Moving to WordPress rosskimes.net

@mikehaynes Thanks Mike. It took me way too long to get the Wordpress site looking how I wanted. Glad to finally have it done so I can get back to actually writing for the site instead of just coding for it.

@rosskimes Good post Ross. I do share your frustration around posting to a static site. At times, it becomes difficult to handle the frontmatter and meta data (dates, tags etc.). However, I haven’t reached the stage where I am on lookout for the alternatives. Yet.

@amit Thanks! Getting the date format right was the worst part of the front matter. The tipping point for me came when I realized the UI I was trying to build for my custom posting app was already built and working in Ulysses.

@rosskimes yes, have tripped multiple times on date format. Btw I didn’t understand your comment about Ulysses and custom UI. You mean posting directly from Ulysses?

@amit Yeah. I was writing a UI for selecting tags, post types, categories, links, etc.

@rosskimes I tried my hand at alternatives for WP and found that I'm definitely not in the right place for taking on sysadmin/webmaster-esque tasks. That's for WP-hosted but even if/when I properly try to move closer to self-hosted it's highly likely that I'll keep WP as the engine.

@rosskimes Ah the friction of publishing static sites. WordPress makes it all so easy. I've switched between WP and a static site more times than I can count. Now I keep one of each so that I can change my mind :). Good luck!

@jack @rosskimes What's funny is that I moved from WP to static a few years ago because of the friction I was encountering with WP. Now I find myself drifting back to WP for the same reasons.

@petebrown @rosskimes I think of WordPress as low-friction, but heavy. Static sites are high-friction, but light. I seem to always miss the combination I'm not currently using :).

@jack @rosskimes Yeah, agreed, although I think WP posting has gotten slicker in the last few years with a more robust, flexible set of tools available.

@petebrown @jack I have only been on Wordpress for about a month now, but I am kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I miss the purity of a static site, but the ease of posting is completely worth the heaviness of WP to me. Another unexpected benefit is the rich plugin ecosystem.

@simonmumbles Yeah self-hosting/managing is a pain I did not want to deal with. This is a case where I am happy to throw some money at someone to solve that problem for me.

@rosskimes I went to WP reluctantly. For me a lot had to do with client limitations when posting. Easier posting with better control means more posting.

@ronguest That was my primary reason. Even with the app I was working on, posting was was tedious. Being able to post directly from Ulysses and Micro.blog is so nice. And since I post form Micro.blog more, I have more reason to open it and check it. Win/win.

@jack we need to make a button, patch or challenge coin for those of us that change cms way too often

@jack Seems m.b still has some link/username parsing work to do

@hjertnes Where do I get it. My old motto was "I can hardly commit to a CMS, how am I gonna pick a degree!"

@jack I've used Squarespace, ghost, Hugo, pelican hosted microblog, WordPress and now my custom thing in less than 12 months 😅

@hjertnes Winner! I mostly just waffle between Wordpress and Hugo lately. I now create new sites to test CMS stuff rather than always converting my one true blog between them.

@jack my favorite WordPress feature is MarsEdit

@jack oh no, new stuff to check out

@hjertnes @jack I'm in, although you guys would have me beat with WP and other automated CMSs. I've mostly stuck to static generators, but a lot of them. I've even written two or three. Yikes, sounds like I have a problem writing it out like this.

@oyam @jack we should probably make some for number of Slack teams you are member of as well.

@rosskimes Couldn't agree more. If I had more space in my life, or the appropriate amount of experience then I could tolerate non-hosted but I'm of the perspective that it's important to identify your priorities rather than follow (potentially) shallow urges. In other words, as much as I like messing around with the tech the fact is that I really want to write and get it published.

@simonmumbles That sums up my thoughts on it perfectly 👌