[wp-hackers] One CMS to Rule Them All (was This was painful to read...)

[Mike Schinkel]

On Dec 2, 2009, at 6:42 PM, Jared Bangs wrote:
> If you believe (as I do) that "WordPress is not, and should not be,
> all things to all people" (to quote Otto's first message in this
> thread), then it's better to identify up front what it should be...


So what would that be?

Personally I like what's on WordPress.org:

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

Is that not correct?  Does anyone feel that should be changed?

Based on that, I'd argue that custom post types and custom URLs are a must have for a "state-of-the-art publishing platform."  Is there a valid argument against that?

Would I think WordPress is a good platform to build a new SAAS offering?  Not so much.

> This thread isn't about particular features, it's about a mindset.
> Specifically, one that sees a problem or project and says "how can I
> handle this... with WordPress" rather than just "what's the best way
> to handle this". It's my opinion that the former approach is overly
> narrow, and CAN lead to the advocating of unnecessary core features in
> order to support it.

I'd propose another question: "Is there a solid reason WordPress cannot handle this?"  

WordPress brings along far more benefits than any other proposed alternative. Using something else leaves the user without those many benefits which to me is not a smart solution.

On Dec 2, 2009, at 7:04 PM, Harish Narayanan wrote:
>> That is the one risk of doing it that way. Writing code can take a while,
>> and it would feel like a waste of time if it wasn't accepted.
> 
> Except, of course, it usually isn't a waste of time because you wrote
> the code in the first place because it worked (on whatever level) for you!


Point of note if the modification is to the core and it's not accepted it is a waste of time because no one in their right mind should deploy a modified version of the core if those mods are not going to get rolled into the core.  So it's only not a waste of time if the mods are in plugin or theme form.

On Dec 2, 2009, at 6:57 PM, Nathan Rice wrote:
> I understand your frustration, though. You'd rather get support for a
> particular feature before you waste time writing the code. Unfortunately, in
> open source (and the WP community), things aren't generally done that way.
> The only exception would be ideas that get debated in the weekly IRC chats.
> But I've personally never seen an idea get debated on wp-hackers and
> eventually make it into core. This simply hasn't been the venue in which the
> WP power brokers look for ideas to include in core.
> 
> Hopefully that helps.

Thanks, I appreciate it.  Yes it is frustrating. I'm an entrepreneur looking for viable solutions and the open source approach doesn't always support getting there efficiently, unfortunately.  Thanks for understanding.

-Mike Schinkel