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March 24th, 2008 Why I Won’t Leave WordPress

Despite not having any programmer blood or ability in me, I love scripts. Platforms. Software. Whatever you want to call them. I love them.

I especially love reading reviews on blog scripts and CMS software. Not because I have any intention of moving away from WordPress, but because I’m curious. I can’t really say why I like it. But I enjoy reading reviews, I enjoy downloading scripts I haven’t tried before, I enjoy testing them on my computer (mucho thanks to WAMP).

I spend hours a week doing things related to this; Testing, reading reviews, looking up tutorials, comparing scripts. It just makes me happy inside.

As you know (by the title of this post, my WordPress category, and the footer of this site) I run WordPress. I’ve been running WordPress for a little over half a year now and I can’t be any happier. But this wasn’t my first time using WordPress. I actually hated it back in the 1.0 days.

But that’s a long story. WordPress and I have had our hiccups but they weren’t anything drastic, after about two months we moved in together permanently and WordPress and I have had lovely little babies. Yes, I produce children that fast.

So why am I looking at other software behind WordPress’ back? I have no itention of leaving WordPress behind, it does absolutely everything I wanted it to do when I embarked for a holy grail of a script.

Initially half a year ago I got tired of having to manually edit my pages. Some people couldn’t comment on my blog, the comment form of the script I was using didn’t work for everyone. I wanted nice urls instead of everything ending with .php. All in all, I wanted something that was simple, easy to customize, and let me manage my whole website via admin interface.

I went through a lot of scripts and then I “broke down” and used WordPress. Haven’t looked back.

I look at other scripts because I’m curious. I like to see what’s out there. I whole-heartedly believe that, with anything, there is always something out there better than what you’re using. So I’m constantly curious and I like checking out what’s in the wild. But at the end of the day, I come back to trusty WordPress. We cuddle in each other’s arms and watch the kids try to kill each other.

I’ve tried the two big ones (along with dozens of other scripts), ExpressionEngine and MovableType. They were great and fun to use, but I won’t be switching to either of them.

Why not ExpressionEngine?

• I take permalinks into consideration. Since I’ve grown so accustomed to WordPress’ awesome link structure (site.com/page) I find that having to use the index.php in your links is really a turn off
• It isn’t Open Source. I love Open Source. Open Source is made for people like you and me and the people who create it don’t want anything in return (except maybe some donations via PayPal)
• The only feature that would’ve actually made me consider EE despite it not being open source is only available with licenses. Pages. Just as WordPress has this absolutely sexy feature for free and available for everyone, you have to fork out at least $99.95 (personal license. see here for pricing details)

Why not MovableType?

• Installing it is a pain in the ass. The first times I tried to install it I couldn’t. It was frustrating to say the least. Not the easiest install method out there.
• It’s HUGE! Extracted on my computer, it weighs in at 13.8mb (takes 19.4mb on my computer) and has 2,017 files and 257 folders. The first time uploading it to a server the FTP client crashed. Compare that to WordPress’ filesize at 2.98mb.
• Despite it being open source you need to pay for Custom Fields. Again, brought to you by WordPress for free.

In fact, the only script that I would ever consider to switch to isn’t even a major player but it’s developing very well, it’s called PivotX. I’m keeping my eye on it. I’ve already tried the last two alphas and I’m really impressed. It’ll be going into open beta (it’s been in open alpha) at the end of March / Beginning of April.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 2:36 am and is filed under Webbie, WordPress. This entry has been tagged as expressionengine, movabletype, open source, pivotx, WordPress. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Peaches to “Why I Won’t Leave WordPress”

1. Mitchell Says:
   March 24th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

   I love Wordpress. I really do. But every once in a while I get curious about other CMS scripts. I’ve done the EE thing. And the MT thing. And while they both were nice (okay, EE was not so nice), they just don’t stand up to Wordpress.

   And I went from manual updating (fun!) to Cutenews, and then to Wordpress. And the few times I’ve thought about changing, Wordpress just surprises me with something else.

   And I’m super excited for 2.5. I haven’t tested it myself yet, but the screenshots all over the web look awesome. It’s Wordpress’s constant renewal and upgrading, making it better and better that makes it so appealing. And the open-source-ness of it, makes it that much better.

   In a nutshell: Wordpress ftw.

2. Hazel Says:
   March 24th, 2008 at 7:10 pm

   I’ve tried wordpress before and the only reason I don’t use it now is because I don’t like working with PHP. :(

   I totally agree with what you said about MT. The installation was brutal. ick!

   At first I was annoyed about the whole index.php issue in EE, but it doesn’t bother me now. So I’m quite happy with everything about it. :)