How do I use Wordpress without going crazy?

[jacobwilliamroy]

I've never had a good experience with Wordpress. No version control, slow GUIs, bad GUIs, over-reliance on 3rd party support, difficulty migrating to production server.

My list of complaints is longer, but those are my biggest problems. More and more clients are asking me to build their sites with Wordpress, and I'm afraid I'm going to start losing work if I can't go along. Right now I consider Wordpress unusable. Are there any themes or techniques I should know about which can alleviate these issues?

[redninja2017]

I've used WordPress as a developer for over 10 years. It's hands down my favourite CMS because it is super flexible. You have access to the entire code base so if you want to modify something, you can!

>No version control You can use SVN or git with WordPress. There are a number of tutorials online. You can use this for the WordPress core files, your plugins (3rd party and your own), your theme files, and even your Photoshop/Illustrator design files. I put my theme php in a plugin, instead of in the functions.php file, which keeps everything compartmentalized. I also use the underscores starter theme, and have built my own starter theme CSS files to go with that. This really reduces and isolates my custom changes.

>slow GUIs I haven't found the GUI to be slow during production. I use a local install hooked up with git/svn. Choosing quality plugins carefully helps a lot as well. I've seen a slow GUI on low-quality hosting, but even there, using a great caching plugin and tweaking the zlib settings on the hosting account can often help. Following the recommended guidelines and enqueuing and concatenating js and css files is also good advice.

> bad GUIs,

I find the base GUI works well for users. I find that some plugins, and especially some third-party themes with overly complex options panels, can become unwieldy. I try to avoid those whenever possible. I try to make sure that users get the appropriate user role, which also simplifies the experience for them. I've also used third-party plugins to hide some admin options if users say that there is too much going on. That helps as well.

> over-reliance on 3rd party support, As Endy mentioned, that's one of the benefits of an open source community. If you don't see what you like, you can build it. I think that one of the major obstacles isn't the number of plugins, but being able to spot the quality ones. Try for ones that have been around for a while, that have a large user base, that have developers who respond quickly and reliably in the forums.

> difficulty migrating to production server. WordPress uses serialized data in its database. Whatever option you choose needs to take this into account. There are guidelines on how to move your files around on the WordPress.org site. There are also couple of really good third-party plugins that let you migrate from local to staging to production servers with one click. I've used these a lot. Another key element is to make sure that your local development environment matches your production environment as closely as possible.

I hope that makes you more optimistic about your experience going forward. I've tried quite a few CMS/ecommerce systems, but using WordPress has made my work easier, not more difficult.

[peshmerge]

Try laravel of ant other cms based on laravel like october cms or Coaster cms?

[bcaulfield]

What do you like better?

[jacobwilliamroy → bcaulfield]

I prefer to just write a website in HTML/CSS/JS. I can reuse code from past projects, the time between saving a piece of code and loading it up in a web browser is milliseconds, I can track it in git and migrating is as simple as copy+paste.

[Endy]

I've done several WP sites, and I'd say that how you should work to resolve this depends on what you're looking to get out of WordPress - or more specifically, what your clients are. The host also matters a lot - there are several "Managed WP" hosters, and each provides different options. I'm not a hardcore dev (i.e. I don't even do PHP), but let me see if I can suggest a couple ideas. And if my ideas spark someone else's, so much the better!

>No version control

In terms of...? The core engine version is pretty easily displayed in the dashboard. Plugins are versioned by their authors, and update notifications happen regularly. If you're talking about page versioning, I'd have to respectfully disagree. The history of all page edits is quickly found and you can revert freely (and the "future" versions of a page once reverted don't automatically get deleted either). I've found that version control is probably the best thing about WP.

>slow GUIs

This may depend on your server and what you're trying to do with the GUI in question, more than WP as a whole.

>bad GUIs

Yeah... the Dashboard could certainly use some work, but after some thought I've not found a better way to deal with it. If you're talking about TinyMCE (the text-editor), there's a few plugins for that which make it much better.

>over-reliance on 3rd party support

I understand your point. I also believe that the 3rd-party support on its own isn't a bad thing; it's the fact that in order to make it so that non-tech-savvy people can make a WP website, it's so easy to install or remove a plugin without recognizing what it will break. If you mean in the form of tech support, I wholeheartedly agree - the problem is that WP is an open-source project, and like many FOSS projects, there's an expectation that you'll be able to rely on "the community". Often, my problems could be solved just by searching either Google or DDG with "WordPress [describe problem]". Just as often though, I couldn't, so I went to the WPNYC or WPNNJ Helpdesk Meetups.

>difficulty migrating to production server

Okay, this one I really have to blame as much on your hoster as on anything else. Morally speaking, I don't like suggesting GoDaddy for much of anything to anyone, but they have found consistently easy and functional ways to handle migrating from testing to production, and cloning to testing. If your host doesn't help you in terms of that, you need to consider a Managed WP host. Otherwise, there's a plugin (there it goes again) which will allow you to quickly export and import your database - I believe it's called WP Backup or something like that; install the plugin on both your testing and production, export/import, should be simple as that. Depending on your setup, you may have to manually copy your media unless you're pointing everything to an external CDN so your images are all URLs and not Library entries. Seriously though, Managed WP - regardless of which Managed host - is probably the best way to deal with WP.