Website maker Wix embarks on weird WordPress-trashing campaign, sends 'influencer' users headphones from 'WP'

Hosting company Wix is apparently running a bizarre campaign in an attempt to win over WordPress customers, causing WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg to accuse Wix of "dirty tricks." WordPress is the content management system giant, with a 64.7 per cent market share and used in some measure by 40.9 per cent of active websites, …

[EmilPer.]

wix commercials

Relentless Wix commercials on Youtube made me get a premium account. Also extremely creepy.

[Lon24]

Re: wix commercials

Maybe they get a kickback from Youtube for 'persuading' people to pay for a bit of peace?

But then you are missing enjoying Mr Farage's exhortations to his base to share a little of their savings with him ... poor man!

[Claverhouse]

Re: wix commercials

To be fair, Brexit has been such a raging success all of those who have benefited could afford to send him and Boris 10% of all the savings they achieved.

.

Freedom !!!

[DJV]

Re: made me get a premium account

It made me get an ad-blocker instead!

[Alumoi]

Re: wix commercials

Next time use uBlock, I don't see ads on YouTube.

[RM Myers]

Re: wix commercials

Yes and no for me. I don't see the standalone ads, but any ads buried in the video still show up. Generally, these have not been intrusive, at least in the channels I watch. Actually, if they were intrusive, I probably wouldn't watch that channel.

[cosymart]

Exit Strategy

I toyed with using Wix for the sites I look after but didn't like the 100% tie in that they operate with no export option :-(

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Exit Strategy

Ditto but in my case it was looking at what the pages are like with NoScript in operation: a big list of links.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: NoScript...

Whenever NoScript throws a hissy fit it is usually a Wix site.

(I tend to go along with NoScript's recommendations).

[Pascal Monett]

So, Wix are just a bunch of assholes

A company that is far behind the competition, closed source in an environment that is apparently mostly open-source and competing fairly, and the cherry on top is that they send "promotional" material looking to be from their major competitor.

That combination speaks of a despicable mindset, and I don't even take into account the impossibility of exporting data.

Keep it up, Wix, and you'll stay at the bottom of the market barrel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor future historians

What will they make of this

"Jamstack approach taken by Netlify is superior technology to traditional PHP-based frameworks like Wordpress,"

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Poor future historians

They'll describe it as a specific case of the general rule "almost anything else is superior technology to traditional PHP-based anything"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Doesn't at all make me want to use them"

But did he send them back?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Doesn't at all make me want to use them"

Why should he ?

You are allowed to keep unsolicited items.

Besides they are quite nice, if overpriced, but as they were free.

And they also appear to have been sent by his own company, so where would you send them back ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Doesn't at all make me want to use them"

I understand the term "ethics" is unknown to "influencers".... it's all about what you can gain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Doesn't at all make me want to use them"

@LDS

I wish I could upvote you more than once.

Also, why are they called "influencers"? Bought and paid for shills seems to be more accurate

[Roger Greenwood]

Re: "Doesn't at all make me want to use them"

They are called influencers because they have a measurable effect on many of below average intelligence or those with "low frequency thinking".

By definition that is half any population....

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: "Doesn't at all make me want to use them"

By definition that is half

Sigh. Only if your definition of "average" is "median". People really need to give up this incorrect sophomorism.

Of course, there's no good measure, quantitative or otherwise, for "intelligence", or even a good definition of "intelligence" in the first place; so the original statement is largely meaningless.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: "Doesn't at all make me want to use them"

I'd donate them to a charity shop myself. Don't see any reason to send them back to the original offender.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh...

I'd always found wix hosted websites annoying and only ever enabled their acres of Javascript if the site was selling something I wanted.

This spiteful and childish behaviour has now promoted all wix-hosted websites to my boycott list.

[Gaius]

Re: Sigh...

During the pandemic one of the local businesses that we support has gone online and unfortunately chosen Wix, the amount of user-hostile JS they cram into their site is incredible. And they have written it in such a way that blocking tracking renders the site non-functional. In other words they know perfectly well that what they are doing is wrong.

I'm not going to boycott a small business over making a bad technical choice, but I do only access their site in a separate browser process!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sigh...

Unless your small business is selling things to geeks, the chances of his page views going down by any significant amount are very small.

If he is selling to geeks, he should probably know better, and if he doesn't, I'm sure his customers would be happy to let him know and suggest alternatives!.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unstable

> another video in the Wix campaign, in which the same actor represents WordPress as an absent father who is unstable "sometimes when I press the update button."

Well they're not wrong.

[AMBxx]

Re: Unstable

Only update problems I've encountered have been due to Jetpack. Now I've found alternatives, it's been flawless.

My major complaint with Wordpress is the very open way that plugins integrate - directly reading and writing the database?!?!

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Unstable

My major complaint with Wordpress is the plugin "ecosystem" in general, as it's historically been a dreadful swamp of gaping security holes. The popularity of Wordpress and its plugins has done a great deal to help web vulnerabilities proliferate.

[ThePalsyP]

WordStress

But does Wix sites have a gazillion EOL plugins that bog down and terrorise a site, and even a server?

[Anonymous Coward]

export from Wix

I had an approach from a former client who had decided she could do a better job than me. She spent many hours constructing her Wix website and it looked OK but she didn't like the costs and had hit some of the constraints so got in touch to ask If I could host it. The answer was not what she wanted to hear, as has been stated above there's no export capability and the more usual alternative means of copying content don't work. Conversion is possible but with a lot of manual effort, essentially rebuild a copy perhaps salvaging some elements of content, not much saving over starting from scratch.

Yes Wordpress is not without its problems but when you encounter one it's usually fairly easy to find a fix or perhaps switch to an alternative plugin. Plugins are one of the problem areas, it is surprising that many/most use the wp database and when uninstalled seem not to fully clean-up after themselves.

[Tim Chuma]

WordPress can trash its own reputation thank you very much

It is 100% possible to be totally up to date with Wordpress and still get your site hacked. I did not believe my site was redirecting until I saw Google logs saying it was bringing up posts for "gay amputee porn" I didn't remember writing those articles. Had to install Wordfence.

[Ian 55]

Re: WordPress can trash its own reputation thank you very much

Of course it is: not only does WordPress STILL not do anything to prevent or even slow bruteforce attacks because "people don't want to be locked out of their own site", they also provide a way to try hundreds of username/password combinations at once.

They also default to allowing comments on posts without enforcing the use of an anti-spam service because "people like comments".

[anthonyhegedus]

I used wix for a while and was not impressed by the speed. The main website page, not particularly large, took several seconds to even begin to load. We eventually went for a Wordpress site, and paid a designer to design one that didn't look like an amateur had been let loose on some templates.

In fact, most of our customers who went for Wix, eventually realised it wasn't worth the money and trouble, and got a proper web designer to design a proper website (usually in Wordpress) for them.

To me, Wix is nothing but a stepping stone. Nothing you do in Wix will ever look as good as if a pro designed it, and any pro out there worth their salt wouldn't use Wix to do a customer's website.