About Wordpress, Usability and Open Source Development
This journal was initially powered by the excellent Movable Type. I had the ability to write entries via a neat interface, and it allowed people to comment on each entry. It came with a nice default template, but as a designer I modified this template to my own design.
But Movable Type is a commercial product, and eventually I saw more benefits in the rapid development of the open source Wordpress, so I migrated.
As it would turn out, open source is not always great…
The priority recipe for any most commercial pieces of software is the following:
- Build the best product ever
- Profit!
In comparison, the recipe for most open source projects only include the first of these priorities—the product. Contrary to what one might think, this is commonly bad for usability. Having to design a product for profit means the designer has to pay very close attention to usability, because if the new user doesn’t understand a product, that user won’t purchase the product. Open source, not having this goal, often treads lightly on the area of usability. Particularly because usability is really just good design, and when it comes to design—everybody has an opinion.
Recently a friend of mine, Michael, decided to improve on the default Wordpress template. The result (dubbed Kubrick) swayed some of the core Wordpress developers, resulting in the possible adoption of this template as the new default template. Not soon after the announcement, the Wordpress forums were boiling.
This is just an example, and in fact applies to most open source development communities. The same goes for Firefox, where any sudden visual change creates a spur of discussion. For instance, with the recent change of visual theme, I even partook in the critique myself. But knowing what I know today, I probably would’ve trusted that the core developers knew what they were doing (which in this case, they were).
The Problem
As I said on Michaels site,
War is too important to leave to the generals… wait, I meant to say the design is too important to leave to the coders. Let me elaborate.
Essentially, the default Wordpress theme has two purposes.
First and foremost, it is to gather a huge user base for Wordpress. Secondly, it should be so user friendly, and so simple that the layman user that would otherwise have used Blogger, will actually consider Wordpress instead.
In this case, Wordpress suffers from too many features, all enabled by default, all fighting for attention.
The focus on profit is clearly non-existent, and the focus on attracting new users is all but ignored. If we take an objective view of the baby-boom in the blogosphere, new bloggers seek to Wordpress and Movable Type mainly for their great comments and archiving features. Both applications sport many more features, but that’s really just icing on the cake.
The problem is, if these basic commenting and archiving features are not so user friendly that anyone can easily and quickly identify, decode and use them out-of-the-box, then these up-and-coming bloggers will choose the CMS that “does it better”.
When asked to rate the usability in open source software vs. proprietary software, Jakob Nielsen (internet usability guru) replied:
Poorly, I’m sorry to say. I think the reason is that it’s biased highly for one specialized area which is the very technical such as IT systems administrators. But Linux for the average user or other open source solutions for someone who is not a geek rates particularly low.
The reason is, the motivation for open source is not because the person gets paid but the person gets prestige. The developers are designing for each other and they are so feature rich—geeks love features—and you get more prestige by adding features. For the average person fewer features is better and easier to understand.
The Solution?
“Firefox is the exception”, says Michelle Levesque:
I have five major complaints about Open Source software development, but in advance I would like to clarify two things. First of all, there will always be exceptions to every rule. For example, I believe that relatively few complaints listed here apply to the Open Source browser Firefox which continues to surpass my expectations.
(Source)
Currently, Wordpress is a great free open source project that enjoys wide community support and shows lots of promise. As opposed to Firefox, however, it has not yet had it’s real breakthrough. Using and loving Wordpress, it would be so sad not to see it reach it’s full potential.
As I see it, there is only one way to go forward, and that is to copy the Firefox recipe. In order for Wordpress to achieve a true breakthrough, focus needs to be on the following things:
- Wordpress developers and designers must pretend that profit is a concern, and always focus on the new user—not the power user
- Wordpress should have a tight closed developer circle that has absolute power (to my knowledge, that is the case currently). As Firefox developer Asa recently experienced, this means having to make difficult decisions.
- Appreciate and listen to constructive criticism from the community, and blatantly ignore the rest
- Disable all but the necessary features, but document and comment inside the code, so the users that want particular disabled features can easily access them
- Features that are nice but not crucial should be visually tucked away, so their use will benefit only those who actually would use the features in question
In the end it all comes down to the end user. Starting out simple is always easiest, and let’s face it—power users will change the default template anyway.
More Reading
- Hiding CSS From Browsers
- About Wordpress, Usability and Open Source Development
- Two Pictures from Spirit and Opportunity
- Matrix Box-Set Due December 7th
Let me ask a more concrete question (in the context of this thread, not the WP support forums):
When the next version of WordPress comes out, how do we retain the work we’ve done on both our index and css files? Or, let me try again with a different take: If a version of Kubrick is the default template system and I don’t want it, how will sorting things out work so I can retain the work I’ve got and get the benefit of the new code that is deeper than my work?
If, in fact, Kubrick is an easily separable layer, or, another way, the WordPress upgrade is easily installed without tampering with certain existing files, then I’m not sure what the issue is about Kubrick or any other set of templates for existing users.
