[wp-hackers] Wordpress as a CMS

[Peter Westwood]

On 22 Dec 2009, at 01:56, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> On Dec 21, 2009, at 5:38 PM, Peter Westwood wrote:
>> In my personal opinion if I was designing a site which needed this  
>> kind of functionality I probably would not start with the WordPress  
>> platform to develop it.
>
> I understand that's a position many people take.  I take the  
> position that so much of what I need it already provided by  
> WordPress that it's crazy not to use it.
>
>> I would however start with the BackPress framework because of all  
>> the cool WordPress like functionality it provides like User  
>> Managment, DB abstraction, object caching etc and I can have  
>> whatever urls I want and optimise the database structure to make  
>> the queries zippy.
>
> I googled "BackPress" and found very little substantial.
>
> I did find this http://www.ohloh.net/p/backpress but this  
> "Decreasing year-over-year development activity" would scare me away  
> from it.

BackPress.org has more info.

The activity on BackPress has been decreasing partly because there  
isn't much that needs changing in it and partly because very few  
people know it exists.

There was a huge spike of activity at the beining of the projects life  
when all the code from WordPress was imported - the shared code hasn't  
changed that much since then so it is unlikely to have increasing  
activity by its very nature.

I am trying to keep the code in BackPress that is also in WordPress in  
sync so that one benifits to the fixes from the others.

>> I like to use the right tools for the job rather than fight against  
>> the one that doesn't do what I want how I want - I find it works  
>> better that way
>
> The "right tool for the job" is an illusive holy grail. Every tool  
> has tradeoffs; the tradeoffs that I value are different than the  
> ones you value.  I value that simplicity of WordPress architecture  
> and the vast support it has from 3rd party themes and plugins, 1000s  
> of articles on how to use it, and how nicely it does 90% of what I  
> need (it's that 10% I'm trying to get past.  But a year ago is was  
> only 85% of what I need so it's getting better.)
>

I know that every tool has its trade offs but it seems to me from a  
lot of what you have commented on about your issues with WordPress as  
a CMS you want to do things in such a radically different way that  
some of the higher level bits of WordPress get in the way some of the  
time.

BackPress gives you a framework to build your site from which doesn't  
preclude you using WordPress as well and using all those plugins and  
themes - it really comes down to what you are trying to build

>> If you have any BackPress questions then please let me know off  
>> list and I can point you in the right direction.
>
> Thanks for the offer.  I'd be interested if it were something a lot  
> of people were using and actively writing about.  If I am somehow  
> misunderstanding its role then I would be very interested in  
> learning more about it.

I know there isn't much being written about it.  A big part of that is  
that you don't necessarily know you are using it.  Everytime you use  
WordPress you are effectively using BackPress as it is a subset of the  
WordPress code.

There are currently two public projects using BackPress and a number  
of private/not yet public projects

I hope that helps answer some of your questions.

Peter
-- 
Peter Westwood
http://blog.ftwr.co.uk | http://westi.wordpress.com
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