Wriging

I don't do that much with WP besides blog (and it's a pretty basic blog), so no, it doesn't irritate with me.

What does resonate with me is what you said about more seasoned users telling others to go check the forums. There are a lot of places like that on the Internet, not just WP, and I am so tired of so-called experts talking down to newbies/not-so-advanced users looking for some help. We've all been a novice at one time; you'd think people would remember that you can't do long division before you know how to subtract, let alone learn to subtract if your teachers are being callous, unhelpful, and/or nasty.

Bad metaphor's over. Rant's over. Goodnight!

I've had that experience myself, finding nothing terribly useful in the forums. On a few occasions it's come through for me, but as I've become more familiar with WP the less helpful it seems to be. I don't really go anymore. I'll either ask for help from someone I know, or wing it and watch everything fall apart, and try learning from there.

And agreed with the Erin rant. Moderation of forums, or the such, is as much a customer service position as anything. Educate for sure, but if you can't be kind doing it, then don't. People ask for silly advice sometimes. We've all done it at some point. Your job is to not make them feel like an asshat, and to get them stoked about the helpful people running the company/organization.

Ha, I could go on for ages about all the things that are just plain wrong with wordpress nowadays...
But I wont. I find it very annoying too, especially the 2.x versions, which is why I dont use them

WordPress itself has never really annoyed me; but, I've never tried to make it do things that it wasn't specifically built for. I blog with it, and that's about it.

However, the WordPress community in their forums *does* annoy me. I ran into what you all are talking about numerous times when I'd ask a question. Either 1) I'd never get a response at all or 2) I'd get some smartass comment saying "read the documentation", or "this is easy to do, you shouldn't be having any trouble". Of course, I *had* read the documentation, and I *was* having difficulty, otherwise I wouldn't have been swimming around with those sharks. :P

Luckily, after having blogged with WordPress for so long, I'm familiar enough with it to generally make it do what I want; and, I very rarely change anything in the "guts" of my site anymore, so I don't have to poke the code much.

What's even more funny is I saw some thread telling people to read the documentation for Wordpress Mu.

There is no documentation.

At all.

I love WordPress, I HATE their site.

Any and all problems and issues I've had with the app were quickly fixed with a trip to Google.

There are tons of WP bloggers out there that publish fixes on their blogs... it's really easy to ignore the worthless WP Support forums.

Yeah, I've been able to find fixes easily. It's when I want to develop a new feature, or alter an existing one. There's literally no where to go other than the code itself.

Though, the code itself is at least relatively clean. Not well commented, but good names of functions and objects for the most part. It's a trick sometimes finding what file the class or function you're looking for is in (or what it's name might be,) but once you find it, it's not vague.

I personally can't stand the wordpress.org sites, especially the codex. The forums are a mess - if there was every a reason not to use bbPress, the WordPress forums are it. And when I do have to search their site, I usually just do a google search.

And there's something about Matt M. being the keymaster of it now that bothers me.

i went through the exact same thing just a couple weeks ago. i searched and searched the forums and finally found a hack to fix the problem.

i was very close to just saying screw it and move on to something else.

I think the problem is that WP was originally created mainly just for blogging, and that shows on the backend sometimes, when you want to do "abnormal" things. I know I do on my website.

Planning to use TextPattern on an upcoming project, as I've heard it's more for content management than WP. If it's better, I'll maybe transfer my site over to it. There are also a few little things coming up here and there that I'm keeping an eye on.

I think WP can best be described now as going through a growing pain. Trying to meet all the needs, while also not creating something absurdly bulky, and while having a hosted (wordpress.com) version...lot to keep up for certain people involved. In the future, one thing I'd like to see--but that would make stranger work for developers--is different versions of WordPress, according to one's needs. What I mean by that is many users do strictly just want a blog, right out of the box, and that's it. They should download a very skeletal version compared to what those of us who want extreme control would download. I think that would solve a lot of problems for the inexperience and experienced alike.

