Opinion: The Four Major Problems with WordPress

As it is generally, WordPress is great software. It's fairly easy to make themes for, has a huge community filled with useful tips, plugins and styles to use and is extremely easy to set up and use, so it's recommended for both blogs and all kinds of other sites. But I do feel there are also a few problems with WordPress as software. Here they are:

4. The default theme makes customisation difficult

The first main problem is one of the default theme being unfit for purpose. Seriously, look at Twenty Thirteen or whatever for a moment. It's neither simple enough that a professional designer can use it as a decent base for their own style nor fancy enough a site can edit a few colours and still get a decent looking theme.



Above: I know, outdated image. But either way, the default WordPress theme is a bit of a pain to modify and not particularly good for anything.

What the software really needs is to choose one or the other. Either come up with something simple that experts can edit to their hearts content or come up with something a bit more fancy that newbies can use with only minor customisations. WordPress's default theme fails in both aspects.

3. The Member System seems to be an afterthought

Just look it for a moment and you'll know exactly what I mean here. Default avatar functionality? Non existing. Any kind of practical author recognition or even proper profile pages by default? Nope. Anti spam controls like a captcha that actually works? No there too.

It's just baffling really. Did the WordPress makers completely forget that the real world isn't some little utopia where everyone can't be trusted with equal permissions and people actually want credit for their work? Did they forget that 90% of sites now utilise some sort of registration system and need more than what WordPress can offer by default? I think they did in both cases, and the software is much the worse because of it.

2. WordPress search doesn't work properly

When it comes to using WordPress for a website, one of the first things I always do is replace the default search engine included. Why do I do this you may ask?

Because WordPress's default search sucks horrendously to use.

Seriously, try to actually find something with it some time, the results are as good as useless and arrange the found pages in the worst possible order.

Relevance? You must be kidding. Nope, instead of making a search engine that works like just about any real search engine you can find on the internet (like Google) and that displays the most relevant results first, the WordPress one just lists matching pages with said key terms in chronological order.

So this whole system really needs some major improvements. Make it list pages by how relevant they are, make it actually highlight the search terms and generally add a few options to search in more detail than just by key word (like choosing specific post types or categories to search in). That way, people can actually find things they're looking for on a WordPress site.

1. The comments system is as user unfriendly as you can get

Finally, you've got the comments system. Dear God this is a terrible way to allow people to post or display comments. It's basic, it's completely user unfriendly, has no way to login with other accounts or social networks and pretty much has none of the neat features people expect from solutions like Discuss, Livefyre, Intense Debate or even just a forum thread.



Above: It's as bland as you can possibly get.

What's worse still here is that WordPress themselves know this. They completely replaced the default on any WordPress.com with their free plugin version, and that one is literally ten times better than the one included on the box. It's ridiculous really, the feature is bad enough an official site/service deemed it unusable for their member sites and replaced it with their own version. It's like if Invision Power Board really disliked the post editor and hacked a new one into any board hosted with their hosting services. Or if vBulletin.org disliked basic vBulletin enough that they didn't bother to upgrade even to the fourth version...



Above: Wait a minute...

My honest opinion here is simple; they need to just tear out the old comment system and start again with something that's even remotely usable in the 21st century. Heck, just chuck in the Jetpack version used on WordPress.com and build from that, it's got to be better than the current solution.

So, does anyone else agree with my WordPress criticisms? Anyone else think these problems should probably be taken care of some time in the future? I know I still need to find a better comment system for my blog/news site, I'm just a bit too lazy to flat out redesign the entire form just yet.

What issues do you have with WordPress?

 

That is why Wordpress has so many plugins around. They know, they are not going to change how the default things are with them. I agree that the commenting system of wordpress is almost outdated when I look at plugins from Discuss or others getting integrated. The same for the default editor which doesnt appeal too much - when I compare it with the jetpack enabled or even the plugin enabled ones. They are so very rich.

And the worst which I mostly face - if you tweak anything (via hard coding) on any theme / template, when you upgrade (you almost dont seem to have any choices when wordpress updates are implemented) the template or theme, the changes are all gone and you have nothing else but to redo the same old stuff over again.

The too many of updates makes wordpress more vulnerable if I look at my future as a coder. Agreed, that this past year, the newer versions have been arriving slow and we are still at 3.5.1 at the moment.

 

There are many things to like about Wordpress' plugin system, but the plugin directory isn't one of them. The search feature is terrible and half the plugins are broken or out of date.

 

I'm one of those never leave anything at the default guys. Therefore, the default theme in WP doesn't bother me. Plugins are great but the system is borked. I have one client who insists on running 50+ plugins and then bitches at me when his site loads slow.

Anyhow, for all it's faults WP is drop dead simple. You don't really need to learn the system as you do with Dupral or Joomla. WP is my go to CMS for projects where a client needs to update the site on their own but doesn't have technical ability. I bill a little time teaching them but it saves them in the long run as they don't have to pay me to update or edit content.

 

Interesting post.

I also find trying to redesign Wordpress to be a pain in the butt. The fact the templating system is still basically a mix of PHP and HTML in PHP files is possibly flexible and even powerful, but it goes against the mantra of keeping business logic (PHP) and design (HTML) separated, which any good CMS should do. Obviously, templating engines like Smarty or Twig offer sort of their own "language" to accomplish logical tasks within a design, but a clear separation between business logic and design is still there and I'd venture to say the learning curve is much lower and less susceptible to mistakes, than having to learn PHP.

Here is an example of what I mean.

Wordpress template kind of code:

Code:

<?php if ( in_category('3') ) { ?>
  <div class="post-cat-three">
<?php } else { ?>
  <div class="post">
<?php } ?>

Whereas the in_category() function is already a special "template" function within Wordpress.

If you did the same with Twig (or any other template engine), this is something like what you'd have:

Code:

{% if category = 3 %}
    <div class="post-cat-three">
{% else %}
    <div class="post">
{%endif%}

It is just more elegant, much cleaner and easier for any designer to understand at first glance.

Scott

 

Darn. I just knew that you were going to say something about plugin developers not following guidelines and creating plugins which conflict with other plugins and break your site.

No? Ok, well, then I'll just add that to my list of wordpress pet-peeves . Seriously, though, I'm a huge fan of wordpress, and now that the the default theme is responsive, I do everything using customized child-themes so that my upgrades stay functional and I can sleep peacefully.

 

I think if your just running a blog something like that design is suitable but you have so many themes and plugins so if you want to customize then you can there not there for nothing just take use of them to make your blog better to use.

 

It's a really good platform to start out on and then customize exactly the way you want

 

It is my experience, customizing Wordpress can get to be a serious mess and it is hard work to get it exactly the way you want it. Yes, you have a lot of options to customize WP with the many plug-ins available. Yes, you can change the design at will, if you have the knowledge to do so or with the many designs available.

But, as you do more and more customization, the whole system gets ugly and becomes a real big pain in the butt, especially when updates of WP start rolling in. There is no decent way to take changes from a test system to a live system without doing a lot of the work again. If you upgrade your live system without testing, you are at risk of breaking your site. If you wait for compatibility upgrades of your plug-ins, you might wait for a long time or even forever, so you could get stuck on an old and even unsafe version. If you have a problem with a free plug-in, getting support for it is like pulling teeth. Yeah, that is a risk you always have with "free stuff" and being WP is open source and free, you have a lot of that risk.

Don't get me wrong. WP has its advantages too. It should just be understood, and I think that is the point of the OP, that there are also things which could be improved..... a lot.

Scott

 

And I'd that say the big problem with WordPress is simple; you have to heavily modify it to get many things people expect on a website (such as the aforementioned fixed search, better comments, a decent style, etc), but by doing so you end up locking yourself in an older version of the software and dependant on plugins. If WordPress fixed many of the things mentioned in post one, a lot of sites wouldn't have to use so many plugins and code hacks to get their site working like it's meant to.

 

I don't see this as a bad thing.

 

Oh trust me, relying too much on add ons/hacks is definitely a bad thing. Means you're at the mercy of the plugin/add on maker and their schedule (meaning you're stuffed in they decide to do something else), leads to quite a few security and performance issues (because most plugins are made with the assumption they're not being used with an already highly modified system, and hence are often poorly coded, or just by amateur coders in general) and all in all, it just leaves you with more possible things to go wrong.

