Hi Ori! Thanks for your message, and for not top-posting. See below for my response.
On Tuesday 20 Oct 2009 13:29:02 Ori Idan wrote: > On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Shlomi Fish <shlo...@iglu.org.il> wrote: > > Hi Ori! > > > > On Saturday 17 Oct 2009 20:39:46 Ori Idan wrote: > > > It seems as if you are trying to be different just for the sake of > > > being different. > > > You get enough people saying they prefer wordpress for several reasons > > > > and > > > > > you reject it just because many people are using it. > > > > Why do you think that? > > I have read many people urging you to use wordpress,even Lior who is a > drupal geek advised you to use wordpress. > However I did not hear any argument against wordpress, other then the > argument that the fact that many people use it is not a reason by itself > (which I tend to agree). > I did not read or do not remember reading a real reason from you why not > use a known and good platform such as wordpress. > I'm sorry if I have made this impression, and it's possible I did. I realise I may have come up as an anti-conformism zealot who does "davka" to people just because they all tell him something else. However, in my original message, I gave several reasons why I would prefer to avoid WordPress, and why I dislike it and distrust it (its popularity put aside). That and when I replied to the people on the list, I explained using reason, logic and experience why they are wrong. Allow me to quote my original message: <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< 1. WordPress - lots and lots of security holes, too basic functionality by default; requires a bootload of plugins to convert into a usable state which many bloggers won't install; and has lots of bugs - it already ate some of my comments and refused to let me post them again, and the blog owners did not know what to do about it. I think I'll pass. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Here is some stuff I said later on: <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< > There are many people that can subscribe to security rss for wordpress > or upgrade the plugin, I think that we are missing is people that will > create content and there are many people with that affiliation in the > wordpress community. From my experience, eventually it ends up with very few people actively maintaining the back-end. I've been trying to get people to clean up spam from some of the community's MediaWikis (wiki.python.org.il, wiki.osdc.org.il, wiki.perl.org.il ,etc.) and so far I've done the lion's share of the work. At once point on eskimo (the old host of iglu.org.il) someone installed a PHP- BB instance under spread.linux.org.il and he didn't have time to update it even after I asked him to. I ended up having to completely disable the domain there. As expected, there was little there, so not a lot of harm was done. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> And here is some more stuff: 1. There's already a WordPress worm that has infected many sites: http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2009/09/07/wordpress-worm-requires-upgrade- to-2-8-4/ (sorry for the broken URL - here's a short one - http://xrl.us/bfs99v ) 2. I know someone who is a very competent Israeli programmer (also active in the FOSS world) who set up WordPress on his blog, and it is incredibly old and vulnerable to this worm (and many other exploits, including those by malicious crackers), who says upgrading his installation now would be painful in part because he has several custom plugins. So his blog is still vulnerable and open to the world. So if a fire has caught the firs, what will the moss on the wall say? 3. Quoting http://www.catonmat.net/ (BCCed to this message) on IRC: <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< <pkrumins> rindolf, i got hacked via wordpress <pkrumins> wordpress is a piece of shit, all i can say. <pkrumins> problem is that i can't post backslashes in my wordpress posts. <pkrumins> wordpress-- haha. wordpress code: http://trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/wp- admin/import/wordpress.php?rev=6870 parsing xml with regexes <pkrumins> it's wordpress that converted normal quote to smart quote >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I also recall him saying something along the lines (but cannot find it) of "WordPress' code is so bad that it looks it was written with one hand. The left one.". (He is free to reply to my post in private and give some more of his opinion about the internal quality and external quality of the WordPress code, and with his permission, I will forward it here.). I agree that judging pkrumins' evaluation of the code (as much as I trust him and I do respect his judgement a lot) is not as good as a first-hand experience with the WordPress code, but I'll have to rely on it for now because I don't have time to go over all the code that I use or would like to use daily. I sometimes have to rely on other people's judgement or the general reputation of the project and what people think of it in comparison to its competing projects. 4. One of the most pervasive arguments in this discussion has been that I should use WordPress because it is the most popular and ubiquitous blogging platform. Naturally, this claim has some merit because that means more people who can help or know their way around it. However, it should not be the only factor in the decision. Here are some examples of some "category killers" that I find OK enough: #. GNU/Linux - naturally. What I'm using as I speak, and a very popular server, desktop, embedded, super-computer, etc. OS. It's not perfect but it works very well. #. Vim - probably the most popular editor on Unixes, and what most end up using (after trying out a few editors). #. Flickr - I find the service great, the site is profitable, I'm paying for the premium service, and it beats hosting my own gallery on my site, both as far as the maintenance work is concerned, and as far as people finding my photos is (as many people find it easier to find high-quality stuff on Flickr). I still keep copies of my photos on the hard-disk, though without the meta-data. However, we can recall many popular and "category killer" technologies or services that people (including me) have hated with a passion: #. MySpace #. PHP - http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/php/ . And WordPress is reportedly written in very sloppy PHP. As an experienced Perl programmer doing PHP, I had to be extremely careful about how to write my PHP code to avoid having bugs, which ended up consuming a lot my time. Often I needed to open a page for the (one of many) PHP functions on php.com and read all of its many caveats and fine points. And I could only hope my code was bug free - I could not be sure. When I did most Python and Ruby programming I was not slowed down so much because when I looked for a verb its documentation was short, succinct and I had confidence in it. So if I had to spend so much time writing such good code, imagine what native PHP programmers who write code fluently but not methodically, but are not aware of its many catches write. And now think of all these new-age webmasters who just install a monolithic PHP application, tweak it a bit (often by patching the core code) and do a poor job of keeping it up-to-date. #. csh - http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/csh/ #. MySQL - http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/ #. The GNU Autotools #. Microsoft Windows #. Internet Explorer - http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/ --------------------- And the list goes on. Naturally, Bjarne Stroustrup was quoted saying "There are more useful systems developed in languages deemed awful than in languages praised for being beautiful--many more" ( http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bjarne_Stroustrup ), but still you agree that we should not automatically choose the most popular solution just because it is popular. Whatsup.org.il is now stuck in an old hacked-to-support-Hebrew version of PostNuke and protected-from-security- vulnerabilities-by-many-web-server-hacks - PostNuke was very popular in its time, and now is mostly abandoned. I'll leave you with an xkcd: http://www.xckd.com/635/ ------------------------------------ I believe I had another point but I forgot it - may be it's for the best. In any case, as you can tell, I have good reasons not to choose WordPress, despite the fact that everyone (including a Drupal Israel leader, yes.) tell me to. These people did not give enough convincing arguments for me to choose it over, say, MovableType. If you think you have ones, please quote my E-mail, while trimming it and write an inline response in text to all my arguments. I always appreciate to be proved wrong with convincing arguments. Sorry for the long message. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Rethinking CPAN - http://shlom.in/rethinking-cpan Chuck Norris read the entire English Wikipedia in 24 hours. Twice. _______________________________________________ Discussions mailing list Discussions@hamakor.org.il http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussions
