Habari
20th of January, 2007
Unbelievably, I will be the first Wordpress blogger not blindly jumping on the all-star Habari bandwagon.
I feel bad writing about Habari when every second post everywhere else is also about Habari. But it’s the ridiculous amount of posts about it that makes me want to write about it… Which makes me a hypocrite. Oh well.
An extremely quick sum up: Matt is an evil dictator that runs a company full of his equally evil minions that together work on a horrible monstrosity called Wordpress. Crippled by Matt’s oppression on them all, nearly every big name Wordpress user and developer moves to Habari, a new, supremely wonderful, blogging platform with a philosophy of goodness so heavenly it’d make Jesus jealous. Now everyone is free, at last, to blog without the torture Wordpress lashed upon them.
What bothers me most is fanboys (and girls) who are blindly dousing their Wordpress installations in kerosene before racing to kiss the feet of the mighty Habari. Ignoring the years of development and huge community around Wordpress for something that doesn’t have a graphical installer, any plugins, any themes or even it’s own website yet.
The Habari Wank blog is great at calling out some stupid things they’ve done. To be fair I’ll mention the Wordpress Wank blog too. Both of them are great reads. I love Habari Wank’s tag line:
“More developers than users.”
I’ve heard many people talking about Wordpress being bloated in reference to Habari. This is something I completely disagree with. Wordpress does have a lot of features but they’re real useful features. I’m the type of person that usually doesn’t use software to it’s full potential but looking around at the moment, I’ve used nearly every feature in Wordpress at least once but most more often.
Something else there’s been a lot of is Matt bashing. “He won’t commit any of our patches or use any of our ideas” they wail. If it’s good code and they’re good ideas, Matt will use them, it’s in his best interest to use them. If someone came up to you and said “Here’s a great free upgrade to the product you’re using” and you agree, you don’t turn it down. I like Matt and I think he’s done very well to handle a project that’s exploded to massive proportions.
While Habari might turn out to be very good, I’m not going to declare my allegiance to it before it’s even made a developer release just because it has big names attached to it.
Funnily enough, all those names attached to Habari are very similar to all those names attached to a certain project that’s been coming soon for a very long time now. Who remembers the hype around that before it became vaporware?
And here I thought (when I first saw your URI) that you were switching to Habari too!
Made by Computer Guru who has a website — http://neosmart.net/blog/
That’s the same dread I have whenever I see the word Habari in my feed reader or in IRC or anywhere really.
Made by Jim who has a website — http://jimwhimpey.com
Lets all jump on untested unproven software before its even out of the gate, sounds like the blogosphere to me!
I think I will stick with my Wordpress installation thank you very much.
Made by Lawsy who has a website — http://www.lawsy.net
Jim, I guess your blog doesn’t accept pingbacks, so here’s a manual entry:
Why I joined Habari, and What It’s all About.
Made by Computer Guru who has a website — http://neosmart.net/blog/
Poor Habari (and developers), it’s already doomed and was as soon as it was announced…
Made by Thought Hacker who has a website — http://thoughthacker.com
I do feel partially responsible for contributing to the premature hype surrounding Habari, which I don’t think is as much the fault of the development team as it is of overenthusiastic bloggers jumping on the bandwagon. Yes, I’ve downloaded Habari and attempted to install it, but it’ll need to be fairly spectacular to persuade me to switch. I’ve been with WP since 0.72 days, and only switched to them because b2 support was withering on the vine. For all its flaws, it’s what I know. I like playing with new stuff, but it’s far too early to even start thinking about migrating all my sites :)
Made by that girl again who has a website — http://wank.wordpress.com/
I’m a bit surprised by all the emotion being attributed to some PHP scripts for putting content on web pages.
Folks should use what they want to use. I’m still using WordPress on my site until Habari settles down enough to use. I’ll continue to advocate WordPress to people who might benefit from it; in the same way that I use and advocate Drupal.
There’s certainly a great deal of “Oooh! Shiny!” going on, as people get excited about the opportunity to get involved in something new. Whether their enthusiasm or our motivation will be sufficient to produce something useful remains to be seen.
Made by skippy who has a website — http://www.skippy.net/
I don’t blame the developers for the hype. They want to blog about what they’re working on, they have a lot of readers, it’s bound to create hype. It’s the fanboys that bother me more, them and Wordpress Wank =).
Advocating Drupal when you’re a Wordpress dev isn’t really the same as advocating Habari when you’re a Wordpress dev. Drupal is fairly different to WP and people see it that way. People see Habari as a full frontal attack on Wordpress. But again, I really don’t have a problem with that. People have explained how bad the code is, I never go near it, so it doesn’t bother me. I write themes and that’s a joy to do with Wordpress. I understand the urge to start all over again and “do things right” this time. Just the blind devotion before it’s close to anything annoys me.
Made by Jim who has a website — http://jimwhimpey.com
You have an interesting point, Jim. A lot of people are jumping a bit prematurely.
In response to a few things you wrote in your post:
1) Most of the devs are not flaming down Matt and his crew, however I am not in touch with their inner-feelings. I find a lot of people are assuming that this is the reason, even though some of the devs have said flat out this isn’t very well the reason.