 

I agree with CM30 on this. Although so many programmers spend time and effort to create add-ons, extensions and plug-ins, for which many people are very grateful, even myself, these additions are at the same time a risk, depending on the experience of the programmers who make them. And, up till now, not one software vendor offers any kind of protection or support against this risk. Worst case, if there is a known security issue, it could be the add-on dev says it isn't his add-on and the software company says, you have add-ons installed, tough luck, there is nothing we can do for you. So you are stuck with a hole in your system nobody wants to close for you. Not a good position to be in at all and I've had this happen to several customers with a very well known vBulletin add-on. So I am not just painting a scenario out of the blue. It does happen.

This risk is at the top of our list for things to avoid in the new system I am leading. We will most probably still have a disclaimer saying 3rd party programming presents a risk to your site (aimed more at the functionality level), but how that programming is introduced into our system will be in such a way that creating security holes will be very, very difficult, if not impossible. Very secure 3rd party programming is one of our goals and an advantage our system has, since it will be a PaaS. It is amazing how many pain points and risks we can solve or eradicate by simply taking the infrastructure layer responsibilities and all its problems off the hands of site owners.

Scott

 

This seems just odd to me.

This is where I disagree with you. I understand where you're coming from, but you are generalizing. You're also focusing on the fact that 3rd party is terrible. You do the same thing with Wordpress itself (or any other script that isn't created by you). You're at the mercy of anyone who makes a script besides yourself unless you are able to fix / update the addon or script.

Just because the script is 3rd party doesn't necessarily mean that there are security and performance issues. There are numerous people out there that put out quality plugins that only benefit rather than break your website. Obviously the more plugins you have, the less secure your website is. I learned that one with vBulletin.

Like anything, you need to find quality or create it.

Also, let me talk about your post.

The standard Wordpress template is plain. You can easily modify it. Actually, 3rd party themes are harder to modify because everyone has their own standard of coding themes whether they are using a framework, turnkey, or custom theme. It is supposed to be plain considering that Wordpress is ran on 1 out of every 6 sites.

I actually like the member system. It is basic and that's all you need for blogs. Hell, I only use the member system for authors only. I don't want to make everyone who comments to sign up. There are such things as author pages, but it is up to the administrator to set it up if they want to set it up. Gravatars are used at the avatar if you want. They did allow for permissions. Yes they are basic, but that's all you truly need.

I agree with you that the search sucks, but in their point of view, this is a blog. They go with most recent rather than most relevant. Who cares about relativity if it deals with stuff years ago and truly isn't relevant because of its date? Yoast actually wrote an amazing article 5 years ago that is still relevant about Wordpress search.

Once again, the comment system is meant to be basic. I still use it because I don't need anything else. You list Jetpack and IntenseDebate. They are both owned by Wordpress's parent company, Automattic. They do provide everything to add on to Wordpress: Jetpack, IntenseDebate, PollDaddy, Akismet, Gravatar, and more.

Wordpress is core software. It is supposed to be highly modified with plugins. Some people use more than others. Just find the quantity. I know I pay for a lot of Wordpress plugins and themes because I prefer their quality than what is on Wordpress.org.

 

The best attribute of Wordpress is just how much it can be customized. There are so many webpages and some you can straight up tell that it is made on Wordpress but I was going through this SEO blog and was surprised to see that it was built with Wordpress as well. I really thought it was made on some other platform.

The plugins are just great and make up for everything that the "Default" settings lack. I really think the default settings are like a clean slate for people to work on anyway.

 

I agree with you on Member System and Search. There are plugin out there to improve these features , you can try using plugins like s2Member for membership and solr plugin for search. Wordpress is good for a small website as well a big content rich site. Wordpress model is built around developers who build plugin using WP code framework . If have multiple plugins without a strong development team then you are taking a big risk with the platform. Wordpress is the best , no cost CMS out there for a client or personal websites.

 

If there is one thing good about Wordpress, it is they have a great resource of plug-ins. However, the really bad thing about Wordpress is, they don't have a clear separation of what the core features/ functions are and what isn't.

Well, I think they don't and that is a mistake. Because, Wordpress users are then forced to plug-ins for things which should be proper within the software itself (like the search). I also know, making the decision "Is it core or isn't it?", is a hard one. But still, with a platform like WP, you must be constantly aware of this line between the software AND the plug-ins and I don't think WP does a very good job at it.

Scott