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A cautionary tale for the Drupal community

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Kevinjohn Gallagher recently wrote “WordPress has left the building”, expressing his colleagues’ and clients’ frustration at trying to use WordPress when CMS capabilities are required. His 15 points of pain for developing usable sites with WordPress are an interesting list for Drupal developers as well. We have good solutions (that are still improving!) for many of the items on that list. Yet, we still share a few of those pain points with WordPress.

Unfortunately, Kevinjohn has been getting attacked by many of the WordPress community. While many WP fans have been writing “How WordPress took the CMS crown, his piece about his agency dropping WordPress as its go-to website solution as provoked vitriol. Over at the WP Tavern, he writes:

[…] there are more posts on WordPress community sites discussing my CV and dyslexia than the actual content of my post.
Sadly in the last 7 days I’ve had 3 ddos attacks, 14 threats (4 “credible”) against myself or my family, multiple requests to have me removed from speaking at WordPress events

I know that many online discussions quickly devolve into ad hominem attacks rather than proper discussions of the issues. But there’s something slightly different going on with the WordPress community. Kevinjohn continues:

Worse of all though, is that the rhetoric of “there’s a plugin for that” is now so deeply imbedded in the WP community psyche that they constantly spout it without actually knowing if its true or not.

That one hit a bit close to home as my book, Drupal 7 Module Development, actually includes a similar quote:

There’s a hook for that.™

It seems that many in the WordPress community take its “superiority” for granted and see honest criticism as an attack against WordPress. Fanboyism has overtaken listening to the users.

Drupal has had its share of well-known community members switching away from Drupal. Development Seed, James Walker’s walkah.net and Steven Wittens’ acko.net are now all built with Jekyll.

There’s a lesson for the Drupal community there. Don’t be complacent. Don’t be tone deaf. Don’t get cocky.

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