So, will Twitter ban single-sided up or down voting in accordance with their agenda, similar to how they have start preventing users from even "liking" a tweet?
Am I the only one that doesn't like WordPress anymore? The concept was great, but it has basically become a "website builder" and not really a piece of blogging software anymore.
Throw on top of it the architecture of plugins (no sandboxing!) and the culture this has developed for websites being "built" with a combination of 50+ outdated plugins and it frankly becomes a nightmare. Of course this can occur with any huge software project, so I somewhat concede this point.
The real turning point for me was the push to move to the "block" editor and effectively turn WordPress into Wix or Squarespace or whatever
Anymore? I stopped liking Wordpress before 2010, especially being a PHP programmer (back then) in small town Midwest where 90% of gigs I landed was fixing some monstrosity that some guys nephew threw together made up of a dozen+ plug-ins that had since been hacked on by a series of online personalities and a theme they purchases three years ago that they had paid five different people to “customize.”
Yeah sure I’d be glad to quickly change over this theme to match new designs. Wait every plug-in also has to be fought with since the templates for those have also been “customized.” Wait I have to match the HTML almost to a tee because the chrome plugin no one else has ever heard of says you have perfect SEO (despite only getting first page results with a highly specific query no human would ever type) and you think this will lower your score? :(
I’ll take a stressful 10 hours at a startup over that any day.
> Wait I have to match the HTML almost to a tee because the chrome plugin no one else has ever heard of says you have perfect SEO (despite only getting first page results with a highly specific query no human would ever type) and you think this will lower your score? :(
That's hilarious. I'm assuming it would not have gone well to try to tell them otherwise?
Most of these people owned mom and pops or online stores; they weren’t tech savvy and tended to believe what they read on google (usually blogs trying to sell them Wordpress plugins, SEO guides and the like) so yeah it would have fell on def ears. It is funny, now that I don’t deal with it anymore.
Apparently, lots of people want a website builder.
We in the startup culture often forget that the market for building bespoke webapps using the latest and greatest frameworks is only a tiny part of the web. The vast majority of people who order websites just want something that works out of the box, and they want it yesterday.
I don't think anybody is particularly fond of WordPress's medieval internal structure or its byzantine plugin ecosystem. For the time being, though, I'm glad that there exists a well-known, open-source, self-hosted alternative to Wix and Squarespace.
There was a time when lots of people wanted something bloggish. Now that time is over, and WordPress has pivoted accordingly.
The core WordPress codebase has been polished until it's sorta OK. It's got some quirks, but many of the obvious problems have been patched over the years.
The plugin marketplace, on the other hand, is a disaster area. Plugins are marketed to non-software people who don't understand security and don't know how to evaluate products for it, even though they might care in the abstract. The result is that the typical WordPress installation is a festering mess of insecure plugins, and sites get hacked all the time.
There are definitely a lot of people who do not like WordPress anymore, there are people who complain about the same things as you do. There just is no other tool that fills the same niche that WP does, semi-easy to use for people without any technical know-how, to add new pages and content.
To me WordPress is a relic of a time long gone, of internet that does not exist anymore, and sometimes wish I could get back to - it enabled so many people to just put out things that they wanted, without having to learn HTML
There's plenty you can do with WordPress as a developer. There are also no-code tools like Pinegrow that attach dynamic WP functions to static HTML templates.
Automattic's failure IMO is making Wordpress.com feel like a blog platform for far too long. A lot of what users would consider reasonable functionality for a website was not provided in WP core but by the plugin ecosystem. So people just defaulted to plugins for everything, which eventually gave WP a bad name, because plugins were often janky and poorly supported.
I suspect you’re no longer in the circles that WordPress is targeting: it’s still a fairly common “no-/low-code” platform for people who just want to put together a site for themselves. I think that what’s going on is that programmers generally don’t encounter it as much in “real programming jobs” because it has been so successful in making programmers unnecessary for a whole swath of websites.
>The concept was great, but it has basically become a "website builder" and not really a piece of blogging software anymore.
You can definitely turn it into practically anything, and it quickly becomes a mess due to the fact that it was never meant to be an application platform. But WordPress is still best in class at what it was meant to do; a simple self hosted blog.
WordPress is highly complex... it has plugin extension points, convolutes HTML building into application logic, and regularly has new security vulnerabilities discovered and exploited.
