Just very sad about wordpress

  • Adri Oosterwijk

    (@adri-oosterwijk)


    10 years ago

    Hi all,
    After doing a lot of research I decided that WordPress was the way to go. Not the case that is was free, that was truly of last importance. What I read about flexibility, languages, scalability, no programming skills required, a great bunch of additions available and a lot of other arguments had influenced my decision. I was happy with it to start my project.

    Now, working on it for months (it is absolutely not as simple as told) I came to the conclusion that WordPress is a crabby platform to say the least. I’m not talking about WordPress in its core but all the stuff around it. When used out of the of the box, with a standard theme it works well for a simple blog.

    However, I have to make use of several plugins and that is were the sadness starts. There are, apparently or at least so it seems, no strict guidelines about the structure and the compatibility of the plugins what so ever. It seems to me that a whole lot of developers (with all respect) create a bit of code, call it a plug-in and dumps it on the repository. I am not saying that they don’t do their jobs but apparently it is not enough.

    For example: Have you ever tried to create a site with a WooCommerce shop, a support forum using bbPess, with a random header image on each page with WP Display Header and use several translations with WPML. I even did not dare to activate the Yoast SEO plugin.

    Try that if you want a nervous breakdown.

    The one problem is not solved or the other appears. And the absolute worst thing is that support from the different plugins are pointing to each other or even don’t react at all. In that case they are true with the statement: Do it ALL by yourself!
    Every entity is updating and upgrading (sometimes three versions in a week) but my experience is that everybody is only looking in his own garden, so to speak. Of course it is the simplest way. Adept your code so that it run in a clean WordPress installation with a standard theme. It runs? Ok, in the repository with it, no matter the consequences. Deep in my mind I say to myself: “What do you expect from a free plugin?” Ok maybe thats true but when you buy and download a plugin like WPML is it to much to ask that they help you to let it run smoothly?

    Sure, there is support, but when it reach beyond there own plugin………….

    Although I am very unhappy with it, I have to go on. I have invested a whole lot of time and money in it. I really hopes that the “WordPress Community” will be introspective, make their conclusions and act on it.

    I really can understand by now that, for example, a company like Apple is that rigid about putting apps in their store. When they did it the WordPress way the company value was down the drain long time ago.

    Sorry when I sound frustrated but I had to put this from my chest.

    All the best and lets handle the next WordPress Plugin problem.

    Regards,

    Adri

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Johnathan

    (@jelyman)

    Hi Adri,

    As someone who uses WordPress on a daily basis and has used a fair share of plugins, I can understand your struggle. I’ve come to the conclusion that when I’m in an environment that has a lot of moving pieces (a.k.a. plugins) upgrading right away isn’t usually the best route to take unless there’s a super critical bug fix.

    What kinds of issues are you having? From my experience, bbPress and WooCommerce should work pretty well together. I can’t speak to the other two plugins because I don’t use them.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The WordPress community is large but it’s not sustainable without real user feedback.

    kmessinger

    (@kmessinger)

    The theme you use is one you developed?

    Thread Starter Adri Oosterwijk

    (@adri-oosterwijk)

    @jonathan and @kmessinger:
    Thank you both for your reply. It is good to know that people are out there who cares.

    @jonathan: I discovered indeed that WooCommerce works well together with bbPress. But that is only when you have to work with one language. When WPML comes in the struggle begins.

    1) Permalinks are not working properly because when I click on the Shop link in the English site (English is the primary one) I land on the Dutch shop page (the secondary language)
    The settings I prefer for Permalinks are “domainname.com/products/bycicle-red” for instance. This should be in the Dutch site ‘domainname.com/nl/products/bycicle-red”.
    This will not work properly. So for test reasons I change the settings to the standard settings in WordPress and for WPML to extend the permalink with ?lang=nl. It is weird that I land up on domainname.com/nl/products/bycicle-red. Only on the shop / product pages. The WooCommerce shop page was my front page. I was advised by WooCommerce support to create another frontpage and move the shop page inside.

