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Tumblr to move its half a billion blogs to WordPress (techcrunch.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not as drastic as the headline makes it out to be, or at least so they claim.

“We acquired Tumblr to benefit from its differences and strengths, not to water it down. We love Tumblr’s streamlined posting experience and its current product direction,” the post explained. “We’re not changing that. We’re talking about running Tumblr’s backend on WordPress. You won’t even notice a difference from the outside,” it noted.

We'll see how that actually works out. Tumblr’s backend has always seemed rather... makeshift, so I'm curious to see how they manage to do that. Given Tumblr’s technical eccentricities, a backend migration could probably do a lot of good for the functionality of the site, if done properly. I have my doubts that WordPress' engineers will be given the time and resources to do a full overhaul/refactor though, so I'm fully expecting even more janky, barely functional code stapling the two systems together.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

WordPress is built on decades of hacky code, probably more so than Tumblr. I would be shocked if this is an improvement.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

is it decades of hacky code, or decades of battle tested code?

I haven't touched wordpress in... many years, but I've seen far too many developers look at old code and call it junk... only to break things horrifically when they attempt a rewrite.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hacky.

Wordpress has a reputation for the most moronic security issues. Especially when it's built on PHP, which has its own reputation for moronic security issues. And that's saying nothing about the quality of plugin developers or plugin code.

I've worked on Wordpress sites, plugins, and themes. That was many years ago now, but I doubt it's changed that much. If anything, it's mostly benefited from improvements to PHP.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Has to rank as one of the most exploited pieces of software ever.

Definitely be not aided by the fact it's targeting an audience without the skills or knowledge to adequately configure, maintain and monitor it. And the plugin community only makes the vulnerability exposure worse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Kind of the old Windows vs Mac problem though. It gets so many exploits because it is so ridiculously popular. No one is going to bother looking for exploits in shit that no one uses right? I'm sure they've got problems like any project but I'm not convinced they're THAT bad. Not to mention a lot of exploits you see are plugins doing dumb shit, not WP itself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

They summarised the history of Tumblr, but failed to mention how they lost 3 quarters of their users by banning porn?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wordpress is just the worst

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The open-source software from WordPress.org is great for blogs. It becomes the worst when you try it make it do more than that. Even worse is WordPress.com which is very different and uses a very locked-down and restricted proprietary version of the WordPress software. They charge $25/mo for the tier that lets you add custom CSS.

Additionally, Automattic gets a free pass of violating the WordPress terms of use for the WordPress name and logo to intentionally trick people into thinking the paid platform at WordPress.com is the same as the free and open-source software from WordPress.org. They get to leverage the non-profit's name and likeness and gets preferential treatment to funnel business to their for-profit company.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Wow. For real, I always just assumed that .com was the commercial arm of .org. Holy shit.

Edit: So, for anyone curious, .com is owned by Automattic, who also own Tumblr, Beeper, PocketCasts and Buddy Press. The WordPress project and .org are owned by the WordPress Foundation. Automattic makes some contributions to the WordPress project but they and the WP Foundation are seperate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Completely separate entities besides the owner being the same.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think you misunderstood the comment you are replying to.

The WordPress Foundation does not have the same owner as WordPress.com.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Matt Mullenweg effectively is the 'owner' of both, yes. Though the term 'owner' isn't necessarily precise, it effectively conveys the idea.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

Ewww