10/22/2024
I have finally started developing an alternative to WordPress, the insanely popular but hugely troubled Content Management System under the stewardship of Automattic (a company named for founder Matt Mullenweg).
Apparently, Mr. Mullenweg has never been a particularly nice person, but his attempts to exert undue control over the ecosystem of an open-source product are alarming to me.
But that isn't why I finally started my project. I've wanted to start work on it for a year, to address what I see as serious technical problems with the WordPress architecture. Matt's apparent sudden loss of sanity has just made it more urgent that I get started.
I'm not going to stop creating WordPress sites, at least not for the short-term. WordPress has been around for years (I personally started using it 11 years ago) and it has a mature ecosystem of plugins and themes, and plenty of developers to whom I can outsource work if I get too busy. But for a while now, I've felt that I can do better. There are features I want to implement that are only truly well-implemented in enterprise CMS packages costing tens of thousands of dollars per year. There are things that Wordpress does pretty well that I think I can improve on...
..and there is one thing WordPress does that has always annoyed me: links are stored as absolute links (https://my.dom.ain/path/to/content) even when the links are to content hosted on the site referencing it. WordPress is the only web-based software I know of that requires you to use a plugin to update links if your domain name changes, and it's silly.
Anyhow... I'm in the planning/architecture stage of my project right now. I'd offer more details, but I don't have any to offer yet. I'll post updates as soon as I have some. Keep an eye on the Lobos Studios company LinkedIn and Instagram feeds, too.
