Gordaen’s Blog

I’ve mentioned a few times here and there that I am working on my own blogging software. I had actually hoped to be switched over to it by the middle of this month, but I’ve been working two jobs (and doing that crazy school thing), so I haven’t had as much free time as I’d like. Plus, I’ve been spending quite a bit of the free time that I do have on artistic ventures. Anyway, the reason I am writing my own software is because I haven’t been fully satisfied with any of the solutions I’ve tried. Right now, I am using WordPress, which is just not “doing it” for me anymore. These are various issues with WordPress that I have had. I either started using plugins or gave up on the issue.

Plastering of version number everywhere
This is especially great for people with malicious intent. “What’s that you say, WordPress version blah has X vulnerability? Let me just do a quick Google search for victims…” It’s annoying enough to have software that is self-advertising, but I can tolerate that when the software is free. When software starts advertising its exact version to people who don’t need to know (i.e., everyone but me), I have a problem.

Query-happy
A fairly simple install of WordPress will run about forty queries to generate the main page. If you start adding in customizations, you can easily be looking at 50-60. Why? Is there some way for me to see these queries so I can understand why the hell it takes that many?

Image thumbnails
This issue has been somewhat fixed in WP2.5, but the image management is still painful. Uploading a bunch of images is no problem at all… unless the directory permissions are set incorrectly. It’s nice enough to tell you that the permissions are bad… for every single file you picked to upload! It doesn’t just detect the error and abort the attempt to manipulate and save each of the images. It is painful to add a large number of images to a post, because you have to open the dialog box every time (and what’s worse is that your settings, such as picking to use a thumbnail, are not kept; you have to reselect the options every single time). Need to change an image’s size for a particular post? Good luck…

Spam control
Does anything really have to be said here? WP’s handling of spam is terrible. There are some good plugins, but the software alone is pretty much a spam magnet. Their solution? Add “nofollow” to every single link that a guest creates… I love ideas that punish people who use the system correctly rather than truly solving the problem in the first place. Now all the real visitors don’t even get “search credit” for their comments, spammers continue to spam because they’re bound to get victims regardless of the search engines, and nothing has been done to stop the hundreds/thousands of spams from occurring in the first place.

Caching (queries and pages)
This ties into the query-happy nature of WordPress. Again, there are plugins for caching, but this should be built in if the software is going to be bombarding the database. Query results can be cached; partial templates can be cached.

Miscellaneous
I feel like drafts are fairly hidden now. The delete links for comments, posts, etc. are very small and not easily seen. It’s easier than ever to forget about categorizing new posts. There’s a “manage” link in the admin section, presumably for managing things, but “comments” has its own link that goes to a page called “Manage Comments.” There’s a random blob of bright orange in the dashboard that is harsh on the eyes and rather out of place. Why does the new magical plugin updating feature require FTP and not just use CURL? I’m sure there are other things I am forgetting, but this is a decent start.

WordPress is definitely solid software, improving with each release, but I need more control. Hopefully I’ll have enough time in the near future to really get going on my own blogging software… maybe I shouldn’t be spending my time with posts like this, haha.