A guy I know runs a blog for his non-profit on WordPress. At one point he asked me for help because pages were loading extremely slowly. It turned out the blog had been hacked and was being used to host gigabytes of junk pages with SEO boosting links to really trashy websites.
I used to recommend WordPress wholeheartedly for self-hosted blogs, but these days I strongly prefer something that doesn't have any back-end code that the site owner has to maintain and/or update -- a static site generator, a JAMStack-based blog, etc. Or consider using someone else's hosted blog platform (someone you really trust to host a secure platform).
I agree, unfortunately. For me, it's been on a decline since wordpress.com came along and from then it's felt more and more like Automattic is driving development to suit their business model. I still run a large-ish blogging network that uses WordPress Multisite, but I would love to migrate away from the platform if there was a suitable alternative.
> Am I the only one that doesn't like WordPress anymore?
I stopped using WordPress over a decade ago. I use other website//blog platforms now. I may go back if there is nothing better available, but I have a control-streak in me.
At the time I started WordPress I just didn't have the knowledge coupled with just needing to start something quick.
I’m newish to wordpress. The Gutenberg block editor is really word presses answer to squarespace( they said so at a talk word camp Boston a couple years ago).
But it still has the ability to just type away and write stuff without ever leaving the keyboard. I think it’s not bad. And it gives the graphic designers some control.
It’s a weird ecosystem though, you need a solid theme to start and finding those is a little hit or miss. Same with plugins, it’s hard to tell the great from the ok sometimes.
>The real turning point for me was the push to move to the "block" editor
Yep, this as well as seeing random ads appear in my blog while scrolling through my posts. Recently, I tried going back to WP, but only if I could use the classic editor but they made it so confusing to find it and use it that I gave up. Too bad. I was a happy customer for many years prior to the block thing.
Even with people moving to walled gardens, many people still want to build and collaboratively author websites.
WordPress is still best in that, even when it kind of sucks.
I myself prefer the "static builders" for small websites, like Hugo/Jekyll, but WordPress also have built-in editor and access control; with small websites it's whatever, but with bigger websites, it comes handy.
With you 100% on the 'block' editor. Instead of offering a decent alternative to regular site builders they have changed the landscape so someone may as well us wix or squarspace since wordpress is now offering nothing better?
Mozilla: a corporation funded by a spying company with a recent shady record of injecting stuff into products secretely (hello Mr robot). What could go wrong in this thought crime?
What I have so far are simple demos, without anything even close to a kernEl. What I have is closer to the c64 karnAl in the sense that I have a few functions that do stuff but then again it's even smaller than that. Also I expect the usual firmware that boots linux to do its setups before booting my program.
I think one of the bad things about getting older that people don't seem to discuss is the increase in death of both those you know or those you know of.
Yeah, watch out for Brain Aneurysm if you have high blood pressure. Internal pluming related death is probably the leading cause of early death at that age. Don't clog your pipes people! Don't sit at the computer for too long either. You can get blood clots in your legs. Take care of your heart. Go for a walk everyday
Good advice. Also don’t start doing this tomorrow. Do it today. I know at least three people now who have pushed off everything to next week for years and ended up with irreversible bad health outcomes.
Man I have to lose weight and get healthy. I'm young enough (28) where I probably have enough time for things to recover but I'm out of time and excuses to start doing something.
Need to halve my mass by the time I hit 30. Never had a healthy relationship with food. Parents were always stuck on yoyo diets :(. They're still here, thankfully.
I just, you know, don't want to die before them. My siblings would kill me. I'd also love to fit on rollercoasters again.
I will echo the replies to your comment. I made a decision to fix myself last August. I switched my diet to lower carb and more protein, drank more water, started getting up earlier, intermittent fasting, plus some other things. I've lost ~23kg (~50lb) since then, and my quality of life has improved. Don't set out to half your mass, just set out to lose a little, then a bit more, and keep going. Don't fail before you start. Drink lots of water, your brain and skin will thank you for it.
100% agree about water and about setting smaller goals that you can celebrate. This thought clicked for me.
If you can lose 10 lbs (4.5 kg), that’s like setting down a bowling ball you are carrying all the time. You will definitely experience a quality of life improvement when you do that. Good luck. Then, do it again.
