I have a friend who hates WordPress.
I’m not sure WordPress deserves it. Sure, it’s a little bit restrictive, and the controls feel almost outdated now like the whole thing could use a reboot. But as a blogging platform, it gives so many options, even if most of the default ones sort of scream “WORDPRESS” when you look at them. (I think her anger comes more from the fact that a lot of people take a WordPress base and build real looking websites. They look slick to the end user, but have you tried to use one? It’s incredibly counter-intuitive.)
So, on the one hand, as a non-programmer with limited HTML knowledge at best, I’m awfully fond of WordPress.
But shhhhh — don’t tell — I dislike it a little too.
It’s undeserved. WordPress is still good at what it does. But what it does is pretty limited.
I’m a blogger, yeah. This isn’t my first blog under my real name, I made a Blogger blog a few years ago, because I was in Israel and it was easier to update there than email everyone about my activities. I was pretty horrible at updating that blog as well.
On the other hand, I’m a whiz at updating facebook. Which is, in a micro sense, a blog! A little blog, snippets of thoughts for just your friends, but the status updates are basically blog posts, And they invite conversation and debate. They also invite useless idiocy and insults for some people. The length is limited and I can’t control anything about the appearance, yeah. But while WordPress is a great blogging platform and Facebooks is a pretty terrible one (I think) the social interaction is happening on Facebook, not on WordPress. And I think that’s the problem.
The only two blogging platforms that I can think of that actually combine the social aspects with the blogging aspects are Livejournal and Tumblr. (And Twitter, possibly, but Twitter is the epitome of micro-blogging and has more limitations than Facebook, which is saying something.)
Livejournal has a somewhat negative reputation online for being full of whiny teenagers who write emo poetry and wear black. It’s an undeserved reputation, especially when you realize that it’s a highly respected blogging site in Russia, used by Russian politicians.
It’s a stagnated site in many ways. The ultimate design hasn’t changed in years, and typically that’s a bad thing. But it’s brilliant in it’s simplicity. You make a blog/username, and you can use it anywhere on the site. Comment on other blogs, sure. But the Community feature is key. Do you like crafts? Join a community and talk about it with people! Live in New York? There’s probably a community for you. Where you can post, and other people will respond. You can choose communities or journals to follow, and your friends page is an automatically generated RSS feed of all of those choices.
There are forks of Livejournal (Ultimatejournal, Insanejournal, Dreamwidth) but the most people are on the main site. And in social networking, people are key.
Now, Tumblr is new and it’s still figuring itself out. I like to call it “twitter for pictures” which is shortchanging the site, but not by much. People mostly use it to post images, and links and gifs. Mostly a “look how cool this is everybody!” sort of place. Now, you can do full text posts, but they don’t look as interesting, and the way commenting works is a mess. Really, the comments get horribly stacked and it can be hard to track who said what and when the screen is too narrow the comments get narrower and narrower…it’s just messy. I have seen a few truly clever Tumblrs that utilize the format well (We are the 99 Percent is a good example) but overall, it’s not my type of site.
But again, it has the people, and it supports the social networking structure very, very well.
Back to WordPress. I’m not expecting people to read my blog just because it exists, obviously. But if I want to put up a post about how I’ve been making bentos, there’s no way to network with other WordPress users who make bentos. If I want to put up a post about fun things to do in New York City, I can’t network with people about that. It’s like I’m operating in Web 2.0 and on all my other platforms I’m already on Web 3.0. I want to blog. I have a lot to say. But the structure I’m working with means that I can’t necessarily find other people to talk to.
It’s one of the reasons I have at least a dozen drafted posts scattered around my hard drive. I want to write, sure, but I want to discourse even more. And even when I cross-post to Facebook, I can’t blame people for not responding here. It’s just not as accommodating.
(This is where Google+ could have just been amazing. If you combine a real social networking site with a blogging platform? I would have been far more over that. Circles are nice. I want a blog that all my friends can see and comment and argue about.)
Really good points, Jacquie, and I think the “web 2.0 in a web 3.0 world” is accurate–even if it’s still a little undeserved.
Honestly I don’t think any of the current platforms really do what you’re talking about very well. I mean, I’d like a platform that would let me have the deeper conversations that are the real payoff from social networking. Not just “hey, I’m making bentos, too,” but something where we could learn from each other about the deeper philosophical roots of bentos (maybe a bad example). Too often on facebook or elsewhere I see these conversations that start to get interesting and then somebody says “well, this isn’t really the place for this, we can’t get into it.” Or they just drop it.
I like the space that the blog format gives me, and I like the control over appearance and the ability to add features and include different kinds of content and organize it differently. I have a (very small) group of people who do read when I blog, and do pick it up and link to it–and I use twitter and (more rarely) facebook to steer other people there. But on my two blogs (personal and professional) the posts that get the most attention and comments, the posts that the most people read even long after I post them, are the posts where I talk very specifically about how to do something–with WordPress or electronics or the reef tank or something. No philosophical discussion, just “how do I wire these headphones” or whatever.
So I’m not confident that we have the best platform, or ever will. Maybe it’s something where we will always need to combine different platforms. Or maybe it’s just something that has to wait for the Singularity. 🙂