    2) The pagination was not working properly in WooCommerce because of an image called “page”. The WooCommerce pagination was linking the second page to this image. It took a long time to get this resolved. With a lot of help from WooCommerce. When the shop page was not the frontpage the problems disappear.

    3) WP Display Header is a plugin that gives you the ability to display a different image on each page. You can set the image or let the plugin choose. Now, after changing the position of the shoppage suddenly the Header image is not shown at the shoppage AND the forum pages. At last I was able to solve the issue on the bbPress pages by turning off WPML. I discovered that the Random header image was switched off for the forum (The English AND the Dutch one). I switched it on for both, turned on WPML ans it appears again. Super strange behavior. For the Header Image on the shop archive page and the search archive page I still don’t have a solution. It is maybe because it is an archive page. I have to dive into that more. On the single product page it is ok. On all pages the get_header_image() function is executed and an image is displayed. On the Woo archive pages it looks like it is simply not executed because the div in the markup is empty.

    4) bbPress. What I want (and posted it on the bbPress.org and the WPML.org site) is only an English forum. At least the forum posts and replies should be in English everywhere on the site. At first iit did not work at all. No forum showed up in what ever language. Then after a lon search I discovered that WPML has its own bridge plugin to get bbPress compatible. It is not in the WordPress repository nor publicly available at WPML. It is on gitHub. I downloaded it and suddenly the forums are shown. In English AND Dutch. Downside is that (altough the Dutch forum should be a copy of the English one) in the Dutch forum no English posts and replies are shown. By all means, what is than the purpose of a copy? So, because I was not satisfied at all by the bbPress / WPML combination I searched for other forum software. I ended up with AnsPress, read a few good reviews about it and decided to give it a shot. It is also not compatible with WPML. Decided to go back to bbPRess, removed AnsPress and ended up with a database filled with AnsPress left overs. I don’t know how to clean that up.
    Over at WPML they stated that the compatibility issues with bbPress are known, that the bridge plugin is not supported, that they are working on it but can’t tell when it is resolved. That’s easy. Simply acknowledge the fact… and then? Believe me, I paid for a lifetime license at WPML and that is NO problem at all. However I expect a good working solution and it is not. I started a topic in the bbPress support Forum 7 days ago and still no reaction.
    Of course I can link to the english forum but that means that Dutch visitors are leaving the Dutch “area” and have to come back somehow when they are finished.

    This only tells about some (recent) issues I came across. I want to forget about the ones I already overcome ??

    @kmessinger: It is a child theme of twentytwelve with a lot of adaptations. In the template files and the CSS as well.

    It is still a nice job to develop websites. I just want to emphasize that it is in my opinion of the highest priority to do some regulations about compatibility and so.
    In any case, thank you for taking the time and effort to read up about my case. I do hope you have some kind of solution for me.

    Johnathan

    (@jelyman)

    I can understand the trouble with the language settings as it sounds like it’s set by a cookie and once you set it with ?lang=nl it sets the cookie as such and so when the plugin sees that, it updates the permalink to /nl/page/red-bicycle-thing. With the amount of control each plugin has, it’s my opinion that the feature-adds (bbpress, woo commerce, etc) should have native multi-language support. Then again, if each plugin does it differently, you’re still stuck but with a different problem of interoperability.

    While it’s not the easiest option, have you considered taking the multisite route? You’ll have two independent sites each in their own language, but you’ll also have to maintain two sites each in their own language.

    Unfortunately I don’t know of one right way to tackle such a complex problem, short of having one mega-plugin that’s built in-house to serve the exact purpose you want.

    Thread Starter Adri Oosterwijk

    (@adri-oosterwijk)

    @jonathan, thanks again for your reply. I thought of taking the sites apart. However because we are aiming for doing global business in the future I have to keep the possibility open for adding more languages. Ah, you say, what languages are more important then English and Dutch (and then Dutch in particular haha) and yu are right. Proper marketing teach us to speak the language of the customer. So it is of importance to add languages as French, Spanish, Portugese, Geman and maybe some Asian languages. As I don’t speak those languages myself the translation options and company of WPML (iCanLocalize) should be handy for this.

    That is one of the main reasons I choose to develop in English (I’m Dutch) and go on from there.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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