It’s been several weeks since I decided to close my CMS project – Injader. Recently, I’ve been setting up some new WordPress blogs at quite a rapid pace, even moving some of my existing blogs from Injader to WordPress.
Today, I started working on my new creative writing blog, which I’ll share when more of the content is up. I’ve suddenly realised that it’s quite exciting to be setting up all these blogs… much more exciting than when I used Injader.
This is because I am no longer responsible for the code that runs that site.
I like building sites. But when I write blog posts or other written works, it’s nice not to think about the things I need to do with the platform, and spend more time focusing on the content.
I still have a few gripes with WordPress, but they’re mainly to do with things that I have to do over and over again every time I set up a blog. Installing it is fine; changing the permalinks or installing some mission-critical plugins can get tedious though. Everyone has different needs, but there are a few plugins I’d like to see in the WordPress core. (Maybe I’ll write about that in a future post. Maybe not. It’s been said before, no doubt.)
The thing that really makes me cringe is when I see a fairly complex site being shoehorned into WordPress. Yeah, you can do it, but a stack of plugins doesn’t make for a very elegant solution. For a blog or a small website, go for it. For stores or community sites, there are better products out there. In much the same way, I think it’s a bit daft to install vBulletin and try to build a site around the forum. Different tools are good in different ways.
Put it this way, if I was asked to build a non-bloggy site for a client that required plenty of complex, custom functionality, I wouldn’t start with WordPress. Sometimes, you really need to get out of the “WP can do anything” mindset, and look at whether a different approach could give you some more freedom.
What do you think?
About Ben
Haha, welcome to the dark side… just when I thought I’d never hear you talk favourably about WP
Granted it’s not perfect and there’s a few more things it could do (which you pretty much list here) but overall I’m happy with WP. Sure beats maintaining a blog with manual markup and notepad, which I did for many years before migrating in 07.
Nice work with the redesign here as well
Hey John – thanks! At least now I can spend more time writing blog posts, and less time updating the software.
I’ve used NucleusCMS and Blogger in the past. I recently setup a new blog using WordPress and the only regret I have is that I didn’t switch over sooner. When setting it up I got just the plugins I needed. But I quickly discovered new plugins that now that I’ve used them, I don’t know how I ever did without them. WordPress definitely wins my best blog platform award.
The next time I create any website whose sole purpose is “content”, I will be using wordpress. (i.e. any non e-commerce site) This includes forums, because I think that current forum software is outdated and needs to be reinvented.
Hi Dustin – I really can’t agree with you on using WP + plugins for a forum. I’ve seen SimplePress on a few sites and I found it to be badly laid out, and unattractive. I like a simple, slick look for a forum. If you’re a keen photographer, then Flickr groups do the job quite well. But I’d rather have the forum on my site instead of hosted elsewhere.
I see your point about reinventing forum software, and I’ve seen some people have tried, but there isn’t any forum software out there that really takes my fancy. vBulletin is decent but bloated and the latest version is way overpriced. I ditched vBulletin at CMF Ads and started building my own integrated forum instead. It’s simple, but it works well.