At the end of the day, it's all "calories in / calories out", but the real trick is figuring out how to change your calorie balance in a way that works for you, long term.
Some people do really well on some sort of rigid "I will eat an exact, precise amount of food each day", be it something like Nutrisystem or Soylent or just very carefully counting calories each day; other people can't stick with it. Some people do better just adding a solid, regular block of exercise each day, be it the gym or just walking; other people have trouble carving out the regular time. Intermittent fasting, eating windows, changing the composition of your diet, eliminating snacks or liquid calories, taking up a sport, becoming a gym rat ... there are a lot of reasonable ways to change how many calories you're consuming or how many you're burning.
The hard part -- besides actually doing it, because that's rarely easy -- is finding one that you can commit to forever, so you aren't, as you say, just trying out yo-yo diets.
Exercise is great, but you can't out-exercise a bad/high calorie diet. Running a mile on a treadmill (if I believe the computer) burns about 135 calories. A typical Big Mac meal is about 1,100 calories.
If I don't pay attention to what I eat, and am fairly inactive, I tend to eat about 50-100 calories more per day than I burn, amounting to a 5-10 lb/year gain.
That is enough of a gain that it really adds up over time, and once it has added up it is quite daunting to deal with, but as far as maintaining goes, it's very reasonable to just add a small amount of light exercise on a daily basis.
Genuinely do it. It was the best improvement I made in my life. All I did was eat less crap and walk a lot. Turned out i liked walking so I now walk up mountains and stuff.
I started over 10 years after you so you’re good still :)
If you’ve got a smart phone get a calorie tracker app like Nutracheck and use it. Job done.
If you can afford it, I recommend hiring people to help. Seeing a personal trainer just once a week has been life changing for me. I just have to show up. Just being accountable to someone else has been huge.
Getting a healthy lifestyle I think is important and at any age is a great time to improve. I think of it more of a journey than an endpoint. It will have ups and downs but try to keep it heading generally in the right direction.
I’m much older but try to stay active (bike commuting, regular exercise, yoga, better diet) although not at my ideal weight it’s helped.
I have a coworker who lists exercise as a required “hobby”. I never thought about it like that, but it what helps her keep it up.
Just lift weights 3-5 times a week and walk often (preferably on hilly terrain). You'll be fine. Don't worry too much...that could be worse than lack of exercise.
Or do none of these things and get special front-of-the-line treatment for Government programs, including first access to the COVID vaccine, and preferred parking spaces.
Can confirm. My dad died last year this time due to a huge stroke happened during an endoscopy. Turned out he had a big chunk of cholesterol at the aorta. The endoscopic procedure probably broke it and sent more fragments to the brain. He had an earlier stroke 4 weeks ago and blood thinner didn’t seem to work.
He was very active, though. So mind you, eating well is also a key to go along with exercise!
I probably shouldn’t say anything, but I once knew a guy whom had general body pain, and it turns out he was very low on vitamin D. He was basically a very overweight shut-in for years, so it’s not surprising he was low. He ate every animal in sight though, so I didn’t think he was low on vitamin D, but he was. (This is not advice. I know vitamin research is not definitive. My friend could have benefitted from the Placebo Effect from taking supplements. I am not a doctor. I don’t think I forgot any HN science disclaimers? Oh yea, what I love most about you guys here is you jump all over statements I’m making right now.)
Then you must take some rest. Get a good recharge of your batteries and get back on the field only when you got stronger. Enjoy life, eat well and move around a lot.
There's not really an "easy" answer which it seems a lot of people trying to get healthy want.
Exercising sucks.
Eventually you get good enough at it that you start to enjoy it-- I LOVE running now--but it's not without a fairly long period of pain and discomfort.
It's EXPONENTIALLY easier to gain the weight than it is to lose it. You can lose the weight through diet alone but that's itself incredibly difficult especially with a life of bad habits.
One problem is that I find exercise extremely boring. I need constant stimulation to keep attention away from pain. For some time I actually could get by with podcasts but after listening to few hundreds I started finding the same patterns and it was just boring again. In the end I had to listen to them at 4x speed to keep myself away from pain. Other "trick" was to exercise once pain killers kicked in, but they work so short periods now that I have to do work instead. Medical cannabis also helps but exercise does not feel comfortable. Still researching... wherever I sit I have weights within reach so I try to lift at least once but after a while I became blind to them and forget they exist.
