Wordpress for Elixir Project

I always wondered if JS based plugins plus an API would be enough. As installable plugins that is. You won’t reach Wordpress level plugins where that can create whole tables and such but is that even necessary? Or perhaps the API can allow that?

This comes up every now and then.

Read some comments here: Use Elixir to create the next Wordpress?

I think it’s doable but not easy. By far what gives Wordpress such an advantage is the plugin ecosystem.

I think @hlx is spot on where plugins are probably best done in JS (typescript/react?) to tap into a larger community and reduce the learning curve for implementing something.

One should also not try to compete DIRECTLY with Wordpress. Better off having a smaller ecosystem of higher quality plugins and a smaller more focused product.

Think about Figma vs. Photoshop. Photoshop had a lot more features but Figma focused on doing a subset better – and just for web/app design.

How would I implement the plugin system in JS? I am halfway done with the course, and most of the remaining lessons deal with non-language stuff. So I would like to start practicing what I learned by doing small mini-projects to reinforce my learning. Here are exercises for Rust and here is Python’s version of that. I believe I saw others, but I can’t find them at the moment. Can anyone recommend some for Elixir?

There is GitHub - bragful/ephp: Bragful core: PHP Interpreter in pure Erlang · GitHub

I don’t see why Plugins would be an issue. BEAM got Hot Reloading and we can create new modules etc. So I don’t see why it would be hard to have plugins that are read in as new modules. The way plugins work and are designed would probably be a bit different since Elixir is a functional language etc.

I think the issue isn’t technical but rather that it would be almost impossible to compete with WP with thousands of plugins and themes since an elixir version would have a lot less. And most users won’t care about whether it is Elixir or PHP.

Security really. WordPress was and likely still is one of the most attacked software on the planet. It takes just one malicious addon and your instance is toast, because the BEAM VM runtime is quite trusting. Zero sandboxing or any other security inside the node itself.

Yep. That. Agreed.

That applies to everything that as MineCraft was even susceptible to malware in the png used for setting players skin. Also many WP themes that encrypt their source code have been found to have malicious JavaScript code.

The fact that most programmers are clueless as puppies when it comes to security does not mean that the rest of us must collectively give up. “It’s all frakked up anyway” is not a philosophy I subscribe under.

Security really. WordPress was and likely still is one of the most attacked software on the planet. It takes just one malicious addon and your instance is toast, because the BEAM VM runtime is quite trusting. Zero sandboxing or any other security inside the node itself.

Yes, but that risk you also got every time you install a library too. Part of reason WP is so targeted is because it is so widely used.

(For the record, I’m not a fan of WP)