Wordpress is very useful, it makes things pretty, it makes things easy.
There are still some things that really really annoy me though. Most significant is code blocks. If I use code or pre tags, then for some reason html tag inside them still need to have their brackets escaped. I’ve given up trying to figure it out. I could get plugins that fiddle with things, but there is always the risk that the method will break in the future. I’d prefer to store the data in the database as plain old text, but wordpress just doesn’t work that way.
Another thing that bothers me about wordpress is it’s code base. Every now and then I dig around the php files to see how things are done, it bothers me that things are so messy and seemingly hacked. A perfect example of this is the way wordpress implement it’s import export feature. Yueuck! Php can be a really messy language when it feels like it.
Now that I’m actually writing code and dealing with xml documents daily, these things bother me. If there is one thing I can’t stand it’s dealing with xml documents in an unstructured way. If there is one thing I love about C# it’s how I can just use xml and xpath so naturally. Note: there are plently of things about C# that do bother me.
Anyway, back to wordpress. Implicit in my frustration at wordpress and code blocks, is math markup and the web in general. Ideally I want to be able to type latex directly into the post editor and have it rendered correctly with no image links to think about. I hear there are plugins for this too.
I’m seriously considering moving to a new CMS. Something smart and well designed. Something that has a design philosphy behind it. It would probably feel like over kill just for a blog, but what the hell. I’ve no idea when I’ll get the time to look into this though, so I’ll probably just stick with this. I might have a look at drupal again and whatever else I find when I can though.
