[HN Gopher] I tried to use WordPress with GitHub Pages
___________________________________________________________________
I tried to use WordPress with GitHub Pages
Author : mdu96
Score : 41 points
Date : 2020-08-16 20:45 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.melissadu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.melissadu.com)
| barbegal wrote:
| If anyone does want to convert Wordpress pages to static pages
| then WP2Static seems to be the best option https://wp2static.com
| They even list alternative tools that are better in certain use
| cases https://wp2static.com/alternatives/
|
| You might not be able to find it as a plugin, the author made a
| deliberate decision to delist the plugin from wordpress.org
| https://staticword.press/t/removal-of-wp2static-from-wordpre...
| wolco wrote:
| This is what the author is trying to do.
| godot wrote:
| I think part of the problem is because you were previously used
| to GitHub Pages with Jekyll, you were trying to use a new (but
| old) tool (Wordpress) with GitHub Pages and it's not a great fit
| for it. I'm sure it's possible somehow, but it wouldn't be
| straightforward. Just conceptually I'm not sure how it would even
| work: GH Pages is for hosting static sites (AFAIK) and WordPress
| uses a DB and dynamically writes posts. So I'm guessing you're
| trying to do a setup where you locally run WP, write from the WP
| interface, saves posts in your local Mysql DB, and then generate
| a static site (html files output) and pushing those files into a
| GitHub repo?
|
| It's a roundabout way to publish to a web site to say the least.
| If Jekyll has enough issues where you need to tweak its config in
| Ruby every time you want to write, you could try a different
| static site generator (e.g. Hugo for golang, or Miner [1] for
| Svelte. Disclaimer: I worked on Miner.).
|
| I think the product you're looking for is a static site generator
| + the use of a client-only WYSIWYG markdown editor that connects
| to your git repo via OAuth and lets you write on a good UI
| instead of plain text markdown files. The SSG is one of above;
| unfortunately I don't have a recommendation or know of a client-
| only WYSIWYG MD editor with git OAuth integration.
|
| 1: https://github.com/bigicoin/miner
| withinboredom wrote:
| Just to point out a caveat with the original idea: all the posts
| would be stored in a local database. If something where to happen
| to it, it's quite miserable to recreate posts from scratch, even
| if you have the source material. Don't ask how I know.
|
| PS, author, if you see this, make sure to use a child theme or
| custom plugin to make code changes. Otherwise a security update
| (which are usually automatic these days) will wipe out your
| custom changes.
| frereubu wrote:
| "running WordPress locally is a nightmare... I should also caveat
| that I know almost nothing about Apache, MySQL, FTP, and PHP."
|
| Without wishing to be too snarky, this could be rewritten as
| "Running this software is a nightmare if you know nothing about
| the technologies it is built on." And being slightly more snarky,
| my response would be: well, duh.
| scotu wrote:
| while you are right for a tl;dr, from the article, the feeling
| I'm getting is more that those are known unknowns only now for
| the author, and they were unknown unknowns at the beginning.
|
| The fact that each moving part wp needds is tricky in its own
| way doesn't make the experience better if you are encountering
| them for the first time :)
|
| The author was probably not aware how complicated set of
| dependencies (moving parts) wordpress needs compared to jekyll.
| Which is fair if from the outside the two seem to be products
| in the same category.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Totally agree, running Wordpress locally needs a minimum
| understanding of Apache, MySQL and PHP for sure
| wolco wrote:
| With programs like ammp abd wamp and others things are really
| point and click.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| I'd add you need to know how your OS will handle the
| installation, IIRC Mac OS comes with pre-installed PHP and/or
| Apache which uses configuration files you might not know to
| look for and may conflict using the same ports etc. Its a
| mess.
| reaperducer wrote:
| It's not a mess. It's just different from what you're used
| to.
|
| Running WordPress on macOS is slightly different from
| running WordPress on Ubuntu, which is different from
| running it on CentOS.
|
| I maintain WordPress sites on all three. None of them are
| inferior to the other for this purpose. They just have
| different conventions.
|
| In fact, I've had far fewer problems running multiple
| WordPress installations on macOS than I have on CentOS. But
| that's because I understand Apache better than the author
| of this article. Pretty much the only problem comes during
| a major OS upgrade when the installed backs up some of your
| configuration files and replaces them with the default. But
| once you deal with it one or two times, you know what to
| do.
