Wandering eyes

I will admit it. I occasionally check out other platforms to deliver my writing on. You know, like that meme of the guy checking out another girl while holding his significant other’s hand and her being appalled… Yeah, I’m the guy, the sig other is WordPress and I am ogling the other services.

While there is a lot of positives to be said about WordPress, there is also 20+ years of baggage that comes with the platform. In trying to be everything to everyone it does have elements that are bloated for your average blogger. Some of that slow-down is self-inflicted when you add plugins (which have their own security risks), but there are plenty of parts under the hood that most of you never have seen, let alone used or needed.

And there are sometimes frustrations, especially on self-hosted flavors (if you are hosted by WP.com, you cannot usually touch those things that cause frustrations without a hefty increase your site fees, and they are managed by WordPress).

But this isn’t a bitch session about WordPress… I just wanted to note a few things I saw this weekend that seemed like nice things and a few that needed more baking.

WARNING: Technobabble ahead. Skip if you really don’t care about these things.

One of the platforms that have hosted and self-hosted flavors is ghost.io and ghost.org. Pricing is reasonable for the hosted version ($6/mo, paid annual). It has some different character to it, but it is really, really clean and snappy. Most users would probably be able to migrate quickly if they wanted to go that route, and it definitely leans into readability versus complexity. I liked it and, if I didn’t have standard PHP hosting paid until 2029, I might consider a switch to self-hosting it. However, it doesn’t play as nice on your standard servers, as it relies on node.js architecture, which usually requires a virtual personal server (VPS) to operate. That said, there are some promising node.js apps emerging aside from Ghost and it might be something to look out for in the future as my paid server space gets closer to renewal.

There are several options that require a VPS to self-host aside from Ghost that also show promise and have a “zenware” feel to them, but Ghost felt like the most non-beta of those out there. Before you jump over to Ghost or others, be aware that you will not be part of the WordPress Reader community. As I have said previously, Reader is more of a WP-integrated RSS (real simple syndication) reader, so you can follow blogs on Reader, but you cannot comment or interact (stars!) if they are not WP-powered sites. In my opinion, less of a concern than I think we lend it credence, but people might miss those things if they move over.

There are also a number of platforms that do work on the standard shared hosting services. I won’t go into the usual suspects (Drupal, Joomla); while they have their fans, I was less than impressed when I trialed them years ago. They may have improved since then, but the fact that WordPress is still the dominant of the three by a HUGE margin should tell you that they are a little on the quirky or complex side. This weekend, I also tried a few of the other, smaller platforms on a subdomain and, while I felt there was something to be said about most of them (Grav was an exception, which is trying already to monetize the platform that doesn’t feel ready for primetime), I don’t know it I am ready to go to back to a content delivery that relies on static pages again. They are quick as hell, but lack some interactive features (commenting being one of the bigger things several are missing). Great for delivering speedy pages with reading in mind, less useful for communities.

And still others looked awesome, but felt like they were not quite ready to be blogs. More… static sites with pages. Again — I did that back in the late 90s, and I’m not really looking to go back to it in the name of speed.

But… Ideas that do translate and thoughts that were triggered as I looked at these offerings (still nebulous, so I will expand on them in another post):

• Would there be more value in leveraging the Fediverse versus relying exclusively on the WordPress community?
• Stars/likes are not a thing in most if these. Are they needed? If they are removed, does this drive away traffic or force people to interact, even if it is to simply say “I liked this”?
• Might there be other ways of interaction that are not currently standard items on WordPress?
• Are some of the plug-ins considered “essential” really that necessary? Can dropping them improve speeds? Increase security/reduce risks?
• How important are metrics to a writer-blogger (versus a monetizing blogger)?
• Are there cleaner ways of presenting writing that still avoid feeling “sterile”?

These are the kinds of questions that come up when I take time to look beyond the established. Sometimes it takes looking at something beyond the norm to make you critically evaluate how you are doing things, even if you stay with comfortable and familiar.