Once Again It Is Time For My Annual Unsolicited Endorsement of WordPress
Posted on October 13, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
And that is because it was around this time, fourteen(!) years ago now, that I switched over to the service to host Whatever. Previous to the switchover I had been beset by issues with the site, stemming from backend hiccups and rough patches that never quite resolved themselves. But once I switched over to WordPress, things have gone swimmingly; the number of times the site’s been down since 2008 can be counted on one hand, and even then it was quickly back up to speed.
This is also where I again recommend that if you are a creator of any sort, but especially a writer, that you maintain your own site, one where people can always find you and where you have control of your content. As the various recent woes of the social media giants have shown us, none of those sites is immune to drama or is going to last forever at the top of the heap, and you will always be the product to them. Have your own site and no matter what happens to them, you’ll always be around. Whatever has been around for 24 years! That’s several generations of social media right there.
I annually recommend WordPress because it’s robust and seamless and easy to use, and because I like it. I have never had cause to regret using the service, and lots of reasons to be glad I do. WordPress doesn’t pay me to recommend it, or hints that an endorsement would be nice, or anything like that. I endorse it because I genuinely think it’s a good service. If you’re thinking of getting your own place on the Internet (and you should!), WordPress is a pretty great place to host it. Here are some of the various packages they offer; see which might work for you.
— JS
I can attest to this firsthand. Until recently, I was a blogger at ChicagoNow, a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune. The Powers-That-Be decided to shut everything down without warning.
Some of us were fortunate and savvy enough to see this coming and exported our content, but many of my colleagues lost all their posts!
Always have a backup plan.
I just took a shallow dive…
WordPress is here to stay…
== “As of Jan 2022, WordPress powers nearly 40% of all websites on the internet”
== “Estimated at $596.7 billion in 2020, WordPress economy expected to grow to $635 billion by the end of 2021…”
just about “too big to fall” to use an over-abused economic cliche…
I am seriously considering moving my blog from Typepad to WordPress this winter. I am not looking forward to the process (and hope I can find someone to hold my hand through it), but inertia is not serving me well.
And in return, here’s my endorsement of unsolicited endorsements. When somebody makes a good and useful thing, I think we should tell other people about it.
Thanks for blogging, and telling us about how you keep your blog running.
This is true, I have a few times split out trying other hosting with a lot more “offerings” for a lot cheaper.
Each time I end up coming back, like now.
John, thanks for this. What I appreciate about WordPress is their dedication to security. There is no safer place on the internet than WordPress.
Agreed! WordPress continues to be the best content management system (CMS) out there, plus it truly allows you to own your own content because it’s Open Source.
There are exciting innovations happening in the WordPress space to keep it fresh and current after nineteen years. The Gutenberg editor is bringing a flexible approach to layout and content with its full site editing and block editor. There are also interesting things happening around modern approaches to architecture and deployment, like Strattic which is an end-to-end hosting platform that publishes regular WordPress sites as static and headless, in one click. https://www.strattic.com