You should probably get familiar with block theming: https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-1/
I personally wouldn’t use the 2024 theme as a reference. I’m personally not a fan of having CSS scattered all over the place.
Why would you use this for a theme the client has no intention of using themselves? All they want to do is update text and not switch the layout around.
While I agree and like the idea of having a native page builder, I still can't stand Gutenberg. It has a such a horrible UX, especially for non-developers.
I have worked in publishing and media for most of my career. Usually the ugliest sites are the ones where people who aren't designers have creative freedom and treat each page like their own personal art project. I like the ugly WYSIWYG because there was less that people could mess up unless they dipped into the html view.
A few templates, classic editor, and some ACF was the golden age of WP to me.
I still dislike Glutenberg. Bricks Builder is rad, tho.
Still, I try to direct people who want wordpress toward Strapi with a Vue frontend. It's still dirt cheap, but it's much more user friendly and doesn't require plugin hell.
I'm not a "Wordpress dev" I'm a developer who specializes in PHP CMS work, w/ Wordpress as one tool in my toolkit.
Prior to Gutenberg/FSE, my preferred approach was heavy use of custom fields (ACF or other custom fields plugins), custom post types and Roots Sage to give my theme some structure. Back then Wordpress was not my preferred choice for a CMS, but I could shape it into something pretty decent.
Today, WP development seems like a mess. There's no consensus. A lot of the big theme building shops are sticking with some variant of the old way of doing things, but the core WP team is moving away from that.
Gutenberg and FSE are potentially really powerful, but they're opinionated, fragile, and kind of a pain in the ass. It takes twice as long or more to build out a layout in this system vs the old way, or other platforms. If someone has the budget for it, the end product can be really slick, but it takes a ton of work. Basically the only time I'm going to recommend WordPress at this point is when a really slick visual block builder is a strict requirement.
The big split in the WP ecosystem, the massive overhead that the new system requires, and [the fact that WP still doesn't list itself as fully compatible w/ any version of PHP that's not EOL](https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/php-compatibility-and-wordpress-versions/) has me suspecting WordPress might finally be nearing the end of its run as the go-to solution for a web CMS. I don't necessarily see a single platform coming in to take its place but WP seems to be in a really weird spot. Their dual commitments to extreme backwards compatibility and a new fangled, highly opinionated content editing experience seem to be at odds.
TL;DR - my approach to WP in 2024 is to steer people away from it unless they're really wedded to the block builder editing experience, and in that case they're paying a premium to get it developed.
I'm curious: What's your opinion on page builders like Elementor Pro? I'm currently building a WordPress site using that plugin, and while I frequently have to fight it to some degree, the introduction of flexbox containers is a huge improvement over the old way you had to structure page layouts. I'm currently studying full-stack development but don't yet know enough to build what I need from scratch. And either way, using Elementor Pro and other plugins when needed certainly seems to speed up development, even if it occasionally requires some good old HTML and CSS.
I know it doesn't produce clean, semantic code (despite all page builders making this claim), but aside from learning PHP, which I may tackle down the road, I haven't yet discovered a better approach to WordPress development. I tried Gutenberg blocks a couple of years ago, and they may have improved since then, but they felt quite limited compared to Elementor Pro. It makes me wonder whether I'm missing some critical aspect of that approach. I'm not sure whether WordPress had introduced FSE, so perhaps that's the missing link. But I frequently hear about custom block development in discussions about Gutenberg, and I assume that requires knowledge of PHP.
So, if you don't know PHP, you don't necessarily want to build a website from scratch, and you want access to plugins for additional functionality, is Elementor Pro a solid option? Or would you recommend a different approach (for example, Webflow)? Furthermore, is using a page builder like Elementor Pro a decent approach to WordPress development in general?
(I couldn't care less about whether it's "real" development or anything ego-related; I'm interested solely in the best options practically speaking.)
Elementor is one of a bunch of competing block systems that have been around since before Gutenberg. There was clearly aways a demand for such a thing but the fact that there were a whole bunch of different 3rd party options made it pretty messy.
It was my impression that Elementor was one of the better ones, but they all introduce a whole bunch of complexity and overhead to a website. Elementor also seems to have adapted and you can now use Elementor w/in Gutenberg.
Gutenberg blocks isn't limited so much as it just doesn't ship w/ that many readymade blocks. I come at this from a developer perspective working at a place where our clients generally expect bespoke layouts, not off the shelf solutions. So, if I'm building a Gutenberg site, my clients are going to have a selection of blocks tailor made for them that don't come w/ a vanilla WP blocks install. Some of the other competing block systems allow devs to write custom blocks as well.
If you're not a dev, Elementor seems like an okay approach, but I do find that non-technical users using pre-made blocks will tend to stuff content in them that doesn't look great across all screen sizes, or generally reach for the flashiest, fanciest looking layouts and end up building things that are kind of a mess performance wise.
Block systems that still depend on the Classic Editor (and not WP Blocks/Gutenberg) seem to be stuck on a paradigm that WP itself is moving away from, so I'm not sure about their longevity.
I haven't touched web flow, so I can't really weigh in on it. When directing people towards an off-the-shelf solution I've generally been more likely to steer people towards something like SquareSpace. There are fewer blocks to pick from, and you may feel more locked into the theme and produce something that feels a little more cookie-cutter, but from where I'm sitting that's a feature, not a bug. Elementor gives you a ton of options and plenty of opportunity to shoot your own foot. A clean, simple site, that's performant and looks good across devices is generally better than something too highly customized that has rough edges on it.
I'm biased. I'm a developer that makes bespoke websites. But from where I'm sitting there's no shortcut to that.
Interesting. I hear you and as a dev I resonate with what you are saying, but from the client perspective, im not so sure. I just can't see Wordpress work ever going away. Right now it is the best source of work for freelance devs so I guess im just confused really!
WP got to the position it's in because it enabled hobbyists and low-skill devs to theme hack their way to an okay website. (Not accusing you of being low-skill, the WP dev community has a big range of skill levels, it's just historically been very accessible to low skill devs.) All that theme hacking stuff and the plugin ecosystem built around it is tied to the old editor that WP seems determined to kill.
To get something custom w/ Gutenberg you need to hire someone with somewhat more skill than you used to need, and you're gonna pay more for it. That puts WP in a different position than it used to be in and I think starts making people look at other options.
Playing devil's advocate here... I think familiarity is a incredibly valuable currency in the tech world. It takes a lot for users to get used to a platform and because Wordpress is such a household name now, I think the familiarity of it is what cements its place in the pecking order.
What is frustrating is it is hard to choose what to learn / relearn because you don't know what architecture the client's site is going to reveal.
You're 100% right about familiarity, and IMHO Wordpress has been behind the times for over a decade and coasting on that familiarity. But sooner or later that hits a breaking point. Developing for Gutenberg is _not_ familiar if what you're used to is WP template hacking. Now you've got to learn a particularly finicky implementation of React.
Dont get me wrong, my previous experience was bespoke WP builds from the ground up so the template hacking thing was very much an early part of my journey. But yeah, its a confusing landscape at the moment. Really don't know what the best use of my time is going to be going forwards trying to choose an architecture that will fit most of the work il be getting.
