Time to switch to WordPress

Have fun trying WordPress. I will wait for you to write your opinion about different blog engines out there.

Be sure you activate the Feedburner option in the control panel. It’s much nicer and faster.

And don’t forget categories…they’re really handy!

I’m lovin’ WordPress!

Subscribed! I can’t imagine how many hours per week you put into blogging. I’m just starting, and spending most of my time just reading! Looking forward to the new interface and the tagging features.

I started my blog over on DABU after you initial post that you switched – so far so good!

WordPress plugins provide some excellent functionality. You can find a bunch of them over at wp-plugins.net

Have fun at your new blog and great job bloggin!

Why not DasBlog? It’s ASP.NET and generally shiny.

DasBlog is not a hosted solution. I don’t want to run my own server. DasBlog also doesn’t do the OPML thing I wanted (I held a little contest and DABU, TypePad, and WordPress responded).

A quick comment on the new blog: While I like the overall theme, the green-on-green date stamps and the light green on white hyperlinks in your posts are not very readable IMO. It’s not that I cannot tell they’re links. It’s that they’re plainly hard to read. Any chance of darkening the shade of green for your links and date stamps? Or is it just me?

What else is important in a blogging tool? If you are going for heavy SEO features, then the things you listed are worth fussing over when determining which blogging tool to use.

But if you are looking for a serious “blogging” tool, content matters. The important things to know about the blogging tool, if “blogging” is more important that being at the top of the charts, are:

1. Is it easy to blog?
2. Will it be still fun to blog in 3 months from now?
3. How easy is it to post content? (Fast access, email, from any computer?)
4. Does it motivate me to keep feeding the beast (blog)?

Blogging isn’t just about having the slickest site on the web. It’s about what you say, how you say it, how long you are going to keep saying it, and what keeps you saying it.

WordPress is very easy and getting easier to post content. It’s clean and simple interface puts the emphasis on the content and not on the distractions. While it is nice to have a fun and colorful administrative interface, I want to think about what I’m writing, not the bright colors and fancy designs on the screen. I like the idea of a clean piece of paper in the typewriter to make you focus on the words not the typewriter.

How you measure that, I’ll leave it to the experts.

As for tweaking this wordpress.com blog, as someone commented, nice thought, ain’t going to happen. Mr. Scoble is luckier than anyone on wordpress.com to get his own custom header. This feature might be available in the future, but wordpress.com is special right now because there are only a few Themes to choose from, totally untweakable, so the emphasis is on the content not the looks.

Again, content matters.

And the “joy” of using a wordpress.com blog is that when you comment on another wordpress.com blog, it “remembers” you are logged in. I was working on my husband’s blog when I wrote the above. Do a fan a favor and change the URL and name in the comment above to this one and delete this? If you got time. Thanks.

I can recommend the Spam Karma plugin for WordPress – to reduce the amount of spam in the comments. Another plugin that is really nice is http://boke.name/c/wordpress-tags together with some mod_rewrite-stuff, and this is lovable.

–larsw

Hey, Robert. Anyway to get an invite for wordpress.com?

You are so cool and so is Microsoft! Does this help??

Oh, and I like Dave.

I read with great interest in regards to your questions about WordPress and Type Pad/Movable Type.

I would just like to reply with some of my comments regarding the two systems.

MT/TP is based on Static/ Dynamic based publishing. Basically what that means is that some parts of the web sites are dynamically created, while others are statically created. Statically created means that it makes changes to the database, but it must “republish” the contents to reflect the changes on the web site

This can be a blessing in disguise while being a curse. With Moveable Type every single time that you make a “change”, then all static elements in the change HAS to be rebuilt.

When you are managing a web blog that has a few hundred or even thousand posts/pages then a static change can be a real drag. It can slow the process right down.

An upside of static publishing (in my mind) is that when it comes to serving out web pages on a slow server, because the static pages are just html then its just plain vanilla web server.

When working with WordPress, it is a different story. With WP every page view that the user reads is a query to the database.

The page is dynamically created “on the fly”. Which means a very fast server.
Also I think that WP has a better comment anti-spam engine that is integrated into its blogging system. MT was a bit rushed and not that well developed IMHO.

In regards to OPML, both are good. The simple reason is that the OPML is merely just a flexible markup language so as I emailed Dave in response to his 30th Sept podcast, it can take such a short time to write up a MT/WP opml, is they create a template that looks like a opml using variables (pulling it from the database) for the date, content, categories etc etc.

For your needs, I would recommend WordPress, out of MT or WP. I cannot say anything about DABU as I have no experience with that.

For my blog, I use MT. The simple reason is that my web server is running on minimal hardware. Plus I switched to MT before WP came out and I haven;t had the time to evaluate it properly. I don’t particular want to make the change yet. Too much time.

I hope that this helpful for you.

Robert -

Tucows would love to get your feedback on Blogware. Let me know if you want to take it for a ride and I’ll hook you up with one of our resellers.

Have fun playing!

-ross

WP themes can be tweaked, it’s just a bit geeky to do. This is a modified WP theme, pslblog.com.

Radio, WP, and MT all have complicated themes/templates that require geek skills to tweak.

Hey Rob, please share your experiences with WordPress – I am considering trying it out but I’ll stay put to hear your first comments (downloading & trying so much stuff lately that I totally loose track of time & space…).

BTW, looking forward to see you at Les Blogs in Paris!

Net

Hey Scoble I have run into the same problem as you have. Blogging systems are a dime-a-dozen yet 99% of them are underwhelming. I have tried many and I too feel that nobody has come up with a breakthrough yet. Many of the blogging systems are open source and are built by hobbyists with varying levels of PHP programming ability. Proprietary systems are often much better in quality and development but are often rediculously expensive. Because you decided to move your own blog to WordPress I am assuming you decided that Typepad (or MoveableType) is not for you either. I would agree with an above poster that WordPress is one of the best blogging systems, not because it is overly impressive, but because it does the job. After many hours of research testing different systems on my own servers I have come across one system that shines above the others…

Give Expression Engine a shot (I am not an affiliate.) You probably have not heard of them because the company has spent all it’s resources on creating a great system. They have a great passionate community and very responsive support team. Some of the support people are actually unpaid users because they love the system so much. The system is proprietary but very affordable.

While EE is loaded with features, this is not the most important to me. You cannot compare two systems from a features list. Go to ExpressionEngine.com and visit the community forum. Try the demo control panel and even download and install a trial version.

If you give it a shot and need any help there is plenty of people available… including myself. Good Luck!

Couldn’t agree with you more – Been trying out various blogging platforms and CMS’s for the same reason – looks like WordPress will be the choice for the many reasons I have already noted.
Welcome to the revolution

Robert, maybe while you’re collecting blogs, you’d like to try Blogsome. It’s back-office admin may not be as funky, but you can edit your template.

Hi, I like your site! I enjoyed browsing it. Thanks. In Dutch we say dank-je-wel 4 thanks))

Great post!
I always enjoy coming here, so I’ve got you bookmarked.
Thanks

I couldn’t agree more!