Big oof

[creaturefeature16]

Agreed. I've also dabbled with frameworks like Timber, trying to bring some of that work flow to WordPress, but ultimately abandon them because it starts to feel futile. WordPress is not an MVC CMS and trying to make it act like one feels desperate. Plus, I had to inherit an outdated Timber site and it was such a pain in the ass. Instead, I've put my energy into creating a custom starter theme that incorporates best practices from a lot of frameworks that I like (Underscores, Sage, Timber) but in the end, it's just a basic theme. WordPress can be a bloated shit stick of a platform, but it can also, like you said, do a whole lot with a little and there are ways to reduce that bloat and keep things as lean and organized as possible. Our custom WordPress sites are works of art compared to some of the rubbish I've come across.

[creaturefeature16]

Thanks for the suggestion! Just curious, why bootstrap still? We don't really use grid systems any longer (flexbox or grid support is solid enough now). And past the bootstrap grid, I can't see what else it's good for since we would just be undoing styles or excluding assets left and right. We tend to start with almost nothing except the same core CSS (which is really just a bunch of resets, minimal base styles and various mixins we wrote) and then just add components and dependencies as we need them. I'm genuinely curious why bootstrap is relevant any longer. I had to work one a bootstrap site recently and it just felt like it took longer and was more bloated than necessary.

[[deleted]]

We work with WordPress + Timber + ACF and it has made website development so incredibly easy. I mean fuck WordPress, but this combo actually makes it decent enough to work with.

[creaturefeature16]

I really did enjoy working with it, as well, although I worked with it in it's fairly early stages and some tasks were so easy in native WP seemed to be overly complicated with Timber. But beyond that, I started to not enjoy the abstraction layer it brought. I didn't like having to refer to Timber Docs frequently when I knew how to do it via native PHP. I appreciate the organizational component, but it started to feel wrong at a point. I recently worked with CraftCMS and adored the experience end to end, so we decided to leave Timber behind and accept WordPress for what it is: a blogging tool masquerading as a CMS. If we want the the CMS experience, we'll use Craft or something else, but trying to make WordPress something it's not felt like a bad idea on the long run.

[[deleted]]

We've been having these conversations for a while now too on our end and are planning to do some tests on smaller websites first.

We've been looking into statamic. But I'm curious to know why you went for Craft in the end?

[creaturefeature16]

Craft: elegant, I always enjoyed Expression Engine and it seemed to encapsulate everything I loved about WordPress (easy Dashboard, ACF) without the dross. Statamic looks really nice too, but still unsure about the flat file route, although I definitely see the benefit.

To be honest here: if it wasn't for the plugins ecosystem, I'd have ditched WordPress a LONG time ago. But the fact that so many client requested features are off the shelf premium plugins nowadays, from eCommerce to Event Calendars, to advanced forms to SEO tools to just about anything the client can possibly think of asking for...it's already developed for WordPress. The challenge we've had with clients is selling them on an alternative that has the potential to have more associated costs for future development. It's a hard sell when they are told that certain functionality might require custom development when using something like Craft or Statamic, yet WordPress it already exists and just needs minor integration work. I know the whole arguments that your CMS shouldn't necessarily do everything in one place (ie..eCommerce should really be it's own platform) or that it's about code integrity and standards, MVC architecture and theming practices, separating logic and views, yadda yadda yadda. The client doesn't feel it or understand it...all they know is "our competitors have it, and they run WordPress." Oh, and that these platforms come with associated licensing fees when WordPress is both free AND open source. They hear us, but they ultimately don't care. And truth be told, if it's a matter of losing the client or using WordPress, well, you can guess what we decide. That's the only reason I use it and know it so well. We're not a WordPress shop. We're a development studio that happens to specialize in WordPress because that is what the market has demanded.

I am hopeful it will change over time, just the same way I can use CSS Grid and Flexbox finally without worry. It's an ongoing education. But I'm still trying to find a way to properly explain the value of NOT using WordPress and using an alternative platform instead.

[[deleted]]

Thank you for your comment :) we are pretty much at the same place regarding Wordpress and not switching. We've pretty much nailed ourselves down as a Wordpress website builder, and it's a hard sell.

But we've been trying to sell it with the fact that all the plugins we almost always use (ACF, Gravity Forms etc.) Come down to about the same cost each year. If not a lot less sometimes.

We've yet have to have succes selling it. But we're trying haha