[FRIAM] Google Bard

Sun May 21 13:01:25 EDT 2023

I haven't signed up for ChatGPT or similar, so I tried Google Bard to
get an answer to a practical question to do with WordPress
development. I knew that the answer that it gave me was incorrect, and
said so. Here is an abridged version of the second conversation:

Gary: I asked Google Bard the following question: "If I have a
wordpress site with no pages or posts, what gets displayed when I go
to the site?" and it basically told me that it won't display anything,
and told me how to add pages or posts. That answer was just plain
wrong. The theme somehow displays something by default, and I'd like
to know what mechanism it uses to show this default content.

Bard admitted it was wrong and pointed to what I presume is correct (I
haven't looked into it to verify).

Bard: You are correct, Google Bard's answer was incorrect. When you
have a WordPress site with no pages or posts, the theme will display a
default content. This default content is usually a message that
encourages you to create your first page or post. The mechanism that
the theme uses to display this default content is called the template
hierarchy. The template hierarchy is a system that WordPress uses to
determine which template file to load for a particular page or post.
When you have no pages or posts, WordPress will load the index.php
template file. This file is responsible for displaying the default
content.

The following is an example of the default content that is displayed
by the index.php template file:

Code snippet

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to WordPress</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to WordPress</h1>
<p>This is your new WordPress site. To get started, please create your
first page or post.</p>
<p><a href="wp-admin/post-new.php">Create a new page</a></p>
<p><a href="wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=post">Create a new post</a></p>
</body>
</html>

You can customize the default content by editing the index.php
template file. You can find this file in your theme's directory.

I wonder how ChatGPT would fare? Anyone care to try since I haven't
signed up for it...