The Best Thing a Frontend Developer Can Think of

Yesterday I stumbled across this post by Joakim. Yea, I know it’s in swedish. It talks about the bank Resurs Bank who are in the process of building a new site. They are going responsive and they are building it on WordPress. They are not the first bank to use WordPress (Handelsbanken is also doing it) but I believe that in Sweden they are pretty unique for using it for their main site. I’ve been looking through some swedish bank sites lately and it’s not pretty. (SEB frames, seriously? It’s 2012. Did you know?) So to this project as a whole I’d say: way to go and bravo!

But Joakim also wrote another thing: “Sure you don’t build backend in WordPress but as a frontend developer it’s hard to think of anything better”. Ok, now, here I do disagree. I don’t think WordPress is the best thing I can imagine. Sure I would pick it a thousand times over Sharepoint but there are problems. One of them is quite clearly visible in the beta of Resurs Bank:

<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/twentyfour-chat/js/widget.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/themes/resurs/js/lib/jquery.center.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/acf-spot/spot.js?ver=1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/knowledge-bank/js/knowledge-bank.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
/* <![CDATA[ */
var knowledgebankAjax = {"ajaxurl":"http:\/\/new.resursbank.se\/wp-admin\/admin-ajax.php","knowledgebankNonce":"429ccf278e"};
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/knowledge-bank/js/knowledge-bank-ajax.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/knowledge-bank/js/feedback.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
/* <![CDATA[ */
var feedbackAjax = {"ajaxurl":"http:\/\/new.resursbank.se\/wp-admin\/admin-ajax.php","feedbackNonce":"af70f522c1"};
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/knowledge-bank/js/ajax.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
/* <![CDATA[ */
var __pluginAjaxRoot = {"url":"http:\/\/new.resursbank.se\/wp-content\/plugins\/rb.bank.connector\/ajax\/"};
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/rb.bank.connector/ajax/js/rb.bank.connector.ajax.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/rb.bank.connector/ajax/js/rb.shop.connector.ajax.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/twentyfour-chat/js/lib/jquery.outerhtml.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/twentyfour-chat/js/lib/jquery.scrollTo-1.4.2-min.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/twentyfour-chat/js/lib/nunt.js?ver=3.3.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://new.resursbank.se/wp-content/plugins/resurs-panels/js/scripts.js?ver=1'></script>

This is not all the js. But still. Pretty hefty. WordPress often rely on plugins and a lot of them add js or links to js in the header or (if a bit better configured) in the footer. Yea, sure there are ways around it like WP Minify But uhm, it’s still not the best thing I can think of. I rather have a good concatination/minification process setup that caches my resources and are NOT run on page load.

Ok, so I could go on and point out more problems like having to try to figure out how to override the default-classes set by WordPress and so on. But well, I won’t do that. After all this blog is live because of WordPress.

Now I know you’d want me to point out my own favorite among technologies for building a web site. And as a frontend dev I say static files with some good build-scripts and server-side configuration. Yes, I’m serious. But I also know it’s an impossible setup for any site that needs server-side integration or some kind of CMS. So what then? As for me I’d say any framework that is clean. That doesn’t include random js on demand or add classes, extra markup or CSS. Right now I’m hoping for Django. The future will tell if that’s the best thing I as a frontend developer can think of.