[thelist] Ruby on Rails: why?

Stephen Rider evolt_org at striderweb.com
Thu Nov 15 14:37:02 CST 2007


On Nov 15, 2007, at 9:04 AM, Mark Howells-Mead wrote:
>>>
>>> the high profile shareware/freeware CMS systems, like WordPress  
>>> for example, don't properly support multilingualism. There are of  
>>> course plug-ins, but the majority of them are likely to be way  
>>> less than they could be, because they're based on WordPress itself.
>>
>> WordPress is most definitely multi-lingual.
>> <http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress_in_Your_Language>
>
> That's to say, I can't use the default installation of WordPress to
> power a site where the visitor can switch between (say) English,
> French, German and Italian content at will. That requires an input
> environment which is capable of handling content in several languages
> concurrently, which WordPress - and, as far as I am aware, all other
> popular freeware CMS systems - cannot. (Not without a third party add-
> on, anyway.)

The general philosophy in WordPress is KISS -- put the major  
universal functions in core and leave the bloat for plugins, so users  
can install _only_ what they're going to use.  As the _vast majority_  
of bloggers aren't writing in multiple languages simultaneously, what  
you describe is definitely plugin territory.

HOWEVER: regarding quality of code and such -- a great many plugins  
are written by the same people writing the core.  I am on a mailing  
list for people writing WP core and plugins, and I have even seen  
instances where core was changed to make it easier in future to  
integrate certain types of plugins.

:)

Does WordPress have faults?  Of course.  But it's pretty robust, and  
designed from the start to be capable of significant flexibility via  
plugins.

Stephen



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