Stop the WordPress Madness!

One month and hundreds of dollars worth of development help ago, I began consolidating my Web site and blog onto WordPress, the popular blog, Web site and content publishing system.

My new site still isn’t up, I’ve lost dozens of hours of productive or leisure time (and will lose more) and my output of marketing posts (the aim of the whole exercise) is lower than ever. The reason: Confusing, contradictory terminology, a truly baffling design interface and the need to understand and upload obscure files into obscure server directories to do simple things.

If you sell the highly-touted Thesis, Headway, or Flexibility 3 themes don’t bother calling. I’ve tried each and none of them deliver. When I should be writing insightful, clever posts on recent industry trends (or, even better, doing paying work) I’m trying to remember the difference between a widget and a plug-in, a top sidebar vs. a sub-sidebar, and a regular sidebar vs. a widget-enabled sidebar. Then there are “skins” for themes. Isn’t “Skins” a TV show?

Designing a page is tricky because the “left” sidebar really appears on the right side of the page, and is actually the “top” sidebar – but only if I resize the “right” sidebar to certain dimensions. To create a  scrolling text box I have to download an FTP client to upload the “external.php file” to the “themes” directory on the server, and then find the right place in the code (see screen shot to the right) to insert my text. And on and on.

Some smart coder out there is going to get rich by selling a truly easy-to-use, WYSWIG (what you see is what you get) drag and drop design interface for WordPress. Especially with the economy picking up, it would be worth several hundred bucks (which I’m spending on themes and professional help anyway) to get beyond setup and into creating compelling content to get more business.

The same, by the way, goes for any marketing automation/demand gen/content management/inbound marketing system. People do not have the time to even create the content they should be creating, much less learning complicated systems to host, distribute and track it. If we don’t make things much simpler, we’ll never get mass acceptance for content marketing.

Does anyone out there in the WordPress developer community get this? If so, I’m dying to hear from you.

Comments

[Jon]

I'm sorry your WordPress experience has been so flaky.

I have not tried the new Headway (with drag and drop) yet but was disappointed it wasn't what you were looking for. There is also http://pagelines.com/themes/platformpro/ which I have not yet checked out.

I've never heard of themes called skins, child themes maybe, but this is not something you should have to be playing with.

If sidebars and navigation areas are confusing you, your themes might have too many of them or might not be using them properly.

I think you just need to get over your learning curve. You shouldn't have to worry about anything accept for the post button to create new content. A good theme or a developer should be able to handle the rest.

[Bob Scheier]

Thanks much for your reply. Skins, as it turns out, are not something I need to fiddle with -- but they are prominently mentioned in all the themes I tried so I had to learn they were not applicable. I DID have to fiddle with header, sidebars etc. as I had a definite look and feel I wanted in my site.

I have no doubt I am not "using my theme properly" but that's my point. I don't want to have to climb a steep learning curve to use WordPress, but to get my site set up quickly and then get into content creation.

In any case, thanks for listening to me rsnt. :)

[Kimmolinkama]

What a relief to find someone else who is frustrated by this "easy, lightweight" CMS.

WordPress may be easy for those who code for a living, but it should be a lot easier for us others who just want to USE it.

It should be like driving a car. I want to get from point A to point B quickly and safely, and when I need to engage 4-wheel drive, I just pull a lever. It would be totally unacceptable that I'd need to disassemble the tranny and manually put the gears in position.

Even a simple thing like displaying different sidebars in different sections of the site requires you to perform surgery on the source files. If you're not a professional coder, you're likely to make a mistake somewhere and have to start from scratch again.

One of the main problems I've found with WordPress is that theme developers have not made the first attempt at standardizing their terminology.

When will we see a genuinely modular theme that has human-readable instructions and can be deployed quickly?

[Bob Scheier]

Thanks so much for chiming in -- was beginning to think I was the only one who didn't "get" WordPress intuitively. Your comparison to driving a car was spot on -- if you want to turn right, turn the wheel to the right!

If I may ask, what did you wind up using? With outside help (a developer, not a therapist :) I am sticking with WordPress, especially as another client may be using it for a site we're beginning to develop.

Good luck and hang in there!

Bob

[Kimmolinkama]

Hi Bob,

I'm in exactly the same situation as you: I want to move from wordpress.com to the self-hosted wordpress.org to consolidate my online presence.

I've spent a heck of a lot of time trying to wrap my head around WordPress and even looking for alternative solutions with the functionality I need. I'm not trying to do anything extreme, but will need:

1. Blog with moderated comments
2. Some 20 "static" pages
3. Different sidebar content for different pages

And this presented using my little company's graphics.

I know something about HTML and CSS, so I even considered an alternative approach: design the site first, then add the WP functions. The PHP savvy this would have required, however, was way above my head. Like you, I finally decided to stick with WordPress after all. By now, I think I've learned enough about changing the PHP pages to make WP do what I want, such as registering more than one sidebar.

I chose the bare-bones Toolbox theme, created a child theme under it to avoid unpleasant surprises later on, and am now in the process of tweaking the child theme to my liking.

Unless I manage to insert a typo somewhere in the code, I know this will eventually work.

But the main problem still remains. To be "easy and lightweight", the platform should be significantly quicker and easier to deploy, and most importantly, NOT require mucking with the code. As you said, people do not have the time to even create the content they should be creating, much less learn complicated systems.

Thanks for enduring the rant!

Best,
Kimmo

[Bob Scheier]

Amen -- amazing the difference between what technical folks consider "easy" and people who create content consider easy. Hopefully someone will hear our pleas and make it easier. Cheers;

Bob

[Urs E. Gattiker]

Bob

This must have been a frustrating experience. Kimmo I appreciate what you point out as well.

My experience has been that WordPress.com does not work for us. Instead we installed the wordpress.mu on our servers and now it works.

Jon in his comment states: "I think you just need to get over your learning curve."

Well, I have found that most of our clients don't want to bother so we help them getting it going and now I have written some material - how to - on what they need to do to get their thing done.

I think it takes some time to figure this all out and this is the problem of free - it does not exist because if you don't pay cash, you pay in lost time and possibly grief and agony....

Bob, hang in there, its worth the effort.

[Bob Scheier]

Thanks for the feedback -- can you elaborate on what you mean by installing the "Wordpress.mu"? Also, can you provide any links to the explanantory material you've written?

Bob

[jhon kuznecov]

I really don't agree with the idea of the post. Wordpress is really a great site builder. It's done to automate the process and to let the people who don't know a thing about html to build their own sites. In 2 clicks. I built my site http://womens-fashiontrends.com in 2 hours. Ok, the design is not unique. But the result counts.
Of course, if you need a commercial site you should think of building your own engine...