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Re:How WordPress Ate the Internet in 2016 and the World in 2017 by simonw on Sunday December 25, 2016 @12:23PM (#13254742)
I helped a local non-profit launch a WordPress site recently, having not kept up to date on WordPress for about a decade.

If you ignore the security implications, the plugin mechanism is astonishingly productive - I needed some 301 redirects, so I searched the plugin dashboard for "redirect", clicked "install" and instantly had a new control panel for setting custom redirects.

The variety and quality of available themes is even more impressive. I'm beginning to understand why the overall ecosystem is such a powerhouse, especially as a tool to enable technical-but-not-software-engineer people to build and deploy their own complex sites.

Re:How WordPress Ate the Internet in 2016 and the World in 2017 by diziet on Sunday December 25, 2016 @12:54PM (#13254826)
To play the devil's advocate, how fundamentally different is it from searching for a gem that allows some function and copy-pasting some example other than that a non-software engineer can do it?

I know, it caters to different kind users, and libraries are typically meant for code consumption (and show the source code up-front and encourage peer contribution), but there is a similar vector here.

Re:How WordPress Ate the Internet in 2016 and the World in 2017 by simonw on Monday December 26, 2016 @01:05AM (#13257197)
It was a one-click install - I clicked a button in the Wordpress admin panel and I could start using the functionality. No text editor, no SSHing anywhere, everything happened in my browser. Definitely fundamentally different from copy and pasting code or installing a gem.
Re:How WordPress Ate the Internet in 2016 and the World in 2017 by ddorian43 on Sunday December 25, 2016 @02:32PM (#13255129)
Check out drupal. It offers a lot of flexibility compared to any other cms that I've seen. And ~all modules are open-source and meant to work together, building blocks. Though it's been some years since I've used it, it was at the time.
Re:How WordPress Ate the Internet in 2016 and the World in 2017 by pjc50 on Sunday December 25, 2016 @04:34PM (#13255518)
> other than that a non-software engineer can do it?

That's the entire advantage, surely?

Re:How WordPress Ate the Internet in 2016 and the World in 2017 by 20161112 on Sunday December 25, 2016 @12:36PM (#13254785)
This is what makes WordPress so hard to compete with.

Its vast ecosystem of plug-ins is essentially a moat against all competitors.

Re:How WordPress Ate the Internet in 2016 and the World in 2017 by lightlyused on Sunday December 25, 2016 @01:39PM (#13254969)
More like a swamp of untrusted code.
Re:How WordPress Ate the Internet in 2016 and the World in 2017 by astrowilliam on Sunday December 25, 2016 @02:04PM (#13255051)
To be fair, free WP plugin code is available to the public so you can check it out and see if it's trust worthy or not.