2) In regards to the Habari Wank slogan– that’s just silly. As you also mentioned in your post, there’s not even a developer’s preview out yet, of course there are going to be more developers.
3) As far as bloat goes, this roots back to the bad coding and blahdeblahblah, stuff I’m sure you’ve heard thousands of times.
4) “If it’s good code and they’re good ideas, Matt will use them, it’s in his best interest to use them” — That’s not always true with WordPress. I won’t get into that because I fear I may already be sounding like a troll, I don’t want to feed that rationale.
All of this is not to say I support Habari, or its developers. I’m in support of some kind of change either in WordPress to bring about a better product, or for something fresh, because a lot of things have gone a different route than I would’ve assumed they would have when I first joined the community. I’m still with WordPress, I still hang around #wordpress (though, to be fair, I’m also found in #habari), I still make money developing with WordPress, and I still advocate WordPress (I wore my WordPress shirt today :P ). Habari is very promising and has great people behind it. If it pulls through, I think it could be something good. If not, then… not. We’ll all have to wait and see.
Made by Joey Brooks who has a website — http://milkcartondesigns.com
Oh, and I forgot to address something else.
“I’m a bit surprised by all the emotion being attributed to some PHP scripts for putting content on web pages.”
Skippy: You shouldn’t be. These are tools some people live off, and tools some people vent with to stay sane. To some, a blog is part of everyday life, so those few PHP scripts that go behind it are important. :)
Made by Joey Brooks who has a website — http://milkcartondesigns.com
I haven’t seen many Wordpress users Jump ship. Habari is just too new and raw also the requirements are rather Cutting edge php5 for most users to use. Also remember that some of the key Wordpress developers are involved in Habari and they have made it clear that they are just looking to make something new since Wordpress doesn’t seem up to the mark and with very good reasons.
Since the launch of Wordpress.com nothing much has been done to feature wise. Also you talk as if Matt is the only one in charge of the wordpress development and is the only one making decisions which seems to be a very bad model for a open source project.
Made by bluesaze who has a website — http://bluesaze.com
“Since the launch of Wordpress.com nothing much has been done to feature wise.”
This just isn’t true. There’s been heaps of feature upgrades. A nicer login screen, dragable admin widgets, a upgrade to inline uploading, a tab for switching between WYSIWYG and code views. These are huge features. I don’t know where you got “nothing much has been done” from.
Made by Jim who has a website — http://jimwhimpey.com
[...] Habari Habari Habari Habari. [...]
Made by Habari | Cornell Finch who has a website — http://www.cornellfinch.com/2007/01/21/habari/
“A nicer login screen, dragable admin widgets, a upgrade to inline uploading, a tab for switching between WYSIWYG and code views. These are huge features”
Features ?? They are more like Cosmetic changes and it took more than a year implement that ???
Though 2.1 has made some changes to the DB to make it faster which I would consider a feature.
Made by bluesaze who has a website — http://bluesaze.com
Bluesaze, so if a car upgraded to more comfortable leather seats you wouldn’t call it a feature but if they made the engine go faster, you would?
Things like the tabbed editor make using Wordpress easier and more enjoyable. How long they took to develop has nothing to do with whether they are features or not.
Made by Jim who has a website — http://jimwhimpey.com
There are several under-the-hood changes (including the optimized queries bluesaze mentioned), styling changes, auto save, everything Jim mentioned, and more. The fact that they took a long time shows some maturity, in the product and in wanting it to be stable. Wordpress is a big product, with that comes a lot of code to sort through, which takes time, especially to optimize all those queries and make those database changes. Stability is important. Releasing a buggy product is not fun for the consumers who use it. It takes time to make sure everything stays stable. So, yes, a year was taken. It probably could’ve gone sooner, but maybe not. They do, however, have a plan in place to get a new release out sooner.
However, if you don’t like it so much, don’t use it.
“Also you talk as if Matt is the only one in charge of the wordpress development and is the only one making decisions which seems to be a very bad model for a open source project.”
That’s because that is summarily true. That is why a lot of people are jumping to Habari. Not for a personal distaste of the man himself, but because he is the end-all-be-all when it comes to WordPress and its inherit decisions, and the possible influence of Automattic thereof. He claims meritocracy and that the influence of the community makes the decisions, but that’s not very true (Rich Bowen, a Habari founding developer, talks about this). So, yes, it’s fair to talk like that.
Made by Joey Brooks who has a website — http://milkcartondesigns.com
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Made by WordPress y Habari — yukei.net who has a website — http://www.yukei.net/2007/01/wordpress-y-habari/
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Made by Habari China | ä¸æ–‡Habri · è€æ–‡ï¼šå…³æ³¨Habari who has a website — http://www.habari.cn/habari-buzz-4.html
[...] Jim Whimpey » Habari Pingback on Jan. 20th, 2007 at 11:19 [...]
Made by Why I Joined Habari, and What It’s All About — The NeoSmart Files who has a website — http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/why-habari/