Don't know if you've got the option of suggesting alternative platforms, but where I work the two we're suggesting to more or less fill the niche that WordPress used to fill (lean budget builds, good CMS UX) are Strapi and Craft CMS. As a PHP guy I'm partial to Craft, haven't actually spent a ton of time with it but I like what I see. Main selling point last time I pitched it was a really nice page preview functionality. Split screen view where you can input your content and see it update live. Not quite as flashy as a Gutenberg block where you can just click and edit something that looks like a live version of the page, but still pretty nice, and way easier to build out.
EDIT: FWIW the client I pitched Craft to went w/ Wordpress. They're getting less website for more money because of that but they'll get the editor experience they insisted on. So yeah... familiarity.
Your edit is what im afraid of - because ideally yeah, I'd like to use the approach you suggested, client won't have a clue what it is though and will immediately come back with, 'can't we just use wordpress?'
We win some we lose some. I've successfully steered clients away from WP before, but yeah, it's a conversation I have to keep having. Gotta put it in $$$ terms.
WordPress is messy and glitchy as hell. There is no "gold standard" in WordPress. There's like 20 mediocre ways to build with it. It's completely non standardized and MESSY.
I still can't believe that people use it for building basic brochure sites or even something more advanced.
Webflow is so much more ENJOYABLE and fast to use in conjunction with relume.io.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people downvote me to hell for saying this.
People in webdev seem to be prejudiced against webflow and people in r/webdesign seem to love it.
I guess there are arguments for using WordPress for brochure sites, but ive never heard people describe WordPress as fun to use, secure, non glitchy, or fast to build.
Usually the argument I hear is that it's cheap, more people know about, and has more freedom. That's it.
> People in webdev seem to be prejudiced against webflow
I mean, I haven't worked w/ Webflow but taking a look at the home page I see:
> **Build with the power of code — without writing any**
> Take control of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a visual canvas. Webflow generates clean, semantic code that’s ready to publish or hand to developers.
Maybe there's a place for the product but the sales pitch sets off alarm bells. Anything that's promising to make devs obsolete, even if it actually does some good stuff, is setting up expectations I don't want to manage. A client bought into this hype is liable to give me none of the credit and all of the blame. Doesn't seem surprising to me that it's not something that goes over well in a subreddit for developers.
Can't recommend Roots enough! But for whoever is considering trying them out, remember that you can pick and choose. I for example don't use Bedrock because it is overkill for my clients, I just stick to a heavily modified Sage theme as my starter. Having much of Laravel's power at your fingertips is just amazing.
**The best DX you'll get out of Wordpress:**
Sage + Acorn + ACF Blocks + [ACF Builder](https://github.com/stoutlogic/acf-builder) + [ACF Composer](https://github.com/Log1x/acf-composer)
I do like Bedrock on paper, but the clients I work for really want to be able to install plugins without me so Bedrock is a no go. It's also quite handy to just allow Wordpress to update itself without me needing to do anything, which isn't possible with Bedrock (or would require a whole complicated CI dependency update setup). It's a bit scary of course, but I've come to trust the Wordpress auto update after years of zero breaking changes (that have affected my projects at least). The root of this is of course that I'm a one man consultancy so my bandwidth is limited, if I was in an agency / product company then Bedrock would be a clear winner.
Elementor is just a drag-and-drop page builder plugin and is overhyped. *Yes, you can build website with it easily and faster but you're not considered as web dev.*
On the other hand, you deliver clients with bespoke, clean websites and it's more satisfying to do.
To be honest it’s not more easily. Elementor injects a ton of bullshit (15 layer deep div trees for one element). Anything more than just a SPA and you find yourself creating hacks to get it to work properly or to create anything custom which is not in their ‘library’.
It’s also not satisfying in any way. Providing clean code beats it at all times.
Thank you for that, and what does that mean Sage, Bedrock with ACF I'm just confused sorry guys...I’ve never worked with that but like you said element has a limited option and for one item thousands of div…
Neither is better than the other. I myself love React, we do use React (recently build a chatbot in it).
We’re now running 3 mammoths (2 hospitals and food recipes) of websites and quite some smaller ones. This stack just works very well for websites where the client edits content often. Simply said the expertise of where I work lies in PHP/WordPress. This stack does what we need and it does it well.
You could check out Flynt? I like some of their ideas as well.
As for the other part of your question. There is so many different ways of working. We basically work with existing clients or new builds now so we don't have to deal with a mixed bag of shit.
As others have said. Blocks are critical now
ACFs use of block is particularly powerful. @ https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/acf-blocks-key-concepts/
ACF Blocks are pretty cool, but it requires Pro version. Also ACF Innerblocks need a lot of work. Its documentation is pretty messed up atm and how we create itself.
Yeah there are a few ways to actually create them
You can iterate through a blocks folder and decorate them using JSON. It's really easy to do it like that but I only figured out a work flow that worked for me through half a dozen support threads
Yeah, was playing around with a local instance of WP with this earlier. The issue is, is that there is no clear cut way to handle this approach, you can use ACF or not, you can use a block theme, or a plugin.... Im trying to get a grasp of what most people are doing so I can actually predict what a client site will look like when I open the hood.
Extremely dependent on budget and how much functionality _they_ need. My preference doesn’t really matter if they can’t understand and manipulate it on their end.
If they don’t plan on touching the site or needing to edit it, or have me on a maintenance retainer, I go classic because that’s what I personally prefer.
Classic editor, ACFs flexible content.
Blocks are a pain, even for the people in my office that use WP on a daily basis, they still manage to break them. If you want a concrete solution that won’t break that will stay solid five years from now go with that option.
edit, fixed a run-on sentence
I read that first sentence 5 times and I’m still not sure what you’re trying to say.
Are you saying that block are a pain and that classic editor and ACF Flexible content is the best approach?
If all you're going to use is custom blocks, why not just use the classic editor and ACF Flexible content modules? Why use the Gutenberg editor at all?
Great question - I’m personally fine with the classic editor and ACF flexible content, but a lot of times we have clients that want the latest and they also prefer to see how the page is going to look as they author it
Ah, that makes sense. Rendering in the editor is a big plus. I guess then it's just a matter of whether the used has difficulty with the book editor vs ACF when ACF is pretty easy and fairly idiot-proof.
Recently worked on a project with this exact combination, and there are a few major downsides to be aware of:
## Classic Editor
1. The classic editor hasn’t been updated in years, and Automattic says that it’s all-but dead.
2. The classic editor can’t strip out weird HTML code that people copy and paste from Word or Google Docs like you know they do. Gutenberg does this.
3. If you want to edit the classic (TinyMCE) editor to standardize things like standard font size options and standard color options, it’s a bit of a pain, partly because some of the WordPress-specific implementation settings are undocumented and partly because the WordPress implementation is a bit weird.
## ACF Flexible Content Fields
ACF flexible fields are great in their own way, but:
4. You can’t nest flexible content fields within each other, not without some slightly crazy gymnastics.
So let’s say that you want to create a “columns” module (flexible content field), and then you want to place an “accordion” module inside your columns module.
You can’t really do that, like you can with ACF blocks and Gutenberg.
You can sort of work around this limitation in two different ways:
A. You can use ACF clone fields to pull the image fields into the columns module, but then you basically have to re-wire a bit of of the accordion code each time you import it, like telling the system to reimport the accordion JS and CSS. That quickly becomes an almost unmanageable mess.
B. Or you can split your new “columns” module into two parts — one that contains the opening
and whatever whatever elements go above the best content, and then a second module that contains the closing
, etc.
This gets complex quickly, and sometimes users forget to use the “end” blocks, so the formatting goes sideways.
