Since its inception until today, this blog was powered by code I had written myself. Some people thought this took a lot of work; to be honest, it was just a few days of simple coding. As I noted at the beginning of this series on “Creating a Blog from Scratch,” rather than using existing software or services, such as WordPress or Blogger, I wanted to write my own blog code so that I could experiment with the form of the blog. In general, I found it to be a great exercise that I would highly recommend. It helped me understand the genre of the blog, challenge long-standing assumptions of form and function (like the tyranny of the calendar, now gone on most blogs), and think about ways one might customize a blog to fit academic needs.
But starting today, this blog will be powered by WordPress, not my own code. Am I a hypocrite? Well, yes and no. Yes, in that by switching to WordPress I have had to abandon some quirks of my original blog that had made it unique and that represented the accumulated wisdom of writing my own code. No, in that I feel I’ve learned enough in the process of the last two years that I can bend WordPress to my will enough to satisfy my need to customize and adapt.
More important, I had other needs that I just didn’t have enough time to implement by writing more of my own code, and there were other features of WordPress–a terrific open-source project–that I really wanted:
- It took two years, but I’ve decided after initially disparaging comments (sentiments echoed recently by some well-known bloggers), I actually do think they are important to a blog and that my critics were right that the blog suffered without them. So starting today I have comments at the end of each post. (My old posts will remain free of comments since I have left them in their original format.)
- I had also worried that the blog comments would be a haven for spam, but after the release of the wonderful reCAPTCHA system–which helps the Open Content Alliance transcribe digitized books while preventing spam–I felt that relatively spam-free commenting was possible.
- As successful open-source software, WordPress has engendered a universe of helpful plugins, modifications, and documentation. For instance, this blog is now Zotero-compatible, thanks to the WordPress COinS plugin by my colleague Sean Takats. And of course reCAPTCHA came with a plugin for WordPress too.
- WordPress’s system for drafting and editing posts is far more advanced than the basic screens I created. Writing this post is taking me about half the time it would have taken in my old system.
- For the past six months I have been using ma.gnolia to add small posts to my feed (and to the sidebar of my old blog under “Briefly Noted”). I now can do this just as quickly using WordPress, and plan to post much more frequently starting in September.
- Despite my best efforts, my old blog code failed to output valid XHTML, which I believe is increasingly important in a world where non-computer devices (such as the iPhone) are browsing the web and RSS feeds. WordPress automatically writes pages in XHTML.
I suppose I should rip off of my sleeve the badge of honor from my home-grown blogging software. But I like to see the switch to WordPress as just another step in the continual improvement of this blog, and look forward to many more years of writing in this space.
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