Comments on: Lightweight vs Heavyweight

By: Why aren’t you using open source? « I’m Simon Dickson.

Why aren’t you using open source? « I’m Simon Dickson. — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:41:29 +0000

[...] has some interesting thoughts on WordPress itself, incidentally. My own feeling (which won’t come as any surprise) is that I’ve been able [...]

By: higgis

higgis — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:37:19 +0000

I’m going to have to continue to disagree. The scenarios you’ve highlighted are ones where (a) there is a bespoke ‘heavyweight’ system that is fit for purpose and (b) there is a ‘lightweight’ system that is not fit for purpose. These two facts do not inform a discussion about whether lightweight systems are *inherently* worse in some situations that heavyweight ones. I’ll bet there are lightweight CMS systems that could do a good job on the Guardian website. (Incidentally, I wonder how you’re getting on with Movable Type on Comment is Free.)

I expanded the discussion to include heavyweight vs lightweight languages because I didn’t think you were comparing apples to apples – languages are clearly trying to solve exactly the same problem but do so in different ways. WordPress is, despite its claims to be a CMS, a blogging platform and not much more. It’s very good at being a blogging platform.

I spent 5 years writing and maintaining a CMS/Community Platform – on which we built quite a number of blogs. But if *all* you are doing is a blog, I’d still recommend using WordPress (as I do myself). The comparison you should be doing is between a full-featured but lightweight CMS and your bespoke one. That might be instructive.

By: Nik Silver

Nik Silver — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:01:28 +0000

If my article came across as saying heavyweight is better than lightweight, then I failed to communicate what I wanted. I had hoped that at no point I said anything as crude as “A is better than B”, for life isn’t as simple as that. Instead, the article was an attempt to clarify “what lightweight really means, both in terms of benefits and drawbacks”.

The scenarios I walked through should have helped show situations where lightweight systems were not appropriate, not that they never are appropriate. For example, I agree with you that getting ads into a WordPress is perfectly reasonable; indeed I said this: “a lightweight CMS such as WordPress could probably do any one of these things [such as contextual ad inclusion]“. My point there was that anyone would be mistaken if they thought WordPress could be evolved to become the CMS that Guardian Unlimited required, with all the features I listed (and many more I didn’t).

The message of the piece should have been “it’s horses for courses” (not very earth-shattering), and to give a guide as to which courses might be appropriate for the various horses.

By the way, I thought you were very thought-provoking when you contrasted lightweight systems with “enterprise” software. I didn’t use the word “enterprise”, and it made me ask myself the question: What does it mean to be an enterprise system? Does it mean the opposite of lightweight? I’m not sure it does. It’s perfectly possible for a lightweight system to be fit for the enterprise, and I know a number of companies, including my own, which run them and for which they are just the right thing doing just the right job.