I hate Wordpress when it doesn't work. Same goes for all the other tools out there, when they don't work. Some examples: my iPod, iTunes crashing on me for no reason, Windows, blaardy Photoshop when I just can't figure out their UI (where was that button again?). But most of the time they work, so I don't hate them. They're competent tools.

I suppose our frustration is directly proportionate to the complexity of the task. Hard to imagine getting pissed at Blogger, but it happens.

Take a walk. Play frisbee. The hate'll pass. :)

I've been using Wordpress for a few years now and its had its ups and downs. I've broken it once or twice but have since learnt the true value of backups!

I've had to delve into the source once or twice to hard code solutions to problems which shouldn't be necessary, but was.

Hopefully, future versions will reduce the probability that something will go wrong. My experience has been problems with Plugins so hopefully Wordpress will do more checks, and upgrade the ones already in place.

I have to agree with Josh. Their forums used to be helpful but no longer are.

I like the software but I can never be bothered to develop a theme due to the fussing on it takes with the loop etc.

I like WordPress and have used it for a few years. I haven't had any major problems

I am really sick of the bugs and holes I run into with wordpress. It's fine for my own blog, as I always find a workaround. Time and time again I'll have a client ask for something that seems easy, or that it's built in. Sometimes it is built in, but invariably something will be broken.

Being broken isn't so bad, it's open source, I can go in and fix it!

Except I can never find a reference to the feature, or a pointer to what area of the source tree deals with it.

This would be a total non issue if the forum was helpful, or there was more than a barebones outline of documentation. As it is, it's a huge time drain. You'd think I'd learn and just assume I have to build everything from scratch--including the features that already exist.

I love/hate open source for exactly this reason. I continue using it because I'm getting what I pay for, but it's no wonder that Big Corporate doesn't adopt more open source with this kind of half-assery.

Just now I had to fix the rss widget handling from stripping out valid characters from urls...

I've never had problems with WordPress even after all these years. If I run into any problem, I can just find and change the code as I go. It's just that recently, it's become bloated and I mean really bloated. I like all the options to use plugins and all, but when a simple piece of software comes choke full with features I don't need, you've got to ask what direction is it headed for?

Aside from the coding bloat, I've managed to hold eveything at bay. Even with my 50+ plugins I have to check everytime they do a new release. It's all working fine after an overnight workover.

I recently migrated to WP from a static html site and the reduction in workload has been incredible.
The forum is next to useless but I have found the documentation OK and Googling the problem usually provides a solution.
I am so grateful for WP, but perhaps an unofficial forum would be a good solution. Anybody know of any good ones?
Mark

I've never had problems with WordPress even after all these years. If I run into any problem, I can just find and change the code as I go. It's just that recently, it's become bloated and I mean really bloated. I like all the options to use plugins and all, but when a simple piece of software comes choke full with features I don't need, you've got to ask what direction is it headed for?

My sentiments exactly. I adore Wordpress, but like with everything, there are certain aspects of the software that I have learned to deal with. Such is life in the computer world, no?

Their forums used to be helpful but no longer are.

Agreed! I remember checking out the forums when I first started using WordPress. Oh how convenient to find answers to all of my questions. Since then, the forums look to have a wee bit more of a spam feel.

As someone else mentioned, usually answers to support questions are best answered on personal blogs by real WordPress users. I've received more tips from 9rules notes and bloggers in the past year than I ever had from the [official] WP Forums.

Such is life in the computer world, no?

No. Such is life in the open source world.

With my experience using wordpress, I've found out that google is your best friend when you run into any problems or issues. I haven't come across many forums that are very searchable in general. I've never tried to setup a forum myself, and therefore I'm not familiar with forum software.

I have noticed a couple weird things with my WordPress, and good luck trying to read their documentation on making custom plugins.

All in all, its solid as far as I've seen though it is a bit of a CPU hog. Mine also has this weird habit of going to a blank page after I publish an article. I don't know why it does it but it annoys the hell out of me.

I don't know how hard it is to make themes, but I don't think I'm going to enjoy doing that either.

I really like WordPress, and for the basic ways I use it, I haven't had too many problems. When I do have a problem, Google is my friend and has always found a solution to my woes.