WordPress vs. TownNews
Note: This entire blog post in my opinion and solely my opinion. Take it for what it’s worth, an opinion.
If you follow me online you’ve probably noticed I have been pretty flustered with the current CMS that I have to use, TownNews. I have been sending a lot of jabber across Twitter recently like:
$time_for_change = ($WordPress > $TownNews) ? true : false;
if ($time_for_change) {
$save_money = true;
$save_time = true;
$faster = true;
}
else {
$save_money = false;
$save_time = false;
$faster = false;
}
I’m a coder, that’s how I think and talk; There is no gray area, it’s true or false. It’s my opinion, but factual and it truly does equate. Time equals money and I seem to be wasting tons of time with TownNews.
TownNews
I have been using TownNews for about 4 weeks now where I work. I have been an actual PHP Developer for a little over 10 years so I have seen my fair share of content management systems, templating engines, frameworks, etc; And I just can’t wrap my head around this system. When you create a framework like TownNews has done with it’s tags or as they call them tokens, you aim to make a developer’s life easier, not harder. In my opinion, why even use a framework or templating engine if it doesn’t speed up development?
I was tasked with writing a PHP wrapper for a REST API, a few hours later done, tested, works fine. I try to use it in TownNews, nothing, no results, no page, nothing. Try to troubleshoot nothing, literally nothing. After some poking I see they are still on PHP 4, no cURL, a bunch of disabled PHP functions and the only call I can use to call out to an API is file_get_contents(). What good does that do me? None to be exact. REST APIs use more than GET requests, they use POST, PUT, DELETE. You can’t accomplish this with file_get_contents, you can only get contents.
The other bad thing is we have mutliple sites so we have the same folder setup over and over again and the same files over and over again, why? Because you can’t share them between sites. No sharing of CSS, JavaScript, widgets, pages, nothing. Great now one line of JavaScript has to be changed for multiple sites multiple times. Something that should take me 20 minutes is not a day long project. Boo again.
The response I got was it was not supported for anyone because of risk of taking down everyone’s site. That is just bad server planning in my opinion. If people are paying a premium we should be separated from other users but it appears we are treated like a shared host. Funny to me though thru my shared host (bluehost), I pay 6.95/month, I am always up (knocking on wood) and I have access to everything I need. No restrictions. I don’t think we pay less than 6.95 a month per site; but I could be wrong.
The only thing I can think of that is positive about TownNews is for people that aren’t developers. It would make your life easier as a Designer or HTML layout person but beyond that it lacks any real flexibility. I was told that in the next version I could only use PHP thru AJAX (less flexibility). What good does that do for SEO when using APIs? Again none. Anyway I don’t want to beat them up too much, they just wouldn’t be on my list of vendors, truthfully not even in the running. My final thoughts on TownNews are it seems they did what they did to make it easier for them and not the client. Which in my book is the wrong way to make software.
WordPress
That brings me to WordPress. I run my site off of WordPress, yes this site. WordPress to me is one of the best content management systems out there. Great admin panel, flexible and best of all…FREE. All you need is some server space, PHP and MySQL. See WordPress does something right; They created everything in objects and methods. You write PHP but it’s easy. The nice thing is if I need to write custom scripts, I can do so very easily. I can create themes, plug-ins, and the support on the web is second-to-none.
Very soon WordPress 3.0 will be released and with that includes a multi-blog setup, something I felt kept people going to TypePad. With this update you can run multiple sites & blogs all from one install. Very nice indeed. For me I look at it as a way to easily share everything. Want to use another site’s content, easy just mark it under your site’s category. Done.
No making folders for sections, that is so 1996. I would use the categories and sub-categories for our sections and we would publish content under those categories. Easy and easily expandable.
What about media? Easy, WordPress supports oEmbed, multiple different embeds and has a great multimedia center where you can upload, resize, tag, title all your photos, videos, etc. Woot, we could do photo galleries pretty easy. Something you can’t do in TownNews either.
For 3 weeks now I have been saying we should drop TownNews and use WordPress; it can’t be any worse. The only thing I would have to create is a plug-in to import data, to be honest I haven’t even hit Google for that, it probably exists already. I truly believe this, WordPress > TownNews. All we would need it some servers, load balancers, database a fresh install and we’re off. Even a nicely sized managed package thru Rackspace would be cheaper yearly.
