Cloudflare previews 'EmDash' – an AI-driven rebuild of WordPress in TypeScript

The world's most popular CMS has been remade with the help of AI. Cloudflare has released EmDash version 0.1, described as a rebuild of the WordPress CMS (content management system) but using TypeScript rather than PHP.  In contrast to the one week claimed for recreating Next.js using agentic AI, Cloudflare's product manager …

[Baird34]

Interesting

As a user of WordPress but a disliker of PHP this project looks very interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Interesting

You have your hate the wrong way around there bud. Lots of people hate PHP because of WordPress. Nobody hates WordPress because of PHP...there are way more reasons to hate WordPress than the language its built in.

There was a time when WordPress was actually pretty good, before the plugin sprawl got to it.

[ThePalsyP]

Re: Interesting

>> You have your hate the wrong way around there bud.

I concur...... I call it WordStress.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Interesting

Indeed. A lot of folks first foray into PHP is writing plugins, themes etc for Wordpress and it's a fucking mess.

If I meet someone that calls themselves a PHP dev and follow it up with "mostly Wordpress" I don't regard them as PHP devs.

It's the same with Joomla, Magento etc.

Further to this, 99% of the stress involved with Wordpress is the combination of your customer wanting something that seems simple to them but is weirdly quite hard to implement without spending tons of money on plugin licenses (How come you need $1000 for it? I know someone that got a firm in India to do it for $150!) and/or the site was inherited from some outsourced place that used almost entirely pirated themes and plugins and therefore the site hasn't been updated in 6+ years because it can't be updated without breaking due to the dodgy plugins / themes...the other 1% is that you know that eventually the site will be hacked because Wordpress is the most hacked platform there is...it is a prime example of "It's attacked all the time, therefore it must benefit from that by becoming more secure" being total bollocks.

[richardcox13]

Not really Wordpress

This is not really WordPress, anymore tha it is "any other CMS" b3cquse the plugins and themes are everything.

Throwing away your branding and functionality, other than making HTML available, doesn't seem a very helpful conversion.

A bit like saying we're switching from SAP to Oracle; someone is going to need a budget.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Not really Wordpress

I agree. Very few people or web sites use 100% stock Wordpress. If it doesn't have all the top plugins, it's a non-starter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not really Wordpress

Is there such a thing as "all the top plugins"...I've never come across two Wordpress sites that are quite the same...there's a couple of plugins I see a lot, like Yoast and ContactForm-7 (or whatever it's called) but outside of those, it varies quite a lot...probably depends on what pirated plugins are available for a given Wordpress version.

[david 12]

Re: Not really Wordpress

Throwing away your branding and functionality, other than making HTML available, doesn't seem a very helpful conversion.

Cloadflare has done a pretty good job with the introductory documentation: They've declared that the branding and functionality is the hard part of any conversion, and that if you have a stable Wordpress site there is no obvious reason for conversion. They are pitching if for consideration (it's only v 0.1) for sites using an unstable mix of plugins, that are worried they haven't really got a handle on their plugin security.

[Juha Meriluoto]

Anything driven by 'AI' IS a joke.

[cd]

Well, at least they're both named Matt.

[sarusa]

Hmmm, I'm torn

Normally I'd hate AI slop, but I'm not sure that hate is as intense as my hate for Mullenweg (I find it hilarious they're all named Matt here) and the sheer security disaster that is WordPress. Though I guess if this became popular enough then all the gaping security holes in this (there have to be, it's vibe coded) will be exploited.

202x, the Decade of Hate.

[Pete Sdev]

Re: Hmmm, I'm torn

In all fairness, the wordpress core isn't bad these days, and criticall, things do get patched.

It's 3rd party plugins that tend to the souce of security holes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmmm, I'm torn

I would tend to agree, but a piss poor Wordpress config can get your site plastered with shit and your comments queue full of spam within hours. The bots out there are actively looking for Wordpress sites 24/7 and it doesn't take long for one to show up.

Try it, create a subdomain on one of your existing domains, throw up a default Wordpress site somewhere using that subdomain, get rid of the default content and throw in some made up content of your own, watch your logs for 24 hours.

The first bot will turn up within 3 hours...your setup will be fully scanned within about 12 hours, and you'll start seeing other bots show up looking for phpmyadmin, cpanel and all sorts of other products. The same thing does not happen if Wordpress isn't detected on the first scan. After 24 hours, check your comments feed in the admin dash, you'll have spam up the wazoo.