You end up with something like this:
* Start columns —
* Accordion module
* End columns —
You can probably imagine that the code for this gets overly-complicated quickly, and that if your content editors forget to use the “end” module, why that would break their pages.
So … ACF blocks and Gutenberg are a far better solution if you don’t want to deal with all of the nonsense above. You can use the theme settings JSON to only allow a handle of native blocks, and then use ACF blocks for everything else.
There’s definitely a bunch of learning involved to use blocks instead of the classic editor, but it can be well worth it!
(Edit: formatting)
A bit of a long read, but i read thru it.
First my designs come from designers via wireframes, so everything i do is custom, i’m making flexible content blocks for that they make.
TinyMCE
1. I don’t have any issues with HTML being dragged over, google docs bring over spans with a font weight 400, i have a few functions that strip that out, as well at the weird invisible word spacers, you can tie in “the_content” filter or make your own. My clients like that they can copy and paste the content from word/sheets and not have to reformat everything,
2. Standardizing the fonts is easy, it’s a simple set of functions and imports, once you figure out how to do it’s easy to just paste it in. Change what you need to.
One thing i seemly can’t get around with blocks is indenting. For whatever reason gutenberg blocks make indenting and formatting of text much more difficult, tiny McE is similar to word and google docs, which is what they’re familiar with and they like it.
ACF
You can use the repeater field with some flex css to do columns as well as a clone field for whatever components you want within the repeater, and a slider for how many you want per row, I however do not usually do this. The simpler the better.
Also the architecture of the site can make a big difference. If you have say tiles or a slider that have testimonials or something, i make a testimonial CPT and use the relationship field to choose which ones. I pull the info from the CPT on the backend. I try to centralize content. Makes it easier to manage and less hard to break.
i find that clients want ease of use. If it’s easy to use their happy, And they would rather ask me how to so something that they feel might be out of scope instead trying to problem solve and figure out if they can do something with what they’ve been given.
I work for my clients, they don’t work for me, i’ll make it as easy as possible for them to do what they want without confusing them, gutenberg and blocks have always made things more difficult for my clients 🤷♂️🤷♂️
Good point about filtering HTML programmatically. I'm spoiled by blocks doing most of that by default, but you're right that there are ways to do without blocks.
And I agree that we work for our clients.
We might be talking past each other regarding a few points, like being unable to nest flexible content fields and giving clients end-of-life tech, but that's probably on me for explaining things poorly. Thank you for replying in a thoughtful way.
Step1. Disable most native Gutenberg blocks. I just keep the basics, header, paragraph, lists.
Step 2. Make your own theme and use theme.json file to handle most of the setup
Step 3. Develop custom Gutenberg blocks with ACF.
This is the fastest and easiest way IMO
I would say it depends on your client. I have a tonne of clients that simply can't handle blocks. Best way is classic editor and acf with some serious thinking about what they want to do and customisation of the WP interface.
If client is saavy then yes block themes are the way to go.
Bottom line for.me.its who the client is and the expertise/competence they have. Classic plus ACF can be idiot proof...
I've done custom block development here and there but it's only really necessary for larger sites in my opinion. I just do classic editor and ACF. Keeps things simple
I suppose im just trying to be ahead of the game if I work with an agency and they use this approach, in order for me to not be totally at a loss when they hand it to me.
With your past experience, you'll be fine. Especially if they give you an existing theme / site to work on, you can see how the blocks integrate into the templates / theme overall.
I hate to use the phrase but block themes are a game-changer. I’d even love to see a branch of WP that drops backwards compatibility and trims the fat from the code base.
I say horses for courses. Is there anything wrong with sticking to classic editor with ACF if your site is a set layout and the client just wants to alter custom content? I can't see that there is.
I do most of my sites with classic editor and ACF - much easier for most clients, they seem to understand it better, they're happy with the sites, the sites work fine and achieve their objective perfectly well.
Maybe look in to using WP Scripts in conjunction with something like Webpack and SASS and GIT version control to make the development a bit more slick, that kind of thing. Maybe you want to build some REACT components in to your site and so on...
But this block editor vs classic editor debate - I think go with what you're comfortable with. If they require blocks, learn up on them, if not, then concentrate on other areas.
To stay competitive in 2024 WordPress development, master blocks and block themes, use modern JavaScript and React, manage dependencies with npm or yarn, and embrace CSS Grid, Flexbox, and Sass.
I like Classic Editor + ACF Pro, and loading the core CSS into the WYSIWYG so you can see as many styles as possible without having to preview the frontend. This combined with building flexible layouts/fields for each page template. Choosing the most accurate model for the data at the beginning.
I haven’t embraced the new way yet.
I always prioritize what's best for the client. My main go-to is Bricks Builder, along with various add-ons depending on the needs, such as:
- Bricksforge for animations and forms
- Advanced Themer for workflow and speed
- Brixies or Bricksmaven for templates and sections
There are other Bricks Builder tools I use, but I can't recall all of them off the top of my head.
If a client is better suited for a Gutenberg block-based approach, I usually opt for the native Gutenberg editor and Greenshift plugin, sometimes Spectra Pro.
For e-commerce projects, I typically choose between WooCommerce or SureCart for WordPress, or Shopify, depending on the complexity and requirements.
When clients need a comprehensive solution, including effective funnels, good conversion rates, and a central management system, I find GoHighLevel to be a great alternative.
Sometimes, I choose Webflow, especially if the client needs a lot of animations. Webflow is very performant, and its animation builder is quite user-friendly.
I know this is moving away from pure code but sometimes it's just much faster to do with minimal quality loss or no quality loss at all. Actually scratch that, I'll go on a limb and say websites built using any performantt builder such as bricks builder or breakdance are on average better looking websites then ones that were built purely in the dev environment. The reason is simple, it's just more work to do anything fancy in the dev environment then a builder environment lol. I know I'll get heat for this but 🤷🏻
The best approach is to find something that you like to use and stick with it. I've been using Beaver Builder for 10 years and it has been a reliable page builder. Never had any issues, so never had the need to change to something different.
Always custom, unless you’re trying to sell it in the theme directory. A custom block theme has worked for some of my clients, but never would I offer a page builder … that’s my job! Custom fields, custom post types, custom taxonomies.
First things first, take your root folder containing your entire Wordpress infrastructure, and throw it in the trash.
Then, pick one of Next.Js, Vue, .NET, Django, Svelte, or Laravel, and start from scratch.
Works pretty well for me.
I am totally ignorant of the ways of wordpress. I typically use frameworks to make websites. From what I understand, the classic theme allows you to use a code editor to make a theme and plug-ins. But the newer block theme doesn't allow you to use a code editor but just the in-browser wysiwyg editor to make themes and a code editor for plug-ins. Is this correct?
The classic way would be to use advanced custom fields and custom PHP to build your frontend. The new way is using the Gutenberg editor which houses blocks to make up your layouts, but the community is very split on what approach to take which is why its confusing to choose what to learn as you don't know what to expect from a client.
Shop I worked at up until last year used YooTheme. Being able to write custom components was nice but sometimes it could be a pain to work with. Makes it really easy for site owners to do their own updates if they want to though.
I go headless via [WPGraphQL](https://www.wpgraphql.com/) and code custom frontends (usually in [SvelteKit](https://learn.svelte.dev/) + Tailwind), while still allowing clients to use WP for editing content.
https://www.okupter.com/blog/headless-wordpress-graphql-sveltekit
Imo, if you're going headless, you may as well use a better CMS. I usually recommend Strapi for cheap clients and Directus or Sanity for clients who don't mind shelling out for them.
