Comments on: WordPress Distributions are the Future

By: David Coveney

David Coveney — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:06:26 +0000

Hi Denis, and so there is. Thanks for that.

I see it’s your own project, so I’m curious to know how you’ve found it to work as a business model. Feel free to contact via the contact form if you don’t wish to be public about it

By: Denis de Bernardy

Denis de Bernardy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:42:48 +0000

@John and David: there has been a WP-based package (Semiologic Pro) since 2005.

By: MaxEmil

MaxEmil — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:13:27 +0000

I agree that distributions and specialized packages definitely has a place for WordPress – or rather more specifically companies living of WP.
For a project like WordPress which attracts so many creative people, and which matures so quickly – some of us just cannot depend on 3party plugin developers.
I myself are constructing a package, and I would rather simplify maintenance and development by including extensive functions than depend on and support (3rd party) plugins.
We plug in our own functions to the admin menu, rather than include plugins.
I call WP a framework, a truly awesome framework.

By: Jason King

Jason King — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:17:16 +0000

WordPress distributions could be worth doing. An alternative might be to simply write recipes: lists of ingredients (plugins) that would work well in combination to create a particular type of website, and step-by-step instructions on how to implement them. I’d love to find out how other WordPress developers put together their solutions.

As John mentioned, a membership site is one scenario. Others might include: a directory with maps; a photography archive; a file download site; an events booking site. In each case multiple plugins are required and it’s a hassle to find out which ones will work best together.

I’ve recently purchased several themes and theme frameworks (e.g. WP-Remix) that come “ready-loaded” with a carefully selected set of plugins. This can help speed up development but those themes are usually very generic.

By: David Coveney

David Coveney — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:17:29 +0000

As far as I’m aware there’s nothing out there at the moment. In essence, the core WP is about blogging. The rest is down to plugins, themes, and cleverness. Consequently there’s a fair bit for someone to do in terms of testing combinations, commitment to plugins and so on that create problems for people. We ourselves have the problem that a client site runs an old plugin that is no longer in active development – we fixed it for WP 2.8 because it’s cheaper than migrating.

It’s this kind of problem that people with more sophisticated requirements have started running into lately, and opportunities may lie in taking those concerns away from users.

By: John Cronin

John Cronin — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:46:28 +0000

Happened to find this post via @amcewen

I would have thought there’s some merit in this approach. Take a wp membership site for example …kind of tricky to identify and configure all of the plugins yourself, so you might want to pay for a suitable distribution package.

Are there companies offering such a wordpress packaged service?

Cheers

John

By: David Coveney

David Coveney — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Thanks Johan for your well tuned observations there.

Keeping away from core is desirable – the only question is that of managing the upgrade process and that may require a hack as I suspect a plugin to change its behaviour is unlikely to be possible. Apart from that, I can’t see any real need to change it.

Forks could happen, but that is only likely if the WordPress project starts to diverge from where its community, users and implementers feel it should be.

But as you say – a distribution is a responsibility, and a project has to be maintained as well as possible. If a project within that implementation is abandoned, it often has to be picked up and maintained. So it’s possibly not something for us yet, as a two man company, but as we grow, and as the WP marketplace grows, it’s certainly of interest.

By: Johan Dahlstrom

Johan Dahlstrom — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:29:35 +0000

It’s a great responsibility to take on a distribution. It’s also a fine line between a distribution and a fork. If you start hacking core (which may be tempting) you are effectively creating a fork rather than a distribution.

I think the key to success is the logistics of a distribution. Implementing a way to upgrade a distribution with the same ease as WP core and WP.org plug-ins today.

Another issue is how to ensure compability between distributions and core.

All in all it sounds very interesting as I am certain that “corporate” implementations will welcome distributions, where they have one contact surface.