[tylershuster]

I don't understand how (if?) WordPress has popularity among serious professionals. Extending it without plugins, many of which are paid, is a nightmare. Adding custom fields is laborious, configuring post type display modes is a slog as well.

HN seems to grumble about Drupal but even if your only requirement is a PHP server with a MySQL database connect, Drupal (8+) is just as simple to set up as WordPress and infinitely easier to configure. Older versions may have been less user-friendly but really, just click "Content->Add New->Page" and you're already running at the speed of WordPress.

[akadruid1]

Wordpress is clunky but it never broke backwards compatibility.

HN grumbles about Drupal because many got burnt by picking the wrong horse. Drupal was the biggest CMS in the world and like a safe bet until they told their users they would have to rewrite their 7 code to go to 8 and their users decided they would rewrite to WordPress[1]. Drupal never regained the trust they lost. They extended the life of d7 over and over but never made a compelling replacement. To this day, 7 is still more widely deployed than 8,9 or 10 ever were[2].

I think it's interesting to observe the fate that Python 3 narrowly avoided. Python 3 wasn't a compelling replacement until at least 3.5. In a nearly parallel universe they're all using torch.rb instead of pytorch.

[1]https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/did-breaking-backward...

[2]https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal

[tylershuster]

That's a fair argument. Maybe I'm just biased because I started with Drupal 8.

[Nectar0516]

Honestly, py3 wasn't a compelling replacement until distros started setting dates to remove py2.

[i_have_an_idea]

I don't understand how `serious professionals` continue to try to trash WordPress using superficial and often uneducated arguments, completely ignoring the fact that it has huge flexibility, a rich ecosystem, many options for using modern development practices and 40%+ global market share.

[tylershuster]

I worked in exclusively WordPress for many years. "Flexibility" doesn't mean jack if it doesn't adhere to modern development practices itself. "Many options," yes but the core is just cobbled together by amateurs. It has nothing to do with modern PHP development practices; it's basically just a collection of functions. It doesn't use composer; most of the development stacks I've seen are tricks to basically gut its dependency management and rewrite it themselves.

As for a "rich ecosystem" and "40%+ global market share" — popularity has nothing to do with quality.

[donohoe]

>> Extending it without plugins, many of which are paid, is a nightmare.

Many of are free, and you can often build your own. You can easily extend it without plugins, but you're doing your future self a favor if you stuck your new features in one (so you can update themes etc easily in the future).

>> Adding custom fields is laborious, configuring post type display modes is a slog as well.

Hard disagree here. Whether you are using ACF for custom fields or post types, doing it manually takes more time but is not that difficult. Its typically a set of actions you wouldn't do often either.

[tootie]

It's the same way products like salesforce become popular. Network effects. As much it's an architectural nightmare, it is a thing that everyone is familiar with. When you are looking at ecommerce tools, email marketing, analytics, etc they all have some kind of one-click integration with wordpress. If you need developers, wordpress freelancers are a dime a dozen. It's just the thing everybody knows.

[ggm]

Hate the codebase, don't mind the front-end mostly. A compatible SQL schema rewrite in a different language with lower exposure to risk, and some of the auth issues resolved, I think a lot of people would shift camp.

I have seen national broadsheets using WP as their publish engine. How they actually write copy and approve the article stream might be another matter.

[debesyla]

Here in Lithuania it's mostly due to customer demand - customers want for open source systems that could be easily modified, would work "just like the old site did", finding developers would be cheap/easy and if launching and hosting site is cheap too, it's all the better.

When you write down all the demands, there aren't much options left. Drupal and Opencart are used, but WordPress is used for 90% of the sites mostly due to demand/requirements.

[pacifika]

Serious professionals write their own plugins or keep a known good list, review plugins before installing them etc.

[heyjones]

Drupal even supports the Gutenberg block editor:

https://www.drupal.org/project/gutenberg

[scarecrowbob]

I see these questions a lot, but mostly the feel disingenuous. People aren't really that dumb, and most large, functioning systems usually have a material history that leads to where they are at.

The answers really are helpful and will tell folks a lot about the world. If you don't understand how WP and Drupal ended up where they did (and why Joomla, Cake, etc ad infi are no longer around), then I suggest that you try to answer the question your asking, or at least pay some attention to the answers you get.

WP had, for quiet a while, a much better and conceptually easier admin system. Even that system was clunky and hard to train non-tech folks to use. But it was better than Drupal and more interactive than Joomla.

You might not accept that answer, but that really was a lot of it in my experience.

I hate WP for a lot of reasons, but its not like the many "serious professionals" who have built software for it were doing so for unworkable reasons. I found it much of a pain the ass, but if you know what you're doing and develop the correct skill sets it is far from a nightmare.