But the fact that no true new “modern” challenger CMS has emerged in years, only platforms like Medium, and platformized-WordPress (Wordpress.com, WPengine which I use) suggests that the “CMS” era proper may be over. The backend has to be serverless now.
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Gutenberg is a bit of a Great Leap attempt on the frontend, but the backend will not so much leap as dissolve into the cloud. Not sure how that will work with aging PHP core, a 90s-era COBOL-of-the-web that is only worth keeping going at enormous cost because so much runs on it.
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I’ve often idly (and not too seriously) worried about PHP being the backend of WP. Now I think “backend” and “CMS” will cease to be meaningful before PHP grinds into obsolescence. Future: Shift a lot of the weight to the front-end, switch out the backend for a more cloudy one.
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At some point I suspect the “self-hosted” kind of Wordpress which many think of as “real” blogging — downloading/installing on your own server — will be a historical curiosity option. Like people running 8-bit DOS games in emulators. It is already no longer a serious option.
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Back when I used shared-server ISP (Dreamhost), they were pressing me to upgrade to a “personal server” (a VM basically). I saw that as a sign they’d eventually either charge for admin services or force you to admin a VM. Which is what you’d do today (likely on Digital Ocean)
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For those who’ve never run a serious site, this is the equivalent of having to self-checkout and bag your own groceries. Instead of just doing light admin on the specific website software, you’d do heavier admin: server OS upgrades, web server configuration etc. Not fun.
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So I sucked it up and moved to a 10x costlier solution in 2014. Instead of a $10/mo shared server, I ended up on a $100/mo managed WPengine account. Usually, I end up with $50-150/mo in overage charges since our traffic is above the band we’re in but not yet at next level
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Today the “self-hosted” alternative for ribbonfarm would probably be a $20/mo Digital Ocean droplet with 10x the admin time and knowledge than I needed to run things on Dreamhost in 2012. Basically out of the question. Cloudy app-level managed Wordpress is the only game in town.
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Replying to
How would you characterise "use a static site generator and push to S3 or GitHub or similar"?
Scared enough of WP's security rep enough that it's the way I'm going, but part of me thinks it's the "build your own damn car out of scrap to pick up groceries" option.
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(Still - the advantage of adminning no boxes and still being able to get dynamic content via JS seems compelling.)
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