Ask HN: Website management for non-web startups
2 comments
Having been with WordPress since v1.5 (2005), I have never once had a plugin break after a core update. Some didn't mesh well with the current interface years later so I'd replace them with something newer, but nothing ever stopped working. Plugins I wrote for WP 5 years ago, designed for a totally different admin interface than exists today, still work perfectly in 3.3.1.
I have a feeling this isn't a real problem, it's an imagined one based on misunderstanding of the "compatible up to" label on WP's plugin directory. Most plugin authors don't log in to the site and edit their plugin to bump that number, but the plugins still work fine.
Most WP core updates are just security fixes. You don't have to worry about breaking a plugin or theme by updating; security fixes don't add or remove any features the plugins use. There are 30 million sites running on WordPress, millions of those at organizations like yours, not just blogs. One reason it's so widespread is that this isn't an issue.
I have a feeling this isn't a real problem, it's an imagined one based on misunderstanding of the "compatible up to" label on WP's plugin directory. Most plugin authors don't log in to the site and edit their plugin to bump that number, but the plugins still work fine.
Most WP core updates are just security fixes. You don't have to worry about breaking a plugin or theme by updating; security fixes don't add or remove any features the plugins use. There are 30 million sites running on WordPress, millions of those at organizations like yours, not just blogs. One reason it's so widespread is that this isn't an issue.
If you don't have much traffic, why do you need so many webpages? Can you just put the info in a PDF? Or consolidate your pages and just use plain html like a regular ol' website.
But there are some of us who are trying to bring up non-web businesses. Our core business is embedded systems development. Our web page, although important, is not our core business. So we would like to spend minimal resources for updates/maintenance.
So far, we have been using Wordpress with a custom designed theme. The administration interface is great, it takes a few minutes to add a new post, etc. We were also relying on some plugins, most importantly WPML, for multi-language support, and some less important ones such as CAPTCHA tool, contact forms, etc.
Lately, we are getting frustrated with our setup. Every once in a while, there's an update to the core and when this update is pushed because of a security vulnerability, we would like to update our installation immediately. But then there is the issue of plugin compatibility. By using plugins, (either public/free ones or commercial ones), we essentially tie ourselves to a certain Wordpress revision, since plugins never update as quickly as the core and often they are incompatible with the latest Wordpress release.
Our experience has been with Wordpress, but we think this problem might be common with other CMSs. I'm not trying to make Wordpress look bad here, I think Wordpress is great and served us well so far, but it feels like we need to move on.
So the question to fellow HNers is: What solution you recommend for maintaining a web site to non-web startups? After our experience with Wordpress, we are even considering writing all our pages in plain HTML!
(Some stats/info if it helps: Our site has approximately 300 pages so far. We are adding about 6-7 per month. Soon we'll have a shopping cart and order processing system up. Traffic is not a concern, we simply don't have and probably never have a lot of traffic)