Is WordPress getting too fat?

  • I love WordPress the first time I used it which was about two or three years ago. At the time I was looking for something simpler than Movabletype so when I met WP it was love at first sight. What attracted me most was the clean interface, the standards driven mindset and the overall feeling of responsiveness.

    However, I ended up with MT in the end because at the time WP didn’t provide support for multiple categories without ugly hacks. After this couple of years or so, since my first visit, WP has done well and displays even a new identity (ok, maybe not so new). Problem is I just did a quick visit to the online demo and think the dashboard is overkill.

    I really think having WP news in the admin panel is counter-productive, not to say useless. Maybe the first time it might be informative but when I log in what I want to do is to create and edit pages quickly. To keep us informed we have RSS readers, your blog and WP’s newsletter among countless of CMS news sites.

    But most importantly, is not what I think that matters but what my client does. And WP news is certainly not a feature he would be interested in.

    I’m about to take on another project and this time I thought of taking the opportunity of using WP as the backend but having your news integrated is not commercially acceptable, especially if it fills the whole page.

    I know everyone asks for more features and what-have-nots but the only feature I would like every single CMS out there to have is to be able to switch on and off features according to your needs. Right now with most CMSs you can do that at a small scale but it would be great to be able to select boxes like post slug, post status, trackbacks, custom fields, etc and preventing them from showing.

    All programs get fat sooner or later. It’s a matter of fact. People who have been using WP for years will not notice the gradual change. A perfect example is
    Microsoft Re-Designs the Ipod Packaging

    So now, is there a way to trim some fat and hide the dashboard completely?

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

  • In a bit of irony, this recent post (found in the WP dashboard) discusses some plugins that may be useful https://asymptomatic.net/2006/09/21/2831/planet-wordpress-and-the-dashboard-feeds/

    It’s easy enough to cut out the code that calls those feeds in the Dashboard …

    I loved version 1.2
    For me – as just a blogger but who can find my around xhtml and css – it was perfect.
    People wanted more – that’s how we got here.

    And bear in mind that if WP had stayed where it was you would not have hundreds of themes and plugins, lots of great customisations and an active and supportive community – one so good that as Handy has pointed out make something to remove things you don’t like.

    Thread Starter vitalis

    (@vitalis)

    Thanks, this forum is as helpful as always. And I mean it literally.

    My post wasn’t just about the dashboard. I just used that to make a point. But I guess, after visiting the link provided, this feature has already caused quite a controversy and I’m just bringing back old topics.

    Podz, I think most people feel the same way as you. We all feel WP is great and has potential, and it’s precisely for that reason I’m stressing about the ‘fatness’ before it gets out of hand. I just don’t believe in the “if you don’t use it then don’t read it” stand regarding the dashboard. And I don’t believe in not caring about new boxes clogging the editing page or any other page for that matter after each version.

    Basically I’m just asking for a ‘WP-diet’ prescription plugin. It would be great if it enables you to just hide sections and boxes you don’t want it to show as opposed to completely remove them, which I guess would be easier to implement. This would be great for those who want more features and those who rather keep it light looking. Also, it would give WP an edge against the upcoming Ruby on Rails and AJAX based Web 2.0 CMSs. eg. RadiantCMS, Typo and ModxCMS among many others.

    I’ve been hacking out the Dashboard for the last few versions. So far it seems I have to re-hack it every time there’s a new version upgrade.

    I agree WP has become too fat.

    For me the fatness problem is with the TinyMCE. I guess this is what gives the WYSIWYG on Write Post, which I turn OFF anyway (I still use Quicktags like WP 1.5). The reason TinyMCE is “Fat” to me, is the large number of tiny files. It’s too much junk to upload on FTP every time there is an upgrade. It seems like hundreds of files, confusing in the FTP logs.

    I just use WP-Dash. It replaces the dashboard without any core hacking. ??

    Dgold: Many people (including me) have been pushing for TinyMCE to be pluginized. It’d still be bundled with the core and activated by default, but it’d be uber easy to not upload it and you wouldn’t have any problems (i.e. a user trying to use it).

    I wouldn’t have a problem with TinyMCE if it was NOT the default. I never could see any reason to make it the default…. other than “web20-ish-ness” which is just plain silly.

    Viperoo7 thanks for the recomendations. I should get WP-Dash. Until now I had a grand idea of re-making my Dashboard with my own instructions for my writers, but it’s become annoying to re-do it everytime.

    Also I agree about Plugin-izing TinyMCE, then I would not have to upload all those tiny files (as easy as that sounds, it gets annoying when I know I don’t use that feature anyway).

    Thread Starter vitalis

    (@vitalis)

    This is regarding my post. After using WP for these past few days I wish I didn’t start this thread in the first place because the different levels of author permissions are excellent. I just didn’t know there was such a thing in the latest version. Keep up the good work.

    That’s good then, vitalis. Would you like to mark this “resolved” up top then? Thanks!

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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