Running sucks, rowing a little as well. Lifting weights, swimming, walking are all great almost from the get go.
Lifting weights is by far the best. You can keep a leisurely pace, have plenty of time to talk to people, listen to a podcast, or just fiddle with your phone between sets, so it's psychologically easier. You become stronger so you feel the benefits all the time. And you gain muscle which means your base metabolic rate goes up, you have much more latitude in your diet and room for lapses.
Most importantly (yes), you look better in the mirror. Both instantly thanks to the pump and in the long term. Which is by far the best motivation to show up again.
I used to think running sucked until I took up soccer, apparently the 2 hours a week every summer and winter (not that I played the whole time, I was overweight and out of shape, maybe 20-30 minutes total) plus practices caused my form to improve. Shinsplints disappeared, and as I lost weight my knee pain disappeared. It's not for everyone, but working on form can make it a much more tolerable exercise if not enjoyable.
Rowing requires you to focus on form as well. If you can get the form down (legs, hips, arms, reverse) the motion becomes very smooth and the pain that remains isn't pain, just soreness and discomfort from the effort. It's still damned exhausting, but it's a great cardio and full body workout. Back pain is still possible, I have sciatica and it's occasionally triggered/made worse by my rowing, but on days when I let my form slack or when I've upped the difficulty for myself (changed resistance, added time, added intensity). But the strengthening of core muscles has overall reduced the frequency of my sciatica problems. Like with lifting (which I need to get back into) it builds up a good bit of muscle and helps raise the base metabolic rate, though not as dramatically. I also don't think I've ever had a more significant improvement in my cardio endurance than when using rowing as a frequent/key part of my routine (other than swimming, but shoulder issues have forced me to avoid that as a regular exercise, I can go 1-2 times a week for moderate distance and pace with breaks, but not the 3+ times of continuous swimming for 30-45 minutes I used to do; take care of your shoulders people).
You didn't mention cycling, but it's another good exercise that's very unlikely to cause issues for most people. Also nice if you can find a good cycling route/trail near your home or office, or find a cycling group in your area. Riding as a pack can help with safety and discovering routes (this is my plan for the spring this year, once I get my bike tuned up, since I'm still new-ish to this area). Cost is an issue, but there are a lot of people that buy nice bikes that never get ridden and sell them a couple years later. Clean it, tune it, and you've got a great bike at a discount. Keep it clean and tuned and it'll last you years. A good indoor trainer isn't expensive (though not cheap either) and can turn it into a nice year piece of exercise equipment (if you live in an area where winter riding is untenable for you, or with frequent summer rains).
This really depends on the issue. If, for example, you have a mobility issue, and walking directly hurt the mobility issue, then the solution is physio or massage to resolve the mobility issue.
But for your more garden variety “I am tired and my joints hurt” then exercise tends to be a virtuous circle. You push yourself to do a little, and it is rough, but it improves the body’s capacity. Then you feel a bit better later and can do more.
Being unhealthy is an equilibrium, and you can push yourself into a better equilibrium with exercise, food and sleep.
For 90% of people reading this what I wrote will be true. But you may be in the 10% where you have an underlying issue to fix first, so check with a physio and a doctor.
Unless your physician is of the opinion that your particular issues would benefit from more rest, you first have to believe that exercise will (eventually) make your life better. And it's not a wild stretch, because all evidence points in that direction.
If you don't really believe that, man, it's super fucking hard and the first step has to be a psychological shift. I would wholeheartedly recommend a professional, if that is in the books for you.
If you do however believe that exercise will eventually improve your life, then make it harder to say no: Join a club, any club, that involves moving your body. Hire somebody, depending on where you live maybe insurance coverage will get you going for cheap/free.
The gains in the beginning are hard but boy do they come quick.
And then when you get to my late parent's age - mid 90s when they died, basically all your peers are dead. Al those people with shared memories of childhood and youth. No one to reminisce with.
I think it just seems like most things surrounding death in the U.S. are in an abysmal state.
Mexico/good portion of the East seem to do things much better regarding it. (These are just the places I'm personally familiar with. Sure there's many others that approach death much differently than the U.S. does as well.)
Until you get to site and things don’t quite fit, then the installer bodges it or you wait 3 weeks for the factory to make a new bit. Making stuff on site isn’t as subject to disasters.
