KoiFish Blog's Move to WordPress — The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Movin' on up
- There is a lot of SEO functionality built in
- The dashboard is very easy to use
- There are thousands of templates to choose from, so you don’t have to design your own page if you don’t want to
- You can cut and paste copy authored in Word without having to deal with formatting problems. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it actually kinda is
- Images are easy to manipulate and tag
- There are thousands of “plugins” to choose from. These let you easily add some very slick funcitons to your blog. If you can think of it, chances are someone has already designed it. Stuff like additional SEO functions, Twitter streamig, Google, etc., etc., etc. is all there for the uploading. And uploading most of these plugins is simple
- Most hardcore blogers use WordPress. If you have a question or run into a problem, there is a large community of people you can ask for advice
- Because templates and plugins are created by the community, some work well and some don’t. Trial and error is required
- Templates are coded in PHP instead of HTML. If you want to create your own (or tweak an existing one) you need to know PHP — or know someone who does
- The template can be somewhat restrictive in how you lay out each individual post. For example, the template I use mashes the body copy of a post directly under the list of tags under the headline. I like a little more breathing room for the copy, so I need to insert a space at the beginning of each post. Inserting this space in older posts can be tricky — I can only do it when I make edits using Explorer. I have no idea why that is
- Speaking of Explorer, you need to check the appearance of your blog in Explorer and Firefox. It will not look the same in both. This is really an Explorer/Firefox issue as far as I understand it, but it is still a hassle. It was less of a concern using GoDaddy software