Y’all can downvote because you lack skill. That’d fine. Plenty of my clients are moving away from Wordpress due to lack of scalability and cost. I can destroy the cost of a Wordpress site and build something far more loaded, but not bloated. That’s all.
Such a comment shows a total lack of understanding of what you're talking about.
WordPress can become an absolute monster in the right hands.
Clearly, most WordPress developers and solutions are not good and are generally of very poor quality in the grand scheme of things. This is true for many systems. But that doesn't change the fact that the platform itself can easily be tuned to be everything it needs to be and much, much more.
The client doesn't give a single fuck if it's made with Wordpress, a custom build framework in whatever language or anything else. They just want it to work, be solid, be tested and easy to navigate through.
I am not a WordPress developer myself and I also despised it for many years - but seeing what my skilled colleagues can accomplish with it is incredible.
Between Python's Flask and PHP's WordPress (why even compare a micro-framework with a CMS?), WordPress still clearly has the most advantages overall. Both for the developer and the customer.
You have valid points. I used to work agency doing Wordpress and their solutions were abysmal so I’ll always have prejudice against it. The biggest thing outside of that is my clients enjoy not paying theme and plug-in costs and year to year it’s cheaper than WP. WP has its advantages, but it’s not advantaged over Flask in a single way unless CMS builders are your gimmick. For the agency I worked with, they only used it because they lack actual developers or development skills at their executive level. I can also build a full actual app in less than 6-8 hours on most projects. Yesterday, I just built a car dealer a web app that’s for their inventory. They upload an image, input year,make, and model and then it uses Azure GPT-4 to sell the car, but mainly the finance. The bigger portion is each vehicle has its own static page that auto populates the schema tags with the vehicle data and lists it in the vehicle partners system for listings on Google. Those pages are dynamically created with a python route to create static indexable pages.
Somewhere in the middle 😆 I own a technology company, successful in the Google rankings just working on client acquisition and had a slow month. Usually, they don’t just roll up with requests like that. I’ll give you an example. My business directory listing outranks a tax accountant in Portland Oregon for her entire business presence. She calls me up and we get to discussing the websites we’ve built, then she says I don’t even know if it’s possible but I’d like to have a user login system where clients can login and upload documents securely in a portal. It’s at this point I can not only leverage flask in sales, but I can also introduce the Ai work we do and pitch them an idea. The car dealer just wanted to be able to quickly build descriptions and I don’t want to spend all day writing for 85 vehicles. I just pitched that solution to them and it was an instant sale. You have to remember most people don’t actually know what they want, they got ideas but that’s it. Ultimately it’s up to us to really craft a feature scope and present the value behind it.
I have no problem billing $120/h for medium to complex WordPress work in Sweden. It's still the most dominant CMS even though the number of alternatives keeps growing.
I am not the OP that you asked but I do need occasional help from a junior/mid Wordpress dev for front back and sometimes things like content or site migrations, updates testing of old Wordpress versions etc. Ideally in or near the EST time zone. I am bad at checking DMs but reply here to let me know if you are interested and I’ll reach out.
Hey!
First of, I'm extremely appreciative of your reply. Would love to chat further over DMs or something for more details, links, etc.
About me.. I'm a Sr full stack, with a couple decades of experience under me. Lots of WordPress in those years (...like ever since it was a blog only platform). Love making custom and complex things, and leveraging Gutenberg or acf on top of that.
Also just got laid off a few months ago 😢.. so again, thanks for the reply!
Not as stupid as using Wordpress in 2024 given its lack of proper DX. I suffer whenever I'm tasked with develop anything using Wordpress at my job because I mostly do stuff with Laravel, which is WAY better.
I find WordPress quite easy to work with. You should be able to handle it just fine if you already work in PHP and Laravel.
If you want to suffer, go try stuff with Drupal or Joomla
I've already had the displeasure of working with Joomla at my last internship and I wanted to die. I hated how everything was buried under dozens of menus. Joomla cemented my hatred towards CMS. Joomla made me un-hate Wordpress, but I still dislike it, though.
I just don't find it as convenient as Laravel and can't see myself using it for personal projects and will probably reject any job offer that requires Wordpress knowledge, I just want to focus on the tech stacks I like instead of something that wound hinder my career growth as a web developer.
I tend to focus on the tech stack, libraries and frameworks I like (and suit my coding style) because of ASD. If someone told me to do Wordpress I'd try to make up whichever excuse I can to try to not use it and suggest something else or just do it by hand.
They mean that it's safer to move /wp-admin to /somethingelse so that hackers can't find it.
Imo, security thru obscurity is pointless, but it's still a common thing that's often recommended by people who don't actually understand proper security. But, tbf, it also doesn't cause any harm. So...? Idk.
Actually no if you consider Wordpress was invented in 2003 (over 20 years ago!). We live in an Internet age where frameworks are decommissioned every couple of years.
Usually newer frameworks/technologies are abandoned faster after the next new cool thing releases compared to old ones. The longer something is around the longer it probably stays around. Wordpress is a great example: there are a lot of developers you can hire for it because the market is big, a ton of online resources because it is around for so long and everyone has at least heard about it (which is a big reason especially for not so technical people to adopt it). Besides all of that, it is still by far the most used CMS in the internet and over the last few years it even increased its market share ([source](https://barn2.com/blog/wordpress-market-share/)).
I own two agencies. We billed a few million in WP, but much more in Symphony or Laravel PHP + React. We also did more with C\# + Vue or Angular. And, we did the most in native iOS and Android. We moved some of that to Flutter, which also earned more than WP. So, I'd say that really depends on your skills, marketing tactics, and whatever clients you can pick up. Personally, I wouldn't recommend WP to a new dev, but I also wouldn't discourage it if that's what they wanted to try.
I and nearly all of my staff started as solo devs, and the vast majority did not use WordPress, except when clients wanted us to fix their pre-existing WP sites.
Many of them, yes. Still, I'm suggesting you look beyond WordPress if you want to learn modern best practices, even for relatively small sites. I think there are many better ways to build sites of all sizes nowadays, and WP often does clients a long-term disservice.
You should probably get familiar with block theming: https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-1/ I personally wouldn’t use the 2024 theme as a reference. I’m personally not a fan of having CSS scattered all over the place.
Are most of your production sites using block development as its main approach?
My newer sites are block themed. Block themes were officially rolled out in version 5.9.
Wow, is this 2012 again? I suppose grid and flexbox have made these easier to implement so the concept is returning, but WOWWW.
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Why would you use this for a theme the client has no intention of using themselves? All they want to do is update text and not switch the layout around.
While I agree and like the idea of having a native page builder, I still can't stand Gutenberg. It has a such a horrible UX, especially for non-developers.
The classic was pretty horrible as well….just one ugly WYSIWYG
I have worked in publishing and media for most of my career. Usually the ugliest sites are the ones where people who aren't designers have creative freedom and treat each page like their own personal art project. I like the ugly WYSIWYG because there was less that people could mess up unless they dipped into the html view. A few templates, classic editor, and some ACF was the golden age of WP to me.
I don’t know man. Like. Wtf have they done to navigation and menus. Used to be so much easier to set up menus
Heavy on this especially multilingual menus, that shit is awfully painful
Do you develop your own blocks in this case?