If, however, it’s all mixed up and hard to sort out the old from the new, then the bundling of a more complex default set of templates might cause support and other issues.
All of what I just said is said from the point of view of a novice at all this stuff although since I last posted/replied here I’ve learned just a tad bit more and even though I think Kubrick is fantastic and undoubtedly cleaner code than what I’ve slapped together I’m rather enjoying flailing around with this stuff and would not want to lose the learning and work I’ve done by replacing it with something else.
Richard: It is my distinct impression, that Matt is using ideas, rather than actual code. Which essentially means, that whichever of those ideas that are put into the new template, their semblance to what Kubrick is now, is negligible.
In other words: Nobody is interested in overly complicating things for new or old WordPress users. I haven’t looked long and hard at what’s currently in the CVS (that is, under development). But knowing how things work, I am pretty sure that nothing that doesn’t need changing, will be changed. But as the project is evolving, there will always be changes.
Which is a great strategy for developing software IMO. Because while it can be easier in the short-term to hang onto what we have, simply because it’s what we know. In the long-term, it’s sure to come back and bite us in the ass, so to speak ;)
If changes are made to core functions, then it’ll most certainly be for a reason. And if that means that old templates won’t work, then it won’t be the first time, and it certainly won’t be the end of the world as we know it either.
Okay, I get it. Wow, learning is possible.
I get how some folks (Root maybe) might be defensive (I just felt that myself) and I get how it’s important to move forward and possibly gut some of the older stuff for newer, better ideas.
And hey, upgrades will always be optional: it doesn’t “fork” WordPress development for me to stick with an older set of templates just like it has not stopped MT from moving on even though most MT users have not gone beyond 2.6 (or whatever the last version was before their new license came out).
Joen you are wrong about this and you are helping to perpetuate a very harmful myth,which sprang from the thread from hell. Gemini and my other interface designs, are simply tools. And very simple tools at that. All they do is to take the default index and CSS files and alter the CSS positioning no more and no less. Critically – they are purpose built to fit the default install. They therefore leave the end user in exactly the same position he was when he got started – the ability to design his own front page using web standards, semantic and valid mark up and fully separated CSS. The big difference is that because the CSS layout changes have already been made to the index, and indeed set out separately in the CSS; a whole level of difficulty is removed.
It is a completely erroneous and fallacious starting point to compare them either to the WP default or to Kubrick. Kubrick is a completely different beast, it springs from a different well, it represents a different vision and presumably it seeks to fill what the designer perceives as a different need. Comparisons between them are pointless.
Likewise, any statements about their alleged aesthetic qualities, or the underlying template need to be taken in context. The Gemini, Trident and Vesuvius templates make no changes to the underlying WP php functionality at all. Nor do they have any styling details. They are simply boilerplates for the end user to design as he sees fit. A range of Gemini compliant style sheets are also available for free download.
When I say well documented you may misunderstand me. I just say there is a track record. I am not referring to documentation. This is open source- we can all adapt. But as commentators here have observed the upgrade path for owners of hacked index files is of very great concern to them. I am not sure there is anything I need to understand thankyou.
Finally this thread started out on useability. To suggest that early versions of Kubrick were more useable than anything is simply farcical. Hence it has already been substantially reengineered. It adds a whole layer of complexity to the install to the CSS styling by the end user and a whole rats nest of technical problems.
Returning to WP and the 1.3 interface. It should be noted that although the app contains an index php file of course, that the divs required for CSS positioning are not to be found in it. At least not exclusively. I hope people understand the useability implications of that. The early signs are that they do not. I have my own solution which will be announced shortly.
Root,
I am very aware that the “Gemini template” merely stylizes the index.php, and as such has nothing to do with the core functionality. With this said, the very positioning of elements with CSS is vital to website usability.
Kubrick, as you are well aware, re-does the index.php, and the wp-comments, as well as the stylesheet. True, this differentiates it from Gemini and other templates. However, the usability improvements that are necessary does require a rewrite of all these files, and it would require a much updated Gemini stylesheet to accompany this. That would also have been an option.
While I wholly agree that every website should be standards compliant and semantic, most bloggers don’t care. They just want to disable the calendar, disable the login, remove the “valid xhtml” link in the bottom, and put in a huge photo of their cat, next to their latest article on Joe Millionaire. Whether it validates or is semantic in it’s markup, why should they care? All they care about is that it looks good, and Kubrick does that.
As for suggesting early versions of Kubrick were less usable, you are forgetting several things, twisting others, and ignoring the fact that there are two facets to usability. First of all, early versions of Kubrick were never intended for WP 1.3. Secondly, once a version of Kubrick hits WP 1.3, “it’ll already be there” in a clean Wordpress install, effectively removing the installation procedure. Finally, even though early Kubricks probably weren’t usable in terms of installation, editing and setup, they were always usable on the front-end, to visitors of the website.
This discussion is repeating itself, and no longer serving to help Wordpress. For that reason, I am closing it.
Don’t worry, you’ll all get plenty of chance to discuss further, as I have another article on Wordpress usability in queue.