
WooThemes joins Automattic - schwuk
http://www.woothemes.com/2015/05/woothemes-joins-automattic/
======
aikah
I'm fascinated by Wordpress success.

It's an horrible peace of software, with horrible PHP code 4.x style, a db
schema only a beginner could have come up with and an ecosystem with a lot of
trash(not even talking about the admin which is hideous ). Yet it's a blazing
success in the CMS space, because of 3 things that are insanely overlooked by
other CMS developers :

\- Ease of installation

\- It runs on a minimal PHP/Apache/Mysql setup (cheap hosting)

\- It has a great backward compatibly, unlike other solutions that break
everything with each major version.

If one compares with Drupal for instance, I mean with Drupal, a designer can
go really really far without writing a single line of PHP code, aside from a
few tags for templates(but it's really light). You have views, CCK and a lot
of handy stuff.

On the other hand, one cannot customize Wordpress without writing more than a
few php tags or downloading a plugin that will mess up with the original db
schema. And good luck customizing the admin(easily done with Drupal).

I get that Wordpress is more of a "platform" businesses can build products
upon, but who would really want to build on that shitty core,with that db
schema? one can say i'm negative and unfair in my criticism, but I think my
arguments are valid.

It's true however that while Wordpress gets a lot of heat from PHP devs, there
is no effort from the PHP community to build something like Wordpress with a
better codebase, and a better db schema. So Wordpress still has a reason to
exist.

Reminds me of Javascript : dismissed as an horrible toy by smart people, fits
an niche, becomes popular and ubiquitous , smart people now have to work on
these deployed codebases....

~~~
ereckers
First, I should mention that I'm glad to see this dismissive and negative
comment voted to the top. I was starting to worry that HN was losing its edge.

Next, you mention:

> __Yet it 's a blazing success in the CMS space, because of 3 things that are
> insanely overlooked by other CMS developers : \- Ease of installation \- It
> runs on a minimal PHP/Apache/Mysql setup (cheap hosting) \- It has a great
> backward compatibly, unlike other solutions that break everything with each
> major version. __

The actual, true and documented reason that WordPress has become a blazing
success in the CMS space is the ease of use of the backend administration
console. This comes from developer and client feedback in poll after poll of
WordPress users and developers.

Regarding:

> __If one compares with Drupal for instance, I mean with Drupal, a designer
> can go really really far without writing a single line of PHP code, aside
> from a few tags for templates(but it 's really light). You have views, CCK
> and a lot of handy stuff. __

I 've heard Drupal developers themselves actually look to WordPress's method
of having the option of handling these things in code/configuration as a net
positive. It's trackable and portable.

\--

I've got to ask. If a builder of websites was looking for something that
wasn't horrible and built by smart people, which one would that be?

~~~
wmeredith
I was about to point this out exactly. I used to do client training for a
small web dev shop on everything from Google Adwords and/or Analytics to
Joomla and Drupal. WordPress' admin was head and shoulders above the rest in
terms of ease of use. I've always thought that was the keystone of its
success.

~~~
jwdunne
For some of the websites I have had to maintain in Joomla, it would be much
more efficient for the company if I converted to Wordpress and the writers use
that.

Wordpress is easy to use. With plugins, such as advanced custom fields, you
can do even more. I've impressed many clients with how easy to use the
"website's CMS" in turn around times they have never experienced before.

The code is shocking. The plugin architecture is, well, not really designed at
all. Theme design the same. It's just impossible to match it with the number
of extensions, the ease of use and my development speed as a result.

~~~
mgkimsal
> It's just impossible to match it with the number of extensions

It's almost precisely because there's very little uniformity between anything.

It's often much more efficient to just install a new wordpress, migrate some
content over and start 'fresh' than it is to modify an existing theme with new
functionality; just find a different theme that does what you want and migrate
your content and images over to that.