| mdu96 wrote:
| Yes, hence the caveat. :)
|
| For my purposes (set up a simple blog and get it running), I
| truly don't think that I need, or should, have to learn the ins
| and outs of the tech stack. In fact I chose WordPress
| specifically _because_ I wanted it to abstract most of the
| implementation details away from me.
|
| I don't think this is true for development generally.
| frereubu wrote:
| Perhaps it wasn't intended, but the post read as a complaint
| that it wasn't easy, but self-hosted WordPress (i.e.
| wordpress.org rather than wordpress.com) doesn't sell itself
| as a one-click install CMS. (Although there are things like
| MAMP that allow you to delegate the basic server setup).
| kaslai wrote:
| This was pretty much my thoughts too. This use case is quite a
| bit outside of the realm of what Wordpress is intended to be
| used for. Local deployments are only really intended to be for
| people who are serious about administrating their own web
| server or developing plugins for Wordpress, so it's assumed
| that you already have the knowledge to set up a web server with
| PHP and MySQL.
|
| The people who want a "writing first" experience _with
| Wordpress specifically_ have many paid hosting providers to
| choose from, but that would defeat the purpose of the article.
|
| Making a one-click installation process would also take a
| significant amount of dev resources to handle all the different
| platforms and require expertise that isn't required for the
| main product, given that it is a PHP project which is almost
| entirely cross platform by default.
| nashadelic wrote:
| Yes but the promise of wordpress is to democratize content and
| its distribution. It works in many ways and fails in some.
| king_phil wrote:
| I run a shared hosting business. Mostly wordpress, of course.
| Most people have their first contact with all this when their
| site is hacked (plugins not updated for years) and they have to
| clean up. Then we need to babysit them - but to a degree that
| is what we are paid for. And for good reason.
| blakesterz wrote:
| I can totally relate to this. Just shut down my little
| hosting business I've been doing since 2002. I just couldn't
| keep everyone safe.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I think your response would be unfair. If you think about the
| statement "running this software is a nightmare if you know
| nothing about the technologies it is built on" outside of this
| context, it clearly doesn't typically apply. You wouldn't apply
| that to using a web browser or a word processor, right? Should
| 'blog writing' software really have such a greater barrier of
| entry?
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I think your response would be unfair.
|
| I don't think so. The author actually gave themselves a weird
| goal - to use Wordpress as the text editor, and export/copy
| the static content to github. I'm not sure why they would do
| that, but OK! In the end, their problem wasn't with the
| workflow but with setting up local version of Wordpress (why?
| why not use a hosted version of Wordpress????), PHP, Apache,
| MySQL and FTP(!!).
|
| WordPress isn't actually that hard to setup. It's a little
| harder on Windows, because setting up PHP on Windows just
| isn't as natural as on Linux but XAMPP makes it as easy as
| possible.
|
| >Should 'blog writing' software really have such a greater
| barrier of entry?
|
| But it doesn't. You have a plethora of hosted blogging
| solutions. You could also get private hosting with the LAMP
| stack already pre-installed and configured.
| manigandham wrote:
| As for why someone would do this: Wordpress has a solid
| editor and lots of plugins for creating content. It's used
| by millions so the workflow is well tested, and the
| resulting pages are a perfect fit as static content.
|
| You can accomplish this by just running with a CDN that
| caches everything, or use any number of plugins that do
| this automatically like WP2Static, or use integrations with
| static site frameworks like Gatsby that treat WP as a CMS.
|
| But yes, doing it all from scratch yourself is probably not
| worth it, especially if you're unfamiliar with the tech.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Bring Back CityDesk!
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/12/what-does-
| citydesk...
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Wow this article makes me feel old. Running wordpress locally is
| something I have done so many times in the past, but yes, I would
| not imagine it being a good fit for then turning it into a static
| site.
|
| These days there are a lot of better CMS options for JS single
| page applications.
| mdu96 wrote:
| Do you have any recs for what those better CMS options are?
| MichaelStubbs wrote:
| I find the first mistake here to be trying to use WordPress.
| Maybe it's just because I use it so much (or rather, as a
| developer, I'm often hired to fix other people's mess and broken
| code) but it is genuinely my most hated piece of software.
| twhb wrote:
| What's the better alternative? What solves "let non-tech people
| build and administer flexible, dynamic websites" better?
| mdu96 wrote:
| Haha! I'd love to hear more of your reasons why.