Wordpress is the most actively exploited CMS on planet earth. From day 1, it'll be under attack.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmmm, I'm torn

WordPress isnt as much of a security disaster if you use it for what it was designed for...a blog or a landing page.

WordPress becomes shit when you start duct taping plugins into it and you try and turn it into an eCommerce platform or an LMS or some other whacky use case.

Even using it as a blog its not the best solution our there. I'm still massively confused over how WordPress became what it is today.

[Pete Sdev]

Re: Hmmm, I'm torn

I'd say because it's:

a) Free

b) Straightforward to install

c) Runs on a common, cheaply available, stack (PHP+MySQL)

d) large ecosystem of themes and plugins, which causes an avalanche effect

e) Usability - the backend is straightforward

I've experience of other CMSs which after a lengthy install (as opposed to WP's beginner friendly install-screens) you're presented with a white screen of death (WP works on a basic level out-of-the-box) without further work, and the backend requires 2 weeks of training for non-technical users.

I'm not saying it's good (it doesn't play well with composer for example), but it does get some things right.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Hmmm, I'm torn

I had never done any real Website work before I tackled Wordpress in 2010. I got a site up and running in a few hours and after a bit more tinkering, I settled on a theme that is still working today.

I have around 12 plugins active. Some are essential to keep the hackers and scrapers out. Others are nice to have and TBH, I could run the site without them.

I have looked at other CMS's including Drupal but most are overkill for what I want, no E-Commerce etc.

It works and with the scripts I have written in the years since 2010, I can move the site to a new server in minutes (most of which is moving the HTTPS cert).

I've never written any PHP for my site. Never had to.

[SuperGeek]

Re: Hmmm, I'm torn

A white screen of death usually means PHP error reporting on screen is turned off. Turn it on and it shows what's up :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmmm, I'm torn

Ok...

a) Agreed.

b) Not really. You still have to hire someone to deploy it usually. Gina on the front desk isn't deploying it.

c) True. But again, see b)...also, whilst it will run on a cheap PHP/MySQL host, it won't scale well on a cheap PHP/MySQL host...so once your agency has deployed the site and ridden off into the sunset, it's left to some other poor bastard to explain that the $5 Digital Ocean droplet it was installed on isn't enough to cope with the level of traffic the site needs to handle. Because of how inefficient Wordpress is, it can get very expensive very quickly...it's also absolute fucking AIDS when you try and use it through a CDN...always has been, still is to this day.

d) True.

e) Strong disagree. There is a firm belief amongst a lot of people that Wordpress is "just the easiest to manage" it really isn't, it never has been...especially when you have plugin sprawl. I'd say in it's default state it's easy and anyone can manage it...but once you start deploying plugins, the difficulty increases quite significantly.

I would say the stongest selling point for Wordpress is that it has always been known (at least assumed) that it is highly optimise for SEO (even though it isn't really, and has never been, it just had a built in service called "pingomatic" which was essentially a backlink spammer...it used to be relatively easy to push a Wordpress site to the front page of a Google search. That's not the case anymore, but for sure 10 years ago, getting a WP site ranked and at the top could be done in a few days.

[druck]

Secure, my arse

The rationale for EmDash, aside from being a marketing pitch for Workers, is that along with AI integration, it is more secure and more easily scaled than WordPress.

Wordpress might be a buggy pile of shite, but just wait until you see the speed and quantity of vulnerabilities that only AI can generate.

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of username and password to login is a massive design failure. Passkeys are garbage and magic links through email are a terrible hassle.

[Always Right Mostly]

As someone that proudly doesn’t use nor gives a damn what Wordpress has to offer besides making your site more vulnerable because big fat targets draw more attention, I find a lot to laugh at because “Now with AI” just got a good reception from the ordinarily sharper knives that comment here.

[ecofeco]

What fresh hell

...is this?

Dear god. No. Just no.

Wordpress is utter shit. So they made it worse? Brilliant! /s

[TeeCee]

Compatible with WordPress?

Really? Even down to all the vulns?

[wibbleme2]

As advice to the team I am not sure you can use WordPress because of CC. File names and readme sould be using WP or wp not Wordpress