That said, I seem to remember drupal's CCK impressing me some time ago - if
that was a default option (IIRC at the time it was a separate plugin) that
might have done more for Drupal's "configurability ease" story early on. But..
I may be misremembering with rose-colored glasses.

~~~
rhblake
CCK has been part of Drupal core since version 7 (2011). Now simply known as
"fields". Fields+views is simply fantastic compared to what WordPress -
including its plugins - gives you. (Views will by the way be in Drupal 8
core.)

~~~
mercer
In my experience the problem with Drupal is that on the one hand it's too
customizable, and on the other it will never beat a proper code-based
framework in actual ease of customization.

Because it's so customizable, it's admin interface is too complex for many
users. It has to be to be as customizable as it is. And to get a site going
you often need to do a whole bunch of work up-front: configuring views,
creating content types, taxonomies, rules, workflows, etc. This is often not
needed with Wordpress because you just pick a theme, dump in a few plugins if
necessary, and it 'works'.

On the other hand, if you really do need all that customization, you're often
better off with a proper framework like Ruby on Rails. You can build features
in code rather than clicking around the CCK/Fields/Views interfaces, and keep
them and other configuration in version control. Most importantly, if you're
capable of building complex views and workflows in Drupal, you probably have
the ability to do so in code as well. And the latter is generally better in
every way if you are capable of it.

Drupal strikes me as the kind of thing that looks good on paper, and that
project managers would like, because _in theory_ it can be customized by
anyone, and _in theory_ you can build anything you need with it, all without
writing code!

In practice, however, you end up paying a lot to get Drupal
developers/consultancies to fix whatever mess you're left with. And what do
most of these shops do? Use things like the Features module to store
everything in code/configuration files, which kind of goes against the whole
point of using Drupal in the first place.

The end result is that nobody is really happy, other than perhaps the Drupal
consultants who happen to know the ins and outs of the crufty framework/CMS
hybrid, and can charge a premium for their knowledge of the dark internals of
Drupal.

------
camworld
This is a really smart acquisition. WordPress continues to dominate the CMS
market. With the upcoming REST API, it's only going to get better. I'm
watching niche CMS industry after niche CMS industry crumble under the
continual migration to WordPress.

The latest victims are the small CMS vendors who have been selling proprietary
CMS solutions to public school districts for the past 15 years, charging far
too much money (your U.S. taxpayer dollars!) for barely functional CMS's. The
FCC voted recently to prohibit spending federal money on these solutions, a
practice that basically created the market, so now every school district in
the U.S. (14,000+) are looking around for cheaper and better solutions. A
large percentage of them are migrating to WordPress.

~~~
edwinyzh
Is this the REST API you are talking about: wp-api.org

~~~
alexweber
Here's a link to a recent update from the Make WordPress Core blog:
[https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/05/18/wp-rest-api-
versi...](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/05/18/wp-rest-api-
version-1-2-2/)

------
MichaelTieso
Hey all. I'm Michael, a Developer Advocate at WooThemes and now Automattic.
I'm happy to answer any questions. As you can imagine, we're all really
excited about this.

~~~
ryannevius
Sort of unrelated, but still a question: what is the role of a "developer
advocate"? Also, it sounds like job roles transferred over one-to-one?

~~~
pionar
> Also, it sounds like job roles transferred over one-to-one?

Usually when a company merges like this, there's a period just after
acquisition where both companies still operate independently while the higher-
ups try to figure out the integration plan. That doesn't mean titles/roles
won't change, but the same day as the announcement? It'd be business as usual
at both companies.

------
arkitaip
And just like that - by acquiring the people behind e-commerce plugin
WooCommerce - Automattic has become one of the major e-commerce platform
providers. Great move by Automattic.

~~~
themodelplumber
WordPress' API and its limitations are so annoying that I just can't imagine
developing for this platform unless you desperately need money. Ideally they
develop some new product that is more competitive than the current combination
of WP & WC.

~~~
wonderyak
The thousands of developers making a living mostly off of WordPress
development would probably disagree with you.