| lotyrin wrote:
| In my case, it just seems architected entirely backward,
| because of an accident of history that was LAMP and the only
| options at the time for having any kind of software running
| "on the internet" that could provide an authoring interface.
| The authoring software and its database and all the security
| surfaces and performance and cost associated with those
| should only be incurred when author changes are being made,
| not 24/7 when people are viewing content that isn't changing.
| The viewing experience can (and should) closely resemble a
| CDN of static pre-rendered documents, possibly plus thin
| edge-worker type logic around interactive features like
| comments or form submissions.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Check out the public API, read the source, look at the data
| model.
|
| Wordpress is a workhorse on the web, but it is a complex,
| inconsistent mess full of weird edge cases. It is much harder
| to introspect, debug and reason about than it should be. You
| need tons of specific, specialized knowledge to interact with
| it as a developer.
|
| The reason for that seems to be this: it is built with people
| in mind who cannot code, but the reality is that for many
| cases this doesn't suffice, so you end up with a hodgepodge.
| spanhandler wrote:
| Mine are mostly state-related. The DB and files from a live
| site are so tied up in basic config & functionality that if
| you only have the source code repo you may as well have
| nothing.
| thedanbob wrote:
| Not the OP, but I've fought Wordpress plenty of times as
| well. Probably the worst time was when I was writing a WP
| authentication plugin for my org. I was reading the docs when
| I ran into this gem[0]:
|
| > The semantics seem rather fuzzy. If id is a WP_User or
| other object, or an array of properties, it seems to clone it
| without touching the cache. Otherwise if id is a number it
| seems to try to read it possibly from the cache, or from the
| database using ->get_data_by(), which can also update the
| cache. If id is empty it reads by login name.
|
| I realized that if even the _offical_ documentation didn't
| know what Wordpress was doing, I definitely had no hope.
|
| [0] https://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_User
| 542458 wrote:
| I'm not the fellow you're replying to, but here's my 2C. My
| perspective might be out of date, as I haven't touched WP in
| 5 years or so.
|
| -The plug-in APIs have been largely written by accretion,
| making them confusing and hard to grok. I always vaguely feel
| like I'm doing something wrong, that this shouldn't be this
| difficult... Furthermore, API functions are inconsistently
| named, and return hard-to-predict datatypes.
|
| - The theme tools are similarly confusing, and can make
| simple tasks take a lot of time. Sure, you just have to
| create magicfilename.php/css and put this magic snippet into
| it - but the discoverability in that is pretty garbage and
| results in a lot of hacks that solve things in the wrong way.
|
| - Using other people's plugins was a crapshoot, as plugin
| conflicts were (are?) pretty common. For a casual user
| plugins are a massive footgun, as WP makes it easy to install
| decade-old unmaintained junk plugins full of security holes.
|
| Compare all of this to Drupal, which while far from perfect
| actually tries to design sane APIs and solid code, and
| iterates on it to correct their mistakes.
| [deleted]
| johnchristopher wrote:
| WordPress has GUI builder (Avada, Beaver, Divi, etc.). That's
| why so many people want to use WordPress.
| pluc wrote:
| > "However, I really don't think I should have needed to learn
| about all of those technologies just to set up WordPress locally"
|
| Then you have no business being a developer
| dang wrote:
| Please omit personal swipes from comments on HN. In this case,
| since the comment consists of nothing but a personal swipe, it
| would be better not to post.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| qzw wrote:
| Her blog requirements sound simple enough that I wonder if she
| couldn't have just coded up a few HTML pages by hand. Or is that
| too 2001?
| mdu96 wrote:
| That's essentially what it was before :)
|
| I mostly just wanted a better writing experience and CMS. (I
| talk about that in a section on the post).
| clairity wrote:
| if you wanted a cms and was using jekyll, why not something
| like https://forestry.io/ ? it's git-aware, which means it
| should work with github pages (i've not tried it myself,
| other than a cursory look-see).
| icemelt8 wrote:
| I use NextJS as my static site generator which uses Wordpress as
| the CMS, I host my static site on Vercel and it works
| beautifully.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Use the right tool for the work you're trying to do. WordPress is
| probably the right tool for the author's problem. GitHub Pages is
| probably not the best tool to use with WordPress.
