On WordPress

I like WordPress. WordPress is cool. Well, WordPress.org is cool. WordPress.com, I don’t particularly like, but it definitely does the job.

“But wait aren’t they the same thing?”

Nope. WordPress.com is a blogging system hosted by WordPress. Think more along the lines of Tumblr. You can blog and do what you want but there’s also a bit of a community feeling about it all. You can browse other people’s WordPress sites and everyone’s website (unless you pay) has the same domain name, generally something like spuf.wordpress.com. That being said, spuf.wordpress.com doesn’t actually exist. I considered making it at some point, but why do that when I have WordPress.org?

WordPress.org is the self-hosted option. You get all the code and everything and you can do whatever the fuck you want with it. The downside is that you need to pay for hosting and a domain name and everything yourself, and it’s on you if you fuck it all up.

And fucking it all up is what happened when blog.spuf.info died. It’s currently dead right now as well. Because I believe the domain name belongs to an old SPUF moderator and I don’t think he’s ever remembered to actually renew it on time, because he has better things going on in his life than to worry about a domain name. This is also why I decided to buy and host spuf.org because if I fuck it all up, I at least know who’s to blame and can try and fix things.

But that’s all besides the point. I like WordPress because it’s all pretty simple. You have your shit down the side and your blogging stuff all in one place. It’s got a bog standard text editor that literally anyone can understand if they’ve used something like Microsoft Word before. Sure it’s got a few issues because WYSIWYG editors like Word don’t translate perfectly into HTML, but it works. It’s clean and simple. And it’s been clean and simple for years. You can of course change things with plugins and shit like that, but plugins are just that: plugins. They leave WordPress’s core blogging experience alone, unless YOU want to change it.

That’s why WordPress is cool.

Well, until I saw this.

I had to try it out on a test website. Not on my normal workspace, not on any of my important stuff, but on a completely separate WordPress installation I used for a project for my OU stuff that was no longer needed.

I tested it out.

And it’s…

Just…

No.

You know the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” Seems that FUCKING NO ONE LISTENS TO THAT LATELY. What this does is take away the basic text editor, completely mutilate things like raw HTML and shortcodes and turn the POST WRITER into something like Wix. This is where you write BLOG POSTS.

Worse, it just feels slower. It’s hard to actually manage my text, which is generally a 500 word article with some pictures, because everything is so overly spaced out. Every time I hover over something, a blue box appears telling me that it’s a paragraph. Uh, yes, I know. I wrote that paragraph. But when I want to make text bold, or change alignment of an image, a little box appears that hovers over previous content, obscuring what’s behind it.

It also takes two presses to publish a page. You click Publish, it asks “you sure you want to publish” and then after a delay it publishes and gives you a URL. A URL that in the current version we’re using how is visible straight away.

Basically, it’s a lot of little, tiny things that really piss me off. And probably piss off other people as well. This layout has been the basic layout for a looooong time. People don’t like change, which is why you need to do change gradually. Not forcefully like this. On top of that, you’re going to have issues with current plugins. How many plugin writers will have the time or skill to be able to quickly update their plugins? Sure, something like Woocommerce or Ninja Forms, who sell premium addons and have actual staff to work on this, will be fine. But all those little plugins made by hobbyists might not survive.

But you know what? I wouldn’t have any problem with this. Some people might like this weird, clinical new layout. But the WordPress developers WANT TO ROLL THIS OUT INTO THE CORE VERSION OF WORDPRESS. They want to replace the basic text editor. Which is guaranteed to completely and utterly fuck up potentially hundreds of thousand of plugins that rely on the core of WordPress not completely changing the main way people edit text on their site.

The solution is really simple as well. Keep the damn thing as a plugin. Make it a core plugin the same way Aksimet and Hello Dolly are. Or give users the option when they install WordPress, to choose between Classic and the new layout. This is a divisive issue, but we’re flexible so give us all both options. Because there’s nothing wrong with liking the new layout, but having it forced on you just makes people angry.

If this… THING… is going to replace the normal text editor forever… well, things will be bad.

You know what’s weird though? This blog post keeps on getting stuck on Saving Draft. Just this blog post. The one that criticizes WordPress. Weird.