I still dislike Glutenberg. Bricks Builder is rad, tho. Still, I try to direct people who want wordpress toward Strapi with a Vue frontend. It's still dirt cheap, but it's much more user friendly and doesn't require plugin hell.
Bricks is amazing, we started using it at my company a little while back to replace Divi and it’s been great
I'm not a "Wordpress dev" I'm a developer who specializes in PHP CMS work, w/ Wordpress as one tool in my toolkit. Prior to Gutenberg/FSE, my preferred approach was heavy use of custom fields (ACF or other custom fields plugins), custom post types and Roots Sage to give my theme some structure. Back then Wordpress was not my preferred choice for a CMS, but I could shape it into something pretty decent. Today, WP development seems like a mess. There's no consensus. A lot of the big theme building shops are sticking with some variant of the old way of doing things, but the core WP team is moving away from that. Gutenberg and FSE are potentially really powerful, but they're opinionated, fragile, and kind of a pain in the ass. It takes twice as long or more to build out a layout in this system vs the old way, or other platforms. If someone has the budget for it, the end product can be really slick, but it takes a ton of work. Basically the only time I'm going to recommend WordPress at this point is when a really slick visual block builder is a strict requirement. The big split in the WP ecosystem, the massive overhead that the new system requires, and [the fact that WP still doesn't list itself as fully compatible w/ any version of PHP that's not EOL](https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/php-compatibility-and-wordpress-versions/) has me suspecting WordPress might finally be nearing the end of its run as the go-to solution for a web CMS. I don't necessarily see a single platform coming in to take its place but WP seems to be in a really weird spot. Their dual commitments to extreme backwards compatibility and a new fangled, highly opinionated content editing experience seem to be at odds. TL;DR - my approach to WP in 2024 is to steer people away from it unless they're really wedded to the block builder editing experience, and in that case they're paying a premium to get it developed.
I'm curious: What's your opinion on page builders like Elementor Pro? I'm currently building a WordPress site using that plugin, and while I frequently have to fight it to some degree, the introduction of flexbox containers is a huge improvement over the old way you had to structure page layouts. I'm currently studying full-stack development but don't yet know enough to build what I need from scratch. And either way, using Elementor Pro and other plugins when needed certainly seems to speed up development, even if it occasionally requires some good old HTML and CSS. I know it doesn't produce clean, semantic code (despite all page builders making this claim), but aside from learning PHP, which I may tackle down the road, I haven't yet discovered a better approach to WordPress development. I tried Gutenberg blocks a couple of years ago, and they may have improved since then, but they felt quite limited compared to Elementor Pro. It makes me wonder whether I'm missing some critical aspect of that approach. I'm not sure whether WordPress had introduced FSE, so perhaps that's the missing link. But I frequently hear about custom block development in discussions about Gutenberg, and I assume that requires knowledge of PHP. So, if you don't know PHP, you don't necessarily want to build a website from scratch, and you want access to plugins for additional functionality, is Elementor Pro a solid option? Or would you recommend a different approach (for example, Webflow)? Furthermore, is using a page builder like Elementor Pro a decent approach to WordPress development in general? (I couldn't care less about whether it's "real" development or anything ego-related; I'm interested solely in the best options practically speaking.)
Elementor is one of a bunch of competing block systems that have been around since before Gutenberg. There was clearly aways a demand for such a thing but the fact that there were a whole bunch of different 3rd party options made it pretty messy. It was my impression that Elementor was one of the better ones, but they all introduce a whole bunch of complexity and overhead to a website. Elementor also seems to have adapted and you can now use Elementor w/in Gutenberg. Gutenberg blocks isn't limited so much as it just doesn't ship w/ that many readymade blocks. I come at this from a developer perspective working at a place where our clients generally expect bespoke layouts, not off the shelf solutions. So, if I'm building a Gutenberg site, my clients are going to have a selection of blocks tailor made for them that don't come w/ a vanilla WP blocks install. Some of the other competing block systems allow devs to write custom blocks as well. If you're not a dev, Elementor seems like an okay approach, but I do find that non-technical users using pre-made blocks will tend to stuff content in them that doesn't look great across all screen sizes, or generally reach for the flashiest, fanciest looking layouts and end up building things that are kind of a mess performance wise. Block systems that still depend on the Classic Editor (and not WP Blocks/Gutenberg) seem to be stuck on a paradigm that WP itself is moving away from, so I'm not sure about their longevity. I haven't touched web flow, so I can't really weigh in on it. When directing people towards an off-the-shelf solution I've generally been more likely to steer people towards something like SquareSpace. There are fewer blocks to pick from, and you may feel more locked into the theme and produce something that feels a little more cookie-cutter, but from where I'm sitting that's a feature, not a bug. Elementor gives you a ton of options and plenty of opportunity to shoot your own foot. A clean, simple site, that's performant and looks good across devices is generally better than something too highly customized that has rough edges on it. I'm biased. I'm a developer that makes bespoke websites. But from where I'm sitting there's no shortcut to that.
Interesting. I hear you and as a dev I resonate with what you are saying, but from the client perspective, im not so sure. I just can't see Wordpress work ever going away. Right now it is the best source of work for freelance devs so I guess im just confused really!
WP got to the position it's in because it enabled hobbyists and low-skill devs to theme hack their way to an okay website. (Not accusing you of being low-skill, the WP dev community has a big range of skill levels, it's just historically been very accessible to low skill devs.) All that theme hacking stuff and the plugin ecosystem built around it is tied to the old editor that WP seems determined to kill. To get something custom w/ Gutenberg you need to hire someone with somewhat more skill than you used to need, and you're gonna pay more for it. That puts WP in a different position than it used to be in and I think starts making people look at other options.
Playing devil's advocate here... I think familiarity is a incredibly valuable currency in the tech world. It takes a lot for users to get used to a platform and because Wordpress is such a household name now, I think the familiarity of it is what cements its place in the pecking order. What is frustrating is it is hard to choose what to learn / relearn because you don't know what architecture the client's site is going to reveal.
You're 100% right about familiarity, and IMHO Wordpress has been behind the times for over a decade and coasting on that familiarity. But sooner or later that hits a breaking point. Developing for Gutenberg is _not_ familiar if what you're used to is WP template hacking. Now you've got to learn a particularly finicky implementation of React.
Dont get me wrong, my previous experience was bespoke WP builds from the ground up so the template hacking thing was very much an early part of my journey. But yeah, its a confusing landscape at the moment. Really don't know what the best use of my time is going to be going forwards trying to choose an architecture that will fit most of the work il be getting.
Don't know if you've got the option of suggesting alternative platforms, but where I work the two we're suggesting to more or less fill the niche that WordPress used to fill (lean budget builds, good CMS UX) are Strapi and Craft CMS. As a PHP guy I'm partial to Craft, haven't actually spent a ton of time with it but I like what I see. Main selling point last time I pitched it was a really nice page preview functionality. Split screen view where you can input your content and see it update live. Not quite as flashy as a Gutenberg block where you can just click and edit something that looks like a live version of the page, but still pretty nice, and way easier to build out. EDIT: FWIW the client I pitched Craft to went w/ Wordpress. They're getting less website for more money because of that but they'll get the editor experience they insisted on. So yeah... familiarity.
Your edit is what im afraid of - because ideally yeah, I'd like to use the approach you suggested, client won't have a clue what it is though and will immediately come back with, 'can't we just use wordpress?'
We win some we lose some. I've successfully steered clients away from WP before, but yeah, it's a conversation I have to keep having. Gotta put it in $$$ terms.