|
| A carpenter doesn't try to build a chair without understanding
| how both a saw and a measuring tape work. People who want to
| build a chair with a saw and a surveying rig are probably better
| off going to a chair store.
|
| It seems that the author overestimated his technical abilities,
| and blames the tools he chose, rather than himself for choosing
| those tools.
| prox wrote:
| Wordpress is part of the LAMP stack, and there are easy tools
| like XAMP to get you up and running locally. With a tutorial it
| should be doable. It's probably better if you get hosting with
| auto-install if you're really averse to tinkering.
|
| That said I wonder why you'd need Github Pages if you're already
| set up with Wordpress...
| superhuzza wrote:
| >That said I wonder why you'd need Github Pages if you're
| already set up with Wordpress...
|
| Maybe there's something I don't understand here? Wordpress.org
| isn't hosted, it's just the website software itself. Hence the
| need for Github Pages (although most people just use a hosting
| provider like Siteground).
| prox wrote:
| But it's specifically made to be a blogging software, to me
| it just feels like an extra step to convert your writing,
| unless the Github Pages ecosystem gives you lots of benefits.
| wolco wrote:
| wordpress.com is the site you want.
| iagovar wrote:
| Try laragon, it's so fun and easy to use, it's also portable.
|
| https://laragon.org/
|
| It needs more love.
| demersb wrote:
| Static hosted site (secure, fast, etc), it's also free?
|
| That said, I personally would rather write in markdown or
| asciidoc and there are a ton of great static site generators
| for alternatives to Jekyll.
| pembrook wrote:
| So, yes, Wordpress is a nightmare.
|
| But no, static site generator plus headless CMS is not the
| answer, regardless of how many comments here enthusiastically say
| so.
|
| I've been down the static site generator rabbit hole for the past
| 7 years...and realized they aren't really well suited for
| anything other than tiny developer blogs that don't ever get
| updated (dev writes his occasional post in VScode)---or, giant
| company marketing sites that get hooked up to enterprise-y
| headless CMS products like contentful.
|
| If you're somewhere in between, I'm starting to think Webflow is
| the answer. In fact, I've started moving all my side project
| marketing sites/blogs over to them and couldn't be happier.
|
| The problem with [insert static site generator] + [insert
| headless CMS] is that getting off the ground is a massive pain in
| the ass.
|
| If you're trying to set up a static site for your side project,
| let me give you a preview of what your next couple of weeks will
| look like:
|
| First you have to pick a SSG. There goes a day of research. Then
| pick the next hot CSS framework (of course, you shouldn't waste
| your time on this, but you will). Tailwind! Sick! Then setup a
| build process. Then troubleshoot the inevitable issues. Fixed.
| Then setup a git repo. Then hook the repo up to Netlify. Then
| hook up continuous deployment. Then get the domain. Then
| configure the domain to talk to Netlify. Then realize your hot
| new SSG doesn't do any SEO stuff for you. Setup xml sitemaps.
| Generate proper tags & structured data. Then you have to create
| the actual site. Realize your CSS framework is overkill. You're
| already a week in. Optimize for breakpoints. Cool. Almost ready.
| Now let's write some content. Shit, I'm never going to write if I
| have to fire up my code editor each time. Look into headless CMS
| options. There goes a day of research. Pick one. Now Setup models
| in the CMS. Try to figure out how to hook it into your git repo
| and trigger deployments to Netlify. Realize the UI of the
| headless CMS you picked is clunky. Never actually write any
| content. Forget how you even set everything up. Get frustrated.
| You haven't even hooked up any analytics or email signup
| capability yet. Give up.
|
| On Webflow I've managed to cut the previous paragraph down by
| about 80%.
| ReverseCold wrote:
| > For example, I tried and failed multiple times to add a <meta>
| tag to the head of my index.html file. This theoretically should
| have been a very simple change.
|
| The thing "they don't tell you" about static site generators is
| that you should vendor your site theme. Don't expect to both get
| upstream updates _and_ make HTML level changes.
| pydry wrote:
| Every month there's a new static site generator invented. Every
| time I check to see if they handle this type of thing cleanly.
| Every time I'm disappointed.
|
| Hell, I'd be happy with a decent theme library that actually
| gets tested and regularly updated.
| [deleted]
| sevencolors wrote:
| Laravel has a great tool called Valet. Makes running multiple
| instances of WordPress locally a breeze. You just point it to a
| folder and it creates a local [directory_name].test. Works great
| for static html too
|
| Confused why the poster wanted to use GitHub pages. Sounds like a
| hassle considering hosting with Wordpress.com you point your
| domain too. [?]
