WordPress site

[phenomlab]

@jac It looks very “Facebook” to me, and personally, not something I’d use. You have to remember that the whole social media experience has been “done to death” and unless it’s Facebook or Twitter, it’s not going to get much traction. The trouble with Forums is that they have to offer something unique to that user that they cannot get anywhere else.

If you consider what Sudonix offers, this is niche, and not an everyday service you can get anywhere. This makes it appealing to members and visitors alike as it addresses a shortfall they have in the sense that they are looking for help, and can easily get it. I don’t know of any other platform that does this - except for the obvious such as Reddit or Stack Overflow, but both of those won’t offer the level of service that this one does.

[phenomlab]

@jac said in WordPress site:

I know WordPress do a community feature that you’ll be used to called Buddy Press.

I’d avoid this like the plague. It’s been a static project for years, is well known and documented for it’s bugs and lack of interoperability, and isn’t nicknamed “B****y Mess” for nothing

For any platform to be a success, it needs to be

• Lean (in the sense that only the essential components are being loaded)
• Easy to navigate
• Be of use to the visitor
• Keep the visitor’s interest sustained

None of these tasks are as simple as they sound. Ultimately, it’s all about the content, how often it’s updated, and how willing others are to interact with that same content.

[phenomlab]

@jac said in WordPress site:

@jac @phenomlab something like this may be more achievable, like I said above I’ve always struggled with the theme when using Buddy press in the past.

You’re not he only one here. I personally have little enthusiasm for Buddy Press’s core package, but it certainly is made more palatable by products like Youzer and BuddyBoss for example. The real issue here is that WordPress relies on PHP for it’s back-end (as does Flarum). This means every time the site is accessed, the PHP code has to be completely loaded before the site will even show. With poorly configured sites, and badly written plugins, this adds severe overhead to the site’s overall speed.

If a site takes more than one second to load, you’ll be surprised at how many people will simply press the back button in their browser and look for something else - me included

NodeBB and Ghost both use NodeJS, which is hundreds of times faster than PHP and WordPress will ever be. Sure, there’s a comfort level with WordPress, but it’s not the platform it used to be, and is rapidly being outpaced by more modern incarnations such as Gatsby, Ghost, and several others - including GRAV which is a flat-file CMS, and completely “database-less”.

Whilst I completely understand the enthusiasm and appeal for WordPress, it can be a difficult animal to maintain if allowed to get to a state where the site is very slow, bloated, and in some cases I’ve seen, really ugly from the UI perspective.

This isn’t designed to put you off, but is generally my experience. I’ve repaired and maintained many a WordPress site. If you want an overview of the transition out, you should ask @justoverclock for his views as he recently moved to Ghost.

[JAC]

@phenomlab said in WordPress site:

This isn’t designed to put you off, but is generally my experience. I’ve repaired and maintained many a WordPress site. If you want an overview of the transition out, you should ask @justoverclock for his views as he recently moved to Ghost.

Mark many thanks for the detailed response.

I completely understand your thoughts on WordPress, I’ve had many many issues using it in the past and have looked for alternatives like Joomla, however the general issue I ran into was the themes, they we’re never up to scratch, they may be now but simply wasn’t back then.

Massively happy to try something else other than wordpress if something is available, I’ve not heard of Ghost I’m afraid. Is this a good alternative to WordPress @justoverclock?

Many thanks .

[phenomlab]

@jac Check out the speed of my blog site mate
https://content.sudonix.com

That runs on Ghost

[JAC]

https://ghost.org/vs/wordpress/ … Just about to delve into this.

[phenomlab]

@jac enjoy. Feel free to ask questions of course. There’s also a good level of support on their forums
https://forum.ghost.org

[JAC]

@phenomlab said in WordPress site:

@jac enjoy. Feel free to ask questions of course. There’s also a good level of support on their forums
https://forum.ghost.org

Looking good… Just looking for themes to find some.

[JAC]

@jac said in WordPress site:

@phenomlab said in WordPress site:

@jac enjoy. Feel free to ask questions of course. There’s also a good level of support on their forums
https://forum.ghost.org

Looking good… Just looking for themes to find some.

https://gbjsolution.com/ghost-themes/reditory/

[JAC]

@jac this looks cool! - https://ghost.org/integrations/beyondwords/

[phenomlab]

@jac looks nice. Is that a one time fee ? It’s a reasonable price.

[phenomlab]

@jac yes, there’s a load of possible integrations, and several you can do yourself (as I do) with JavaScript

[JAC]

@phenomlab said in WordPress site:

@jac yes, there’s a load of possible integrations, and several you can do yourself (as I do) with JavaScript

Brilliant, sounds positive! Yes mate a one off payment for the theme. It’s looking to be the best I’ve found so far.

I wonder can something like your RSS parser run with this?

[phenomlab]

@jac not natively, but ghost also has an API so with some modifications, it’s possible.

[JAC]

@phenomlab said in WordPress site:

@jac not natively, but ghost also has an API so with some modifications, it’s possible.

Sounds great Mark! That’s something that I’d hoped you’d say .

[JAC]

I see Ghost are running Discourse as their forum software… always liked the look of it but so costly to run I believe.

[JAC]

@jac said in WordPress site:

@jac said in WordPress site:

@phenomlab said in WordPress site:

@jac enjoy. Feel free to ask questions of course. There’s also a good level of support on their forums
https://forum.ghost.org

Looking good… Just looking for themes to find some.

https://gbjsolution.com/ghost-themes/reditory/

Going back to this, having had a pretty extensive look for themes this probably is the best one for what I need it for.

[phenomlab]

@jac said in WordPress site:

always liked the look of it but so costly to run I believe.

No, actually you can self host Discourse - see below

https://sudonix.com/topic/86/nodebb-vs-discourse/7?_=1643973071754

The problem with this is that it is based on Ruby and requires it’s own “docker” container. Not a simple setup to maintain if you’re a beginner.

[JAC]

@phenomlab said in WordPress site:

@jac said in WordPress site:

always liked the look of it but so costly to run I believe.

No, actually you can self host Discourse - see below

https://sudonix.com/topic/86/nodebb-vs-discourse/7?_=1643973071754

The problem with this is that it is based on Ruby and requires it’s own “docker” container. Not a simple setup to maintain if you’re a beginner.

Thanks for the link mate.

I do like it but I think it’s best to stick with NodeBB .

[JAC]

@jac said in WordPress site:

@jac said in WordPress site:

@jac said in WordPress site:

@phenomlab said in WordPress site:

@jac enjoy. Feel free to ask questions of course. There’s also a good level of support on their forums
https://forum.ghost.org

Looking good… Just looking for themes to find some.

https://gbjsolution.com/ghost-themes/reditory/

Going back to this, having had a pretty extensive look for themes this probably is the best one for what I need it for.

Without setting out a big list the main thing I would require from Ghost is:

• A nice theme

• Good intergration of plugins

• Ability to import RSS feeds

• A wierd one, but to have it looking like and functioning like a football site, with widgets, league table etc.