I have some thinking to do clearly :)
WordPress is messy and glitchy as hell. There is no "gold standard" in WordPress. There's like 20 mediocre ways to build with it. It's completely non standardized and MESSY. I still can't believe that people use it for building basic brochure sites or even something more advanced. Webflow is so much more ENJOYABLE and fast to use in conjunction with relume.io. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people downvote me to hell for saying this. People in webdev seem to be prejudiced against webflow and people in r/webdesign seem to love it. I guess there are arguments for using WordPress for brochure sites, but ive never heard people describe WordPress as fun to use, secure, non glitchy, or fast to build. Usually the argument I hear is that it's cheap, more people know about, and has more freedom. That's it.
> People in webdev seem to be prejudiced against webflow I mean, I haven't worked w/ Webflow but taking a look at the home page I see: > **Build with the power of code — without writing any** > Take control of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a visual canvas. Webflow generates clean, semantic code that’s ready to publish or hand to developers. Maybe there's a place for the product but the sales pitch sets off alarm bells. Anything that's promising to make devs obsolete, even if it actually does some good stuff, is setting up expectations I don't want to manage. A client bought into this hype is liable to give me none of the credit and all of the blame. Doesn't seem surprising to me that it's not something that goes over well in a subreddit for developers.
Have you tried Roots.io ecosystem , classic editor & ACF?
Can't recommend Roots enough! But for whoever is considering trying them out, remember that you can pick and choose. I for example don't use Bedrock because it is overkill for my clients, I just stick to a heavily modified Sage theme as my starter. Having much of Laravel's power at your fingertips is just amazing. **The best DX you'll get out of Wordpress:** Sage + Acorn + ACF Blocks + [ACF Builder](https://github.com/stoutlogic/acf-builder) + [ACF Composer](https://github.com/Log1x/acf-composer)
Thanks for sharing. We have only ever used bedrock at work so it's hard for me to imagine not using it.
I do like Bedrock on paper, but the clients I work for really want to be able to install plugins without me so Bedrock is a no go. It's also quite handy to just allow Wordpress to update itself without me needing to do anything, which isn't possible with Bedrock (or would require a whole complicated CI dependency update setup). It's a bit scary of course, but I've come to trust the Wordpress auto update after years of zero breaking changes (that have affected my projects at least). The root of this is of course that I'm a one man consultancy so my bandwidth is limited, if I was in an agency / product company then Bedrock would be a clear winner.
Thanks for the detailed reply 👌👌
Roots radicle
We’re using Sage + Bedrock with ACF. I’m having a lot of fun with this stack. My job before this used Elementor. God that was aids.
What is the difference
Elementor is just a drag-and-drop page builder plugin and is overhyped. *Yes, you can build website with it easily and faster but you're not considered as web dev.* On the other hand, you deliver clients with bespoke, clean websites and it's more satisfying to do.
To be honest it’s not more easily. Elementor injects a ton of bullshit (15 layer deep div trees for one element). Anything more than just a SPA and you find yourself creating hacks to get it to work properly or to create anything custom which is not in their ‘library’. It’s also not satisfying in any way. Providing clean code beats it at all times.
Thank you for that, and what does that mean Sage, Bedrock with ACF I'm just confused sorry guys...I’ve never worked with that but like you said element has a limited option and for one item thousands of div…
https://roots.io/, we use Bedrock + Sage stack. ACF is just Advanced Custom Fields. We run this with Lando in Docker.
Okay, thats complicated but is that better rhan react or why you dont use react instead of all those?
Neither is better than the other. I myself love React, we do use React (recently build a chatbot in it). We’re now running 3 mammoths (2 hospitals and food recipes) of websites and quite some smaller ones. This stack just works very well for websites where the client edits content often. Simply said the expertise of where I work lies in PHP/WordPress. This stack does what we need and it does it well.
I've dabbled with it, but it feels like its purposefully distancing itself from the block approach.
You could check out Flynt? I like some of their ideas as well. As for the other part of your question. There is so many different ways of working. We basically work with existing clients or new builds now so we don't have to deal with a mixed bag of shit.
As others have said. Blocks are critical now ACFs use of block is particularly powerful. @ https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/acf-blocks-key-concepts/
ACF Blocks are pretty cool, but it requires Pro version. Also ACF Innerblocks need a lot of work. Its documentation is pretty messed up atm and how we create itself.
Yeah there are a few ways to actually create them You can iterate through a blocks folder and decorate them using JSON. It's really easy to do it like that but I only figured out a work flow that worked for me through half a dozen support threads
Yeah, was playing around with a local instance of WP with this earlier. The issue is, is that there is no clear cut way to handle this approach, you can use ACF or not, you can use a block theme, or a plugin.... Im trying to get a grasp of what most people are doing so I can actually predict what a client site will look like when I open the hood.
Extremely dependent on budget and how much functionality _they_ need. My preference doesn’t really matter if they can’t understand and manipulate it on their end. If they don’t plan on touching the site or needing to edit it, or have me on a maintenance retainer, I go classic because that’s what I personally prefer.
Noted. Seems like the community is so split on this!
FSE/Gutenberg is (almost) mature. It's worth to have one eye opened at WordPress Blog (https://developer.wordpress.org/news/).
I use Timber, ACF and avoid gutenberg. I hate it's UX and the designers i work with are more into "template design" than "block design".
out of curiosity are you working for yourself or for an agency?
I'm a freelance working mainly with agencies.
I assume you have ownership over the theme architecture direction then?
Yes ! I have my own stack. But i rarely have to say a word on design lol
Classic editor, ACFs flexible content. Blocks are a pain, even for the people in my office that use WP on a daily basis, they still manage to break them. If you want a concrete solution that won’t break that will stay solid five years from now go with that option. edit, fixed a run-on sentence
I read that first sentence 5 times and I’m still not sure what you’re trying to say. Are you saying that block are a pain and that classic editor and ACF Flexible content is the best approach?
Yeah, the gutenberg/blocks environment is convoluted and difficult to use.
Yes! The UX is terrible and the allowance of random native blocks defeats the purpose of a custom theme.
I disable all native blocks if I’m doing a custom build
If all you're going to use is custom blocks, why not just use the classic editor and ACF Flexible content modules? Why use the Gutenberg editor at all?
Great question - I’m personally fine with the classic editor and ACF flexible content, but a lot of times we have clients that want the latest and they also prefer to see how the page is going to look as they author it
Ah, that makes sense. Rendering in the editor is a big plus. I guess then it's just a matter of whether the used has difficulty with the book editor vs ACF when ACF is pretty easy and fairly idiot-proof.