Conclusion
I know my article sounds harsh but I can’t stand bad technology. Not necessarily old technology just poorly thought out software. It doesn’t scale, no thought seems to have been given to multimedia, SEO, analytics, etc. All things which are super important to media sites.
I feel like some companies provide an inferior product because we let them, we accept. I preach this but we need to demand better. I purchased the domain ‘Anecdot.es’ to do just that, do it better. It will take me some time as it’s a side project for me and I may ask for some help from the talented folks I talk shop with, but we will get this right. There is a gap out there for an drop-dead easy publishing system that is affordable for all and hey to me right now….WordPress is that system. Hopefully within 12 months it will be ‘Anecdot.es’.
Take this article for what it’s worth, my opinion. To some that’s expensive (probably just me) for others it’s pennies on the dollar; but hey if someone doesn’t speak up who will?
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TN didn’t make anything easy for designers either. One of the first things I did where I am now is initiate the migration away from TN. Even our designers/producers pulled their hair out over it. Not the least of the issues was the multiple files/folders fiasco… their ‘tokens’ are inconsistent, and there’s no base set of properties or methods, or even any rhyme or reason between them. For example, one token might give you back a list that you can apply formatting to, while another just gives you a plain set of links with no other options. It’s maddening!
So happy now that we moved to a real CMS. They all have their quirks and issues, but TN is really the bottom of the barrel.
Tucker, I agree with you completely. I feel like they make an application for people who just don’t know. It’s unfortunate. I was just at a meeting today with a different company and they said they were considering TN over their current Joomla system. I said stick with Joomla, you pay $30 bucks a month for it now, TN will be a lot more than that and you will gain nothing by using it.
You’re looking at TN’s oldest CMS, not it’s newest. Newsys is bing phased out.
Marc, you are correct. We are not on blox and while I can’t compare the two, the one thing I was told is that it is less flexible with PHP. Taking a more MVC approach is good but me having to put all my PHP in an apps folder and call thru AJAX kills any hope for SEO when dealing with 3rd party API calls.
One of the biggest parts of being successful as a larger media company is SEO, having people find you organically. This is a multi-part process and not all the responsibility lies on TN. That being said I stand by my original argument of flexibility for developers.
I shouldn’t have to submit tickets to implement an API (where I will more than likely get charged a fee for development), news happens in real-time and I need to be able to develop in real-time.
The beauty of frameworks, templating engines, content systems is flexibility in my opinion. Even when working with Newsys I should be able to redirect my PHP files to be rendered by PHP5 via .htaccess but I cannot. The simplest of PHP has to be reworked to fit or you get a white page that is impossible to troubleshoot.
Anyway like I said this is my opinion, others love your system and I am happy it works for their needs. I don’t make the calls on what we use, I just try to work with what I have.
Since you work for TN how would you compare your product to that of WordPress or Joomla? Why should someone (a potential customer) use your product over these two or any other free CMS that has templating, a framework and a CMS? Just curious to see the comparisons.
Thanks for the comment. I like an open debate
I’d like you to take a full demo of BLOX before you make your final judgment.
I’d like you to take a full demo of BLOX and Total CMS before you make your final judgment. We’d also be happy to share with you our development path.
Apologies for the delay. Fair enough, I would be more than happy to look at Blox. It will have to be off-work hours as I am to focus on our current product and not the system we are not on. That being said we can a look at it later in the evenings or on the weekend.
Contact me: jeff AT phraction DOT com.
Thanks for the response.
Jeff,
As a former user of TownNews CMSs I can tell you to be cautious about Blox too. It’s years behind schedule and the last time I saw it was not being implemented on any TN sites. Newsys stinks, but thank your stars you never had to use ZWire. Newsys and ZWire were both early 90’s TN CMS systems. The problem is that TN never noticed a need to advance until around 2008. Their customer service people are polite and try to be helpful, but are overwhelmed. Good luck.
Len
Thanks Len. I have heard that from some of my other news friends. I can’t give an opinion of Blox without seeing it but from being told it is less flexible than Newsys for developer, leaves me with little hope.
I appreciate your feedback.