
Reasons Why WordPress Made PHP Popular, not PHP Frameworks - lkrubner
http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/215-7-Reasons-Why-WordPress-Made-PHP-Popular-not-PHP-Frameworks.html
======
ceejayoz
Comparing Google Trends for WordPress - which has a multi-million blog network
as part of the results - against framework names seems to have some pretty
significant issues.

PHP was already popular and widely available when WordPress became popular.
WordPress benefited from that - it was much easier to install and find hosting
versus the then-leader MovableType.

~~~
krapp
Its being better than Movable Type is the only reason I ever switched to
Wordpress.

------
jwatte
PHP was popular way before Wordpress. I remember working on sites upgrading to
php3 (with the file extension php3 no less!)

~~~
maratd
> I remember working on sites upgrading to php3 (with the file extension php3
> no less!)

And I remember renaming all those .php3 files to .php when upgrading to php4.
Thanks a lot! =)

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bowlofpetunias
Just as a warning: Manuel Lemos is the most clueless and destructive clown in
the entire PHP community. PHPclasses is a collection of worst practices and
anti-patterns.

Nothing he writes is in any way plausible, it's all just a feeble attempt at
arguing that any engineering practice he can't wrap his head around is wrong.
The man is just desperately trying to defend his limited understanding of
software development.

Excuse the ad hominem, but there's really zero plausible content to this, or
any other of the delusional utterings he has published over the last decade.

~~~
h2s
I agree in as much as I think that PHPClasses is an anachronistic throwback to
the bad old days of PHP. It has a shameful history of promoting terrible code
with dubious "awards" as if it were the greatest thing ever built. Newcomers
to PHP development would be better served by a web that lacked phpclasses.org
in its current form.

For example, in a recent article entitled "26 Ways to Show that PHP Can Be
Better Than PHP" ([http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/203-26-Ways-to-Show-
that...](http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/203-26-Ways-to-Show-that-PHP-Can-
Be-Better-Than-PHP.html)), they showcased a series of "multithreading"
implementations in ascending order of WTF, culminating with this:

    
    
        Mohammed Yousef from Egypt has written the PHP
        Threader class that also takes advantage of the
        fact that a Web server can run multiple scripts
        in parallel, except that it uses AJAX requests
        sent from the browser to start the scripts.
    

I disagree, however, with the idea that Manuel Lemos is a clueless,
destructive clown. I think he's a well-meaning, intelligent person who has
somewhat failed to keep pace with the "proper software engineering" standards
that have infiltrated PHP in recent years.

For example, in an article from 2013 comparing development using Wordpress vs
using a framework, I would have expected some comparison of the viability of
automated testing in each approach. And unless my name was Fabien Potencier, I
would not expect to be advised to "use your own framework if you have a good
capable framework to address your needs".

But this is only destructive to the extent that others fail to make a strong
case for building well-tested software using high quality open source
libraries where suitable instead of endlessly reinventing wheels. There is
room for competing ideas, and I don't see these particular ideas as an
especially worrying competitive threat.

------
dictum
WordPress benefited from the fact that PHP hosting was always cheaper (even
free) than hosts that supported Perl or Python (this was a little before Ruby
became popular through Rails). You could find oversold hosting plans for as
little as $1,99/mo.

As ceejayoz mentioned, PHP was already popular before WP.

Arguably, forum software written in PHP made PHP popular before b2/cafelog
(WP's predecessor) appeared.

~~~
nonchalance
> WordPress benefited from the fact that PHP hosting was always cheaper (even
> free) than hosts that supported Perl or Python (this was a little before
> Ruby became popular through Rails). You could find oversold hosting plans
> for as little as $1,99/mo.

Why was/is that the case?

~~~
chc
You could get "good enough" support for PHP just by turning on mod_php. PHP
was literally made for this. It was a little more work for hosts to get the
same out of Perl or Python or Ruby.

~~~
btilly
More work than you indicate.

The problem is that you can turn on mod_php and run 50 virtual domains on one
webserver with 50 different people in control of each ones. But if you turn on
mod_perl, it expects to have complete control of the server, so you needed one
web server per mod_perl server. That made shared hosting for mod_perl
massively more expensive.

Of course you could do CGI scripts in any language. But that has more
overhead. That made them both slower and more expensive (a cost the hosting
providers passed on).

~~~
mgkimsal
agreed, although most shared hosts I see are running PHP as CGI (or FCGI)
anyway. But, PHP got popular precisely because it didn't demand complete
access to the entire server request cycle (unlike, say, mod_perl).

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jacques_chester
Wordpress had the right product at the right time with the right message.

There were other PHP blog systems. And Movable Type was, for a while, the
undisputed king.

Then the great GPL kerfuffle happened. Wordpress had a pretty site and Matt
Mullenweg was proactive in seeking out high profile bloggers and getting them
to convert.

Add in PHP's ease of installation and the favourable situation for hosts
(mod_php is closer to shared-nothing than mod_perl), and I guess it was
inevitable.

At this point it's network effects and path dependence that keeps it at the
top.

~~~
ereckers
I don't see network effects or path dependence keeping it at the top. In fact
its share of the universe of free open source CMS installs, has I believe been
increasing in recent years.

I think there is a shared experience out there that when you put it up against
alternatives such as Joomla, Drupal, ModX, and to some extent even Magento
that it's the only CMS you can ship to a client without having to field calls
all day on how to use the thing.

Plus, the ease of simple templating and plugins available allow small shops to
deliver products with which they can actually make a profit. I believe this
reason alone is a big driver of WordPress recommendations.

I'll also mention that my comment is from the point of view of design shops,
contractors, and freelancers. If someone is building, maintaing or planning a
free standing product website that will have engineering resources dedicated
to it then yes, there are probably better alternatives.

~~~
jacques_chester
Wordpress is not a general purpose CMS and requires no configuration out of
the box to do its basic task: publish a blog.

It's a different genre of application from Drupal, Joomla et al, so they can't
really be compared.

The in-genre competitors are systems like Habari, TextPattern or Serendipity.

Nobody uses them. Why? _Because nobody uses them_.

Tell me again about how it's not network effects or path dependency.

~~~
ereckers
Ok. I read your last sentence of, "At this point it's network effects and path
dependence that keeps it at the top." as still alluding to PHP and cheap hosts
as being responsible for WordPress's current position.

As for me putting WordPress into a basket with Drupal, Joomla, Modx, and the
like; the reality is that WordPress is being used as a CMS. It wasn't built
for that, and this is distasteful to many here, but that's what it is now
being used for for a majority of its new installs.

Install WordPress, create custom post types, create meta fields, and tie it
all together with posts 2 posts plugins, and you're well on your way to a
website with some basic many to many and one to many relationships.

Habari, TextPattern and Serendipity look like purely blogging platforms, but
if they're better, I hope to start hearing about them in the near future.

~~~
jacques_chester
Oh I realise that Wordpress is being used as a CMS. People write some fairly
amazing plugins to browbeat it into being all sorts of things. (BuddyPress,
anyone?)

My point is that Drupal out of the box requires a lot more configuration
simply to something, _anything_ , that an end user can understand. It
continues to reveal a very large control surface which, as you correctly point
out, is confusing to people who just want to know how to edit some pages.
Drupal hands you the toolbox and expects you to work out what you want to
build. Wordpress hands you a chair and says "here, sit on this".

> _Habari, TextPattern and Serendipity look like purely blogging platforms,
> but if they 're better, I hope to start hearing about them in the near
> future._

If you haven't heard of them before, it seems safe to assume that you won't
hear much about them in future.

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shaneofalltrad
For one thing, if you go on google trends, you are basing this on someone
doing a search. Chances are, this being a user friendly CMS, "WordPress" will
be in the search. While if someone using a more complex PHP framework, they
might look for OOP searches or simply cURL and such. I have used google trends
to decide on my future projects and found it a bit deceiving. Though I must
say, Wordpress has done well and fits a niche from total noob to advanced
programmer.

------
elchief
Wordpress is Wordpress because it's Wordpress.

Your dumb-ass boss can use it. It has 100x more, prettier, themes than
everyone else. It has 100x more devs than anyone else.

Related: my buddy still makes $30,000 a month off a plugin he wrote 3 years
ago.

~~~
onedev
Out of curiosity could someone still do that in today's landscape?

~~~
dangrossman
Yes, many people do. There are 68 million active WordPress sites out there.
That's a _huge_ market, and there are so many things people pay for on other
platforms that you can bring to WordPress and sell there as well.

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joemaller1
So we're wrong to wish for WordPress to adopt PSR standards instead of their
own idiosyncratic coding style?

I really like PSR compliant PHP code (it's almost PEP 8-ish), the WordPress
standards are frustratingly opposite on some key concepts (braces,
indentation). But WP is so popular, I don't see how this might ever be
resolved.

[https://github.com/php-fig/fig-
standards/blob/master/accepte...](https://github.com/php-fig/fig-
standards/blob/master/accepted/PSR-2-coding-style-guide.md)

[http://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/coding-
standards/php...](http://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/coding-
standards/php/)

~~~
stephenr
Code style is the least of Wordpress' faults. Completely fucking insane
architecture (or lack thereof) and ridiculous use of the database should be
much higher concerns

~~~
maratd
> Completely fucking insane architecture (or lack thereof)

Lack thereof. Grep is your friend when dealing with anything internal-
WordPress-related. I charge extra whenever I have to dive in.

~~~
stephenr
I find simply refusing to work on WordPress projects is a simpler solution.

------
luisehk
Actually, phpBB and phpnuke did.

~~~
ceejayoz
Oh man, I remember PHP-Nuke! One massive switch statement. My first
introduction into coding anything beyond HTML, believe it or not...

------
pushkargaikwad
WP didn't made php popular as it was already #1 choice for entry level web
developers and had active helpful community (all webmaster forums had a php or
similar section), something which other languages lacked.

Wordpress became huge because it is modular, plug and play and the go to
choice for beginners. Not to mention, it is also a huge marketplace and tens
of thousands of people make money creating themes, PSD, custom design, plugins
etc.

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lmeyerov
No, based on the data, the more reasonable hypothesis is that WordPress is
killing PHP:
[http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=wordpress%2C+php#q=wo...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=wordpress%2C+php#q=wordpress%2C%20php&cmpt=q)

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shire
I think the title means PHP made WordPress popular at least back in the days

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grumps
This is just a bunch of self righteous crap.

blah blah blah "WordPress is awesome..."