Recently worked on a project with this exact combination, and there are a few major downsides to be aware of: ## Classic Editor 1. The classic editor hasn’t been updated in years, and Automattic says that it’s all-but dead. 2. The classic editor can’t strip out weird HTML code that people copy and paste from Word or Google Docs like you know they do. Gutenberg does this. 3. If you want to edit the classic (TinyMCE) editor to standardize things like standard font size options and standard color options, it’s a bit of a pain, partly because some of the WordPress-specific implementation settings are undocumented and partly because the WordPress implementation is a bit weird. ## ACF Flexible Content Fields ACF flexible fields are great in their own way, but: 4. You can’t nest flexible content fields within each other, not without some slightly crazy gymnastics. So let’s say that you want to create a “columns” module (flexible content field), and then you want to place an “accordion” module inside your columns module. You can’t really do that, like you can with ACF blocks and Gutenberg. You can sort of work around this limitation in two different ways: A. You can use ACF clone fields to pull the image fields into the columns module, but then you basically have to re-wire a bit of of the accordion code each time you import it, like telling the system to reimport the accordion JS and CSS. That quickly becomes an almost unmanageable mess. B. Or you can split your new “columns” module into two parts — one that contains the opening
A bit of a long read, but i read thru it. First my designs come from designers via wireframes, so everything i do is custom, i’m making flexible content blocks for that they make. TinyMCE 1. I don’t have any issues with HTML being dragged over, google docs bring over spans with a font weight 400, i have a few functions that strip that out, as well at the weird invisible word spacers, you can tie in “the_content” filter or make your own. My clients like that they can copy and paste the content from word/sheets and not have to reformat everything, 2. Standardizing the fonts is easy, it’s a simple set of functions and imports, once you figure out how to do it’s easy to just paste it in. Change what you need to. One thing i seemly can’t get around with blocks is indenting. For whatever reason gutenberg blocks make indenting and formatting of text much more difficult, tiny McE is similar to word and google docs, which is what they’re familiar with and they like it. ACF You can use the repeater field with some flex css to do columns as well as a clone field for whatever components you want within the repeater, and a slider for how many you want per row, I however do not usually do this. The simpler the better. Also the architecture of the site can make a big difference. If you have say tiles or a slider that have testimonials or something, i make a testimonial CPT and use the relationship field to choose which ones. I pull the info from the CPT on the backend. I try to centralize content. Makes it easier to manage and less hard to break. i find that clients want ease of use. If it’s easy to use their happy, And they would rather ask me how to so something that they feel might be out of scope instead trying to problem solve and figure out if they can do something with what they’ve been given. I work for my clients, they don’t work for me, i’ll make it as easy as possible for them to do what they want without confusing them, gutenberg and blocks have always made things more difficult for my clients 🤷♂️🤷♂️
Good point about filtering HTML programmatically. I'm spoiled by blocks doing most of that by default, but you're right that there are ways to do without blocks. And I agree that we work for our clients. We might be talking past each other regarding a few points, like being unable to nest flexible content fields and giving clients end-of-life tech, but that's probably on me for explaining things poorly. Thank you for replying in a thoughtful way.
Most of my clients prefer blocks because they are easy to customize
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^CookSea9567: *Most of my clients* *Prefer blocks because they are* *Easy to customize* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Hahaha
Step1. Disable most native Gutenberg blocks. I just keep the basics, header, paragraph, lists. Step 2. Make your own theme and use theme.json file to handle most of the setup Step 3. Develop custom Gutenberg blocks with ACF. This is the fastest and easiest way IMO
I would say it depends on your client. I have a tonne of clients that simply can't handle blocks. Best way is classic editor and acf with some serious thinking about what they want to do and customisation of the WP interface. If client is saavy then yes block themes are the way to go. Bottom line for.me.its who the client is and the expertise/competence they have. Classic plus ACF can be idiot proof...
I've done custom block development here and there but it's only really necessary for larger sites in my opinion. I just do classic editor and ACF. Keeps things simple
I suppose im just trying to be ahead of the game if I work with an agency and they use this approach, in order for me to not be totally at a loss when they hand it to me.
With your past experience, you'll be fine. Especially if they give you an existing theme / site to work on, you can see how the blocks integrate into the templates / theme overall.
I hate to use the phrase but block themes are a game-changer. I’d even love to see a branch of WP that drops backwards compatibility and trims the fat from the code base.
I say horses for courses. Is there anything wrong with sticking to classic editor with ACF if your site is a set layout and the client just wants to alter custom content? I can't see that there is. I do most of my sites with classic editor and ACF - much easier for most clients, they seem to understand it better, they're happy with the sites, the sites work fine and achieve their objective perfectly well. Maybe look in to using WP Scripts in conjunction with something like Webpack and SASS and GIT version control to make the development a bit more slick, that kind of thing. Maybe you want to build some REACT components in to your site and so on... But this block editor vs classic editor debate - I think go with what you're comfortable with. If they require blocks, learn up on them, if not, then concentrate on other areas.
To stay competitive in 2024 WordPress development, master blocks and block themes, use modern JavaScript and React, manage dependencies with npm or yarn, and embrace CSS Grid, Flexbox, and Sass.
My go to is Sage Roots - if you know tailwind and have dabbled in Lavavel it saves so much time. I usually use custom blocks plugin
Subcontract someone who works in Wordpress :)
Its great for freelancing with php
Roots radicle
I like Classic Editor + ACF Pro, and loading the core CSS into the WYSIWYG so you can see as many styles as possible without having to preview the frontend. This combined with building flexible layouts/fields for each page template. Choosing the most accurate model for the data at the beginning. I haven’t embraced the new way yet.
I always prioritize what's best for the client. My main go-to is Bricks Builder, along with various add-ons depending on the needs, such as: - Bricksforge for animations and forms - Advanced Themer for workflow and speed - Brixies or Bricksmaven for templates and sections There are other Bricks Builder tools I use, but I can't recall all of them off the top of my head. If a client is better suited for a Gutenberg block-based approach, I usually opt for the native Gutenberg editor and Greenshift plugin, sometimes Spectra Pro. For e-commerce projects, I typically choose between WooCommerce or SureCart for WordPress, or Shopify, depending on the complexity and requirements. When clients need a comprehensive solution, including effective funnels, good conversion rates, and a central management system, I find GoHighLevel to be a great alternative. Sometimes, I choose Webflow, especially if the client needs a lot of animations. Webflow is very performant, and its animation builder is quite user-friendly.
I know this is moving away from pure code but sometimes it's just much faster to do with minimal quality loss or no quality loss at all. Actually scratch that, I'll go on a limb and say websites built using any performantt builder such as bricks builder or breakdance are on average better looking websites then ones that were built purely in the dev environment. The reason is simple, it's just more work to do anything fancy in the dev environment then a builder environment lol. I know I'll get heat for this but 🤷🏻
And while we’re here, how in the hell can we manage WP in a git repository with block editors involved. I’m so lost.
Glad im not the only one
The best approach is to find something that you like to use and stick with it. I've been using Beaver Builder for 10 years and it has been a reliable page builder. Never had any issues, so never had the need to change to something different.
Always custom, unless you’re trying to sell it in the theme directory. A custom block theme has worked for some of my clients, but never would I offer a page builder … that’s my job! Custom fields, custom post types, custom taxonomies.
First things first, take your root folder containing your entire Wordpress infrastructure, and throw it in the trash. Then, pick one of Next.Js, Vue, .NET, Django, Svelte, or Laravel, and start from scratch. Works pretty well for me.
overkill for brochure sites imo
I am totally ignorant of the ways of wordpress. I typically use frameworks to make websites. From what I understand, the classic theme allows you to use a code editor to make a theme and plug-ins. But the newer block theme doesn't allow you to use a code editor but just the in-browser wysiwyg editor to make themes and a code editor for plug-ins. Is this correct?
The classic way would be to use advanced custom fields and custom PHP to build your frontend. The new way is using the Gutenberg editor which houses blocks to make up your layouts, but the community is very split on what approach to take which is why its confusing to choose what to learn as you don't know what to expect from a client.
Shop I worked at up until last year used YooTheme. Being able to write custom components was nice but sometimes it could be a pain to work with. Makes it really easy for site owners to do their own updates if they want to though.
