Almost done with Wordpress
I’m almost done with Wordpress.
This has been tough, using Wordpress for the past few weeks. I have always hand-coded my websites, and will continue to do so. It simply doesn’t make sense to use these bloated, slow, complex, and cumbersome CMS programs. As an editor, it’s too slow and unreliable. Firefox crashes under the weight of the js every once in a while, and more often than I like the Wordpress editing page loads only partially, leaving some controls inaccessible.
One of the key factors in my SEO is…. oh, sorry. I’m not giving out info like that any more. Well anyway the pageload times are way slow with Wordpress compared to my other sites on the same host. And I notice the page load time displayed by Wordpress is not at all true… it even updates before the page is fully loaded. Sure it’s probably a browser parsing issue, but why should I care what it is? The page loads slowly. Period.
I worked with Wordpress 1.2 and loved it, but it wasn’t secure nor stable enough to run a business on it. By the time 1.5 was stable, adoption was too high and the footprint too obvious. And now with 2, WP is bloated beyond recovery. Mambo was the same… not stable enough, too many features, and then too complex, too bloated, and too much risk. Now Joomla! and we’re back in the same cycle.
I always hated Dreamweaver for the way it interfered with my code, changing things when I hit save that it shouldn’t change. And TypePad… geesh, what they did to Typepad! I edit the HTML and they convert it into what-is-that, XUL? Well Wordpress is doing the same funk to my posts. A p tag here and a BR there, here a P, there a BR… is that really necessary?
So no matter how much it makes me feel like an old-timer, and no matter how slow I think I am developing by hand with TextPad and an assortment of home-grown tools, I’m sticking with it. Of course that brings me back to the one real reason I returned to Wordpress for this blog. For competitive reasons, it is not wise for me to show the world my standard technology toolset. Its’ what keeps me competitive. I don’t want to use my own tools on my publicly owned blog. Ahhhh…what to do.
July 24th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Hi John,
I’m with you, I’d rather handcode all the way. You know something is wrong when it’s quicker to do it by hand. I have been using a cms at a company I have been doing some work for and it take at least 6 times what it would with static html and you have less control. Stupid. Old is young again.
Love your blog btw, a good reflection of the John Andrews that started prolifically posting out of nowhere over at TW.
Cheers!
July 24th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Thanks Ben, and thanks for stopping by. I suppose that since we came to the same conclusion re: control of the coding of a site, we both have to waste a bunch of time every year or so to re-confirm it.
I have so much experience “playing” with open source CMS and directory systems, with no direct practical gain, that I made a website about it. That site monetizes pretty well. Go figure.
PS: As for “out of nowhere” that’s a deceptive appearance (necessary illusion?). I’ve been in the game many years anonymously. Maybe I’ll post about that….