| iruoy wrote:
| I'd like to add that Valet is a great tool and I use it daily.
|
| It is a Mac app though.
| mdu96 wrote:
| I've never heard of Laravel before - checking it out now.
|
| I wanted to use Github Pages because I had my previous site on
| Github Pages. GH Pages was easy to setup and provided good
| hosting/serving for free. I wanted the same for my new
| Wordpress site and naively thought I could make it work.
| phreack wrote:
| WordPress is an incredible blog editing software, which is why
| it's so popular, so I get the author's intention.
|
| It'd be amazing to have something that let's you open a desktop
| app, have WordPress with all (or most of) its themes and ease and
| plug-ins for blogging, deploy changes to a git repo, and from
| there to a host -- in a way where you don't need to know more
| than how to make an account on say Github and Netlify.
|
| Maybe there already is something like that, I'd love to know if
| so!
| david_draco wrote:
| Perhaps a wordpress.org instance can be wget/httrack mirrored and
| uploaded as github pages.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| It takes a while to understand the wp modular system, that's why
| people get paid to set it up and customise it for specific needs.
|
| That being said, deploying WordPress takes minutes. And running
| it locally as well. Docker images are available if installing
| hundreds of libraries isn't your thing.
| pmlnr wrote:
| The built in php -S can run WP just fine, albeit without url
| rewrites, aka nice permalinks. One still needs a mysql server
| though.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| > I started to procrastinate writing because there was always
| some small thing I wanted to fix with Jekyll first.
|
| This is what happened to me when I thought it would be a good
| idea to build my own blog software.
|
| These days I'm a believer in using whatever setup minimizes the
| daylight between wanting to write, and writing.
| mdu96 wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. What's your setup right now?
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| I have the same problems as both OP and the blogger: I want
| absolutely nothing to do with the hosting of the blog itself.
| I just want it to be a writing platform, a very very simple
| one, and nothing more.
|
| I ended up using Hugo hosted on AWS Amplify and CodeCommit:
| https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-aws-
| ampl...
|
| This allows me to do plenty of things. There are no servers
| to manage, and I write my posts with vim and use Markdown. I
| have a simple theme. Deployment and testing happens
| automatically through Amplify.
|
| If I really, really, absolutely must, I can dig deeper into
| Hugo and do whatever I want. But if I just want to stick to
| the basics, I write files in the content folder and edit the
| settings file the first time. That's it!
|
| And because it's in AWS, I can use cert manager and Route53,
| things I already know from work, to put my domain on it.
|
| This was a lot easier for me than anything else. I previously
| used Ghost hosted on a Digital Ocean instance, but I quickly
| grew tired of having to update Ghost, dealing with node, etc.
| Plus having to worry about securing the site and the
| instance. Patching the instance. Backups.
| discreditable wrote:
| I had similar annoyances with Jekyll / Octopress and chose to
| switch to Pelican. Now I can only blame not writing on
| myself. :)
| drawkbox wrote:
| > whatever setup minimizes the daylight between wanting to
| write, and writing.
|
| No matter your setup, writing in markdown is the fastest way to
| get your ideas/thoughts to a presentable format. That should
| work in all good CMS/blog/static/dynamic software.
|
| The markdown can have associated markdown settings that are
| either in a comment at the top or a sidecar file that can be
| adjusted to any platform.
|
| Whenever I write I do it in markdown, get the thoughts out,
| clean it up, add presentation. Then I know there is no lock-in
| or ownership of the content to _any_ system.
|
| If you do change systems there may be some initial
| settings/markup/declarative hooks you need for things like
| embeds/code highlighting etc, but after that you are rolling.
|
| Standards whether specified or market standards, always help
| you evade lock-in and can make your content a free agent when
| needed.
|
| Software today is a mine field of lock-in created by large
| entities that want you to develop in an abstracted layer above
| the simple standards, even at the programming level we have
| lost focus of shared standards that give you platform freedom.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I don't understand how the author was able to set up a
| Jekyll/github/DNS/markdown website and later hitting a roadblock
| with the whole Apache/PHP/FTP/MySQL stack.
|
| Is the root of all this the fact that github offers free hosting
| through github pages ?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-08-16 23:00 UTC)