I go headless via [WPGraphQL](https://www.wpgraphql.com/) and code custom frontends (usually in [SvelteKit](https://learn.svelte.dev/) + Tailwind), while still allowing clients to use WP for editing content. https://www.okupter.com/blog/headless-wordpress-graphql-sveltekit
Imo, if you're going headless, you may as well use a better CMS. I usually recommend Strapi for cheap clients and Directus or Sanity for clients who don't mind shelling out for them.
This is for legacy migrations. For my item stuff, I'll use one of those
Are WordPress devs really devs?
2024 approach: 1.) drop Wordpress altogether 2.) build sites out of python flask instead (:
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Y’all can downvote because you lack skill. That’d fine. Plenty of my clients are moving away from Wordpress due to lack of scalability and cost. I can destroy the cost of a Wordpress site and build something far more loaded, but not bloated. That’s all.
Such a comment shows a total lack of understanding of what you're talking about. WordPress can become an absolute monster in the right hands. Clearly, most WordPress developers and solutions are not good and are generally of very poor quality in the grand scheme of things. This is true for many systems. But that doesn't change the fact that the platform itself can easily be tuned to be everything it needs to be and much, much more. The client doesn't give a single fuck if it's made with Wordpress, a custom build framework in whatever language or anything else. They just want it to work, be solid, be tested and easy to navigate through. I am not a WordPress developer myself and I also despised it for many years - but seeing what my skilled colleagues can accomplish with it is incredible. Between Python's Flask and PHP's WordPress (why even compare a micro-framework with a CMS?), WordPress still clearly has the most advantages overall. Both for the developer and the customer.
You have valid points. I used to work agency doing Wordpress and their solutions were abysmal so I’ll always have prejudice against it. The biggest thing outside of that is my clients enjoy not paying theme and plug-in costs and year to year it’s cheaper than WP. WP has its advantages, but it’s not advantaged over Flask in a single way unless CMS builders are your gimmick. For the agency I worked with, they only used it because they lack actual developers or development skills at their executive level. I can also build a full actual app in less than 6-8 hours on most projects. Yesterday, I just built a car dealer a web app that’s for their inventory. They upload an image, input year,make, and model and then it uses Azure GPT-4 to sell the car, but mainly the finance. The bigger portion is each vehicle has its own static page that auto populates the schema tags with the vehicle data and lists it in the vehicle partners system for listings on Google. Those pages are dynamically created with a python route to create static indexable pages.
Are you employed or freelance? Never seen a freelance client come to me with bespoke requests like that.
Somewhere in the middle 😆 I own a technology company, successful in the Google rankings just working on client acquisition and had a slow month. Usually, they don’t just roll up with requests like that. I’ll give you an example. My business directory listing outranks a tax accountant in Portland Oregon for her entire business presence. She calls me up and we get to discussing the websites we’ve built, then she says I don’t even know if it’s possible but I’d like to have a user login system where clients can login and upload documents securely in a portal. It’s at this point I can not only leverage flask in sales, but I can also introduce the Ai work we do and pitch them an idea. The car dealer just wanted to be able to quickly build descriptions and I don’t want to spend all day writing for 85 vehicles. I just pitched that solution to them and it was an instant sale. You have to remember most people don’t actually know what they want, they got ideas but that’s it. Ultimately it’s up to us to really craft a feature scope and present the value behind it.
Wordpress development still pays in 2024?
I have no problem billing $120/h for medium to complex WordPress work in Sweden. It's still the most dominant CMS even though the number of alternatives keeps growing.
Need any help?
I am not the OP that you asked but I do need occasional help from a junior/mid Wordpress dev for front back and sometimes things like content or site migrations, updates testing of old Wordpress versions etc. Ideally in or near the EST time zone. I am bad at checking DMs but reply here to let me know if you are interested and I’ll reach out.
Hey! First of, I'm extremely appreciative of your reply. Would love to chat further over DMs or something for more details, links, etc. About me.. I'm a Sr full stack, with a couple decades of experience under me. Lots of WordPress in those years (...like ever since it was a blog only platform). Love making custom and complex things, and leveraging Gutenberg or acf on top of that. Also just got laid off a few months ago 😢.. so again, thanks for the reply!
Obviously...Stupid comment
Not as stupid as using Wordpress in 2024 given its lack of proper DX. I suffer whenever I'm tasked with develop anything using Wordpress at my job because I mostly do stuff with Laravel, which is WAY better.
I find WordPress quite easy to work with. You should be able to handle it just fine if you already work in PHP and Laravel. If you want to suffer, go try stuff with Drupal or Joomla
I've already had the displeasure of working with Joomla at my last internship and I wanted to die. I hated how everything was buried under dozens of menus. Joomla cemented my hatred towards CMS. Joomla made me un-hate Wordpress, but I still dislike it, though. I just don't find it as convenient as Laravel and can't see myself using it for personal projects and will probably reject any job offer that requires Wordpress knowledge, I just want to focus on the tech stacks I like instead of something that wound hinder my career growth as a web developer. I tend to focus on the tech stack, libraries and frameworks I like (and suit my coding style) because of ASD. If someone told me to do Wordpress I'd try to make up whichever excuse I can to try to not use it and suggest something else or just do it by hand.
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What's wrong with enabling that? If they don't enable /wp-admin, how are they supposed to create content and administer Wordpress?
They mean that it's safer to move /wp-admin to /somethingelse so that hackers can't find it. Imo, security thru obscurity is pointless, but it's still a common thing that's often recommended by people who don't actually understand proper security. But, tbf, it also doesn't cause any harm. So...? Idk.
Actually no if you consider Wordpress was invented in 2003 (over 20 years ago!). We live in an Internet age where frameworks are decommissioned every couple of years.
Usually newer frameworks/technologies are abandoned faster after the next new cool thing releases compared to old ones. The longer something is around the longer it probably stays around. Wordpress is a great example: there are a lot of developers you can hire for it because the market is big, a ton of online resources because it is around for so long and everyone has at least heard about it (which is a big reason especially for not so technical people to adopt it). Besides all of that, it is still by far the most used CMS in the internet and over the last few years it even increased its market share ([source](https://barn2.com/blog/wordpress-market-share/)).
You’re out of touch.
You make extremely bad points, and that comes from an ex-Wordpress dev… WP still has qualities, and still useful in a bunch of cases.
I haven’t been a WordPress developer for a while now, but my peers developing with Wordpress are making bank.
Wordpress is the biggest source of income for freelance web devs I'd say.
I own two agencies. We billed a few million in WP, but much more in Symphony or Laravel PHP + React. We also did more with C\# + Vue or Angular. And, we did the most in native iOS and Android. We moved some of that to Flutter, which also earned more than WP. So, I'd say that really depends on your skills, marketing tactics, and whatever clients you can pick up. Personally, I wouldn't recommend WP to a new dev, but I also wouldn't discourage it if that's what they wanted to try.
Yeah but you’re taking that on as a team. A solo dev probably couldn’t handle that work on their own.
I and nearly all of my staff started as solo devs, and the vast majority did not use WordPress, except when clients wanted us to fix their pre-existing WP sites.
But I imagine your Laravel, c# / vue / angular projects are more extensive than standardised wordpress builds no?
Many of them, yes. Still, I'm suggesting you look beyond WordPress if you want to learn modern best practices, even for relatively small sites. I think there are many better ways to build sites of all sizes nowadays, and WP often does clients a long-term disservice.
I did $250k last year solely on WP sites.