Ten - wait, Eleven - reasons to switch to WordPress
I finally worked up the nerve to switch this site from Blogger to WordPress last week and it’s been a pretty good experience thus far. Here are a few good things that have come out of the change:
- Excellent free WP layouts are everywhere. I chose the Structure theme for now because I’d seen it around and it was clean and simple. I’m going to try and keep things less cluttered here than they were on Blogspot.
- Huge library of plugins to extend blog functionality. The WordPress plugin directory has 3300 plugins available right now to enhance and customize the blogging experience. In many cases installation only takes a few clicks.
- Hands-free search engine optimization. The nifty All-in-One SEO pack is cramming each page with relevant meta tags and alt tags and all of the other things that make for better search engine results. This plugin helps Google do a better job of finding all of my posts and presenting them as relevant search results. This process is aided by automated XML sitemap generation (another plugin). I’ve already seen incoming Google traffic skyrocketing in the few days since I’ve moved to WordPress.
- Robust tagging interface. Unlike Blogger’s reliance on categories, WordPress is letting me use real live tags to separate posts. While they can be about the same thing if you approach it the right way, tags are the dominant metaphor for content indexing under Web 2.0. As a bonus, I can now use the nifty WP-Cumulus tag cloud plugin seen in the sidebar.
- Better integration of third party comment systems. I’ve got the same DISQUS commenting system I was using on Blogger, but now it’s served up through an internal plugin rather than just a paste-on javascript include. Wordpress publisher Automattic has just brought IntenseDebate back online so all WP users will be able to take advantage of another third-party commenting option. Check out this September post for some background on the awesomness of third-party commenting.
- Better portability. Moving from Blogger to Wordpress required some server-side voodoo to suck up all of my Blogspot posts into an intermediate Wordpress account. Once I got the intermediate WP site working I was able to export the whole site as a 400kb XML file. As humbling as it is to see my blog reduced to a tiny text file it makes me feel more secure to know that I can export it and save it wherever I want.
- Fine-grained caching control. I’m using the WP Super Cache plugin to cache every page to disk rather than returning to the database for each page view. The benefits here are twofold: First, page load speeds are dramatically increased. Second, If I ever accidentally post something that winds up on the front page of Digg the site will last a bit longer without melting. WP Super Cache offers plenty of options for exactly how much content should be static and how much should be reloaded on demand. Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has a great writeup on why all WordPress blogs should consider caching.
- Native iPhone support via plugin. I’ve looked at the WPTouch plugin as a way to easily serve up a lo-fi version of the site to iPhones. Unfortunately it’s got some conflict with the cache plugin I mentioned in #7 and so I haven’t turned it on yet. I’ve read that I could switch to the slightly less exciting “WP Cache” plugin and then pop in a workaround to get WPTouch working but I haven’t taken the time to do that yet.
- Open source flexibility. Google-owned Blogspot has its own cachet in the blogosphere but WordPress is a completely customizable PHP application. I can change absolutely anything about this blog if I take the time to read through the source code. I’ve already dropped in several tweaks and it makes my programmer’s heart melt.
- Cleaner separation of content types. WordPress has a static “pages” feature that allows me to create permanent posts without dates. The Sharing at Work About and Contact pages are now standalone pages viewable from the sidebar. They have simple urls like /about and /contact. Under Blogspot I’d had to backdate my about and contact pages as old posts in order to push them out without messing up the flow of the site’s news feed. The fact that WP supports categories AND tags is just icing.
- Cohesive presentation. The excellent Related Posts and Smart 404 plugins automatically identify related content within the site and present it to the reader in easy to understand lists at the bottom of the page. Now new readers, curious readers, and casual drive-by Googlers are going to have an easier time finding the posts they are most likely to want to read. If you come here to read a post about iPhones you’ll see links to five other iPhone related posts in the footer. Enjoy your visit, leave happy! If you follow a bad URL to get here the Smart 404 will do its best to redirect you to the intended post or at least present you with a set of similar posts to browse.
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