It's low hanging fruit, not a lot of effort for decent return.

~~~
themodelplumber
It's a technical debt trap. You dive in with a one-click install and follow up
with a bunch of plugins that seem to fit the bill. Then you spend 2-3x more
time creating a custom theme for someone than you would in a sensibly-
architected CMS, and only then do you begin to realize that maintenance costs
down the road are going to be absolutely crazy. Especially when plugins X and
Y start requiring a different theming architecture in production builds, and
an immediate update to the latest version is now critical due to a security
flaw. Then the plugin you were relying on for sub-task Z is sold to a third
party, and while they keep promising to address security and usability issues,
somehow you start to receive spam for telecommunications equipment through
their support channels.

This actually happened to me. Low-hanging fruit is often a mirage when it
comes to the CMS world.

~~~
woah
WP is certainly not clean, but it's completely possible to make great sites
with it, and it runs a huge number of great sites out there. It sounds like
you messed up on a job and are trying to blame someone besides yourself.

------
ereckers
This is definitely unexpected. I'm guessing Auttomatic + WooThemes + Jetpack +
More? is WordPress's answer to fending off the Weebly, Shopify, Wix, etc..

~~~
wonderyak
With the coming REST API and possibly some new ways of obviating the dashboard
and the TinyMCE editor WordPress is headed in a great direction.

~~~
ereckers
Yeah. REST API + JS front-end frameworks like ReactJS look to be the future.

------
ShirsenduK
I'm a fan of Wordpress but not the templates which are available. They never
take performance into consideration. Most wordpress sites are slow primarily
Becuase of the frontend performance. 5 css and 10 JavaScript files seems to be
the average. As for woothemes it's 2015 and the page where they have announced
this acquisition still isn't responsive and they want to take over 51% of the
web. Hope they switch gears and innovate.

~~~
thirdsun
Yes, same complaint from me, but I think their problem is the target audience,
which probably opts for flashy sliders and kitch-sink approaches to design
instead of keeping it simple and fast.

However, coincidentally WooThemes offers a theme that advertises itself with
something along the lines of "no sliders, no fonts, no bloat" \- forgot the
name, but it's a good move.

------
skrebbel
Automattic is definitely a company I wouldn't mind being acquired by. They
seem to genuinely put "make cool stuff" before "ecosystem! lock in!
billionaires!". Congrats!

------
erlend_sh
That's pretty clever. They're buying WooCommerce, one of the leading eCommerce
platforms.

~~~
dubcanada
Where are you getting your stats from? I'm interested in the source for said
speculation.

~~~
nedwin
eCommerce overall
[http://trends.builtwith.com/shop](http://trends.builtwith.com/shop) Trending
up and to the right
[http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/WooCommerce](http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/WooCommerce)

------
wonderyak
I wonder if this will somehow improve the quality of WooThemes' themes?

~~~
torbit
I'm wondering if the prices will change, if any plugins will be discontinued,
how high will yearly markups be, how often will they update the plugins.

------
HNhappyface
Wonder if they'll keep hosting the site at WP Engine...?

------
MBCook
Going in not knowing who Automattic is (although I know of WooThemes)... I
still don't know who Automattic is.

That seems like basic information I'd expect to see.

~~~
nacs
Automattic is the company behind Wordpress (and Gravatar and a few other
things).

~~~
Viper007Bond
Behind WordPress.com specifically. The WordPress(.org) open-source software
project isn't owned by anyone, although both have the same founder and many
Automattic employees are contributors to the software.

------
gesman
Wise business decision for wordpress.

Free ecommerce framework + lots of paid sub-plugins for years to come.

This will pay for itself.

------
luisrock
Any plans for Sensei plugin? My business depends on it and I am a little
scared…

~~~
pknight
Usually an acquisition spells trouble for the product's users, but this is a
different kind of situation. I think WooCommerce and Sensei will only get
better as a result. The only folk who have to worry is the people building
competing products.

