W3C drops Wordpress

phiw13 · 2020-09-26 08:24:54

(clickbait headline…) at least their website vendor drops WP from consideration. reason: accessibility, Guttenberg.

source: Adrian Roselli – twitter thread and article

nominated replacement: craft CMS

(would be good, me thinks…)

michaelkpate · 2020-09-26 15:01:02

The entire thing is a mess IMHO and everyone looks bad.

I get the Gutenberg hate but going with a non-Open Source product based on a pledge doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. What happens if the company is sold and the new owners aren’t interested in achieving/maintaining the promise?

phiw13 · 2020-09-27 00:34:22

michaelkpate wrote #326107:

The entire thing is a mess IMHO and everyone looks bad.

a mess, probably, everyone looks bad, I doubt.

[…] What happens if the company is sold and the new owners aren’t interested in achieving/maintaining the promise?

Government / public administration / international organisation type contracts. IOW the contractual obligations are there for all to see. The hypothetical buyer of the company must respect those contracts.

And I very seriously doubt that OSS offers better protection in those situations.

bici · 2020-09-27 03:50:13

There had to be some serious issues with WP for studio24 to drop them from contention and choose Craft CMS.
Its time that there was a full-on evaluation of WP. There are score of underlying issues that i gather from talking to web developers who do WP stuff. Most of these folks dont use WP for their own personal stuff

michaelkpate · 2020-09-27 15:31:04

phiw13 wrote #326117:

Government / public administration / international organisation type contracts. IOW the contractual obligations are there for all to see. The hypothetical buyer of the company must respect those contracts.

And I very seriously doubt that OSS offers better protection in those situations.

Years ago, the public library system I worked for was using a system to manage our public Internet stations. It was a pretty large investment to get it up and running and there was an annual cost but we were really happy with how it worked.

One day we had a meeting with an executive from the Corporation who had purchased the product. They were no longer adding customers but would maintain the system until all the existing contracts had expired in 18 months or so.

I have no doubt that the contracts will be honored – for as long as they last.

michaelkpate · 2020-09-29 17:18:24

“Studio 24 ultimately determined that working with a CMS to make it better was more possible with a smaller, proprietary vendor than with a large open-source project,” accessibility advocate Brian DeConinck said. “Project leadership would be more receptive, and the smaller community means changes can be made more quickly. That should prompt a lot of soul-searching for…well, everyone. What does that say about the future of open source?” – W3C Selects Craft CMS for Redesign Project

I wonder if they going to go with the $299 Pro Version or negotiate for the unspecified Enterprise Version?

We are using open source technology in the majority of this project (HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Symfony). While Craft is a proprietary CMS, this has given us the advantage of direct access to the team developing the CMS which has helped improve accessibility in these CMSs. – On not choosing WordPress for the W3C redesign project

Of course, this is the same W3C that thought proprietary Encrypted Media Extensions were a good idea.

bici · 2020-09-29 20:49:21

Not pretending to understand the situation completely. But having worked a little with WP, i am so glad that it was ditched as a choice. For one thing who wants to deal with all those PHP files. imho:
WP is the VHS of cmses and EE, CRAFT, Statamic, and TxP are the Beta .

phiw13 · 2020-09-30 05:30:44

Here is another voice, from inside the WP accessibility community: Joe Dolson: The W3C Drops WordPress from Consideration

He talks accessibility of course, but also a note on internationalisation / multi-lingual content. It seems WP is not at all in a good shape… (I did not know that, but then, I know little about WP over the last decade).

BTW, Michael, have you ever checked the contracts offered by the larger Linux vendors?

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2020-09-26 08:24:54