Yet Again, My Annual Unsolicited Endorsement of WordPress
Posted on October 11, 2021 Posted by John Scalzi 13 Comments
In October of 2008, after years of dealing with site software that was less than stable and had difficulty handling the load of traffic, I switched Whatever over to WordPress, both as software and as hosting. Since that time, the site’s been down maaaaaaaybe three or four times, and never longer than a couple of hours. That’s the sort of constant uptime other social media dreams of, and which is really useful for me as a creator.
Indeed, the entire WordPress platform feels designed for me as an independent creator. Although my own needs for the site are relatively simple (Whatever has not substantially changed form in two decades), the fact is the current iteration of WordPress has a whole bunch of tools for creators to build sites that reflect their needs and wants, and to build an online presence (and business) that is their own. It’s never been more important to have one’s own site, and for me, WordPress has been the best way to do that.
Again, WordPress has not asked me to post this endorsement of the software and hosting service; I do it because I like both and I love that it just works for me, day after day, month after month, year after year. If you’re looking to create your own site (or move it to new software/hosting), check out the various WordPress plans and see which one works best for you.
— JS
John, after more than a decade of self-maintained WordPress site, I migrated it to a WordPress.com Business plan earlier this year and it is SO much better. Not only that, but the folks at WordPress made the migration so easy. I thought this would be a complicated multi-day process and it turned out to take about 2 hours. I’ve had no downtime and fantastic support ever since. So I completely agree that WordPress.com is outstanding, as are the people that work there and provide support.
I have been running a personal diary blog at WP for nearly 3 years, after considerable experience with Blogger for travel and other blogs. Stuff works pretty well, but the WYSIWYG editor is really not pleasant to use for any length beyond a couple of plain paragraphs.
It tries sooo hard to be helpful with its popup menu of symbols, which often pops up covering just what you want to edit. Its auto-formatting of lists and quotes never seems to do what I intend. There’s no way to drag over a sequence of paragraphs and change their type (i.e. make these into a quote or a list). And so on.
I don’t have a positive suggestion or alternative to propose; just grouching. I’ll ask the commentariat: Is there another blogging platform with a better editor?
@Dave Cortesi I’ve been able to get wordpress to go back to classic editor for me.
I’m not sure if this kludge works for everybody, but if you go to:
https://https://codgerville.net/wp-admin/
(or whatever your blog name is/wp-admin) do you get the old school dashboard? Then would you be able to click on posts and use the add new dropdown to get classic editor instead of block editor?
I like WordPress, been using it about ten years for a recipe and (now also) a homesteading blog. I’m not using my own domain for this purpose (but will be expanding out to one for a probable business).
There are some bugs in the interface, but I’ve gotten used to most of them. I am not crazy in entirety by the block editing system recently adopted (I return to Classic Editor, the old one, most of the time – although it appears some features of the old Classic are now missing.)
I do like one or two features in the new block system,
I have no intention of moving to another platform.
WordPress – Yay!
I moved to WordPress a few years ago, and I am also very happy with what it offers and how reliable it is.
I use both WP and Blogger. WP drives me crazy, though — it has too many bells and whistles for me. When there’s a problem it’s always extraordinarily time consuming to track down the source of the problem and fix it. Blogger is way simpler, but since WP handles my whole domain, not just my blog, I only use Blogger now for side projects.
Blogger recently changed its text-entry interface and it’s much harder to use than it used to be.
One small thing seems broken – I tried the ‘Random Whatever’ link and it sent me to the same page over and over.
I like the RW button when I don’t have a specific ‘read’ in mind.
I’m not a fan of the new bloc editor either as it generally complicates blog posting without returning much in benefit.
HOWEVER, if I were creating a web site or a web site including a blog, I think I would be much happier with the bloc editor. I don’t know how it is in actual practice, but it promises to give you greater control over formatting.
But I suspect that the folks at WordPress are figuring that blogs are not the future. I expect they’re right.
I’ve been on Word Press for about ten years and have never had any problem with it!
A man—full disclosure—that I e-correspond with, Scott Berkun, spent a year as a team leader with WordPress, with the understanding that he would write a book. He did, called “The Year Without Pants.” He shows a company that is cool like Pixar, that has people working remotely without e-mail, that has “happiness engineers.” As I recall, he once had his team do their in-person work together, each with a computer, in Greece. I recommend the book..
I started my site on WordPress back in 2018 and have enjoyed it. I’m running it on Bluehost, and I’ve heard both good and bad things about that particular host. I didn’t even know WordPress had its own hosting service. Should I switch?