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

[Mike Schinkel]

On Dec 2, 2009, at 7:28 PM, Harish Narayanan wrote:
> Mike Schinkel wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> And why is that?
> 
> I maintain a slew of small changes with respect to WordPress pristine
> that makes it work more the way I want it to. I use this modified
> version every day, while keeping up to date with the development
> version. I haven't run into any problems because of working this way.
> 
> The reason these changes stay local to my machines is because they're
> only useful for my purposes. And the reason they're modifications to
> core is because because I'm too lazy to encapsulate everything into a
> plugin when a few direct core hacks will get the job done in seconds.

Because I want to be able to update when a new version comes out without having to hack to core to replace my own prior mods.  I especially don't want to do it to a client either given how I prefer to give them something they themselves can maintain and I no longer have to be there for every beck and call.  

I actually think anyone that delivers a hacked version of WordPress to a client is doing them a huge disservice.

Here's something that Drupal.org says about the same issue for Drupal:

http://drupal.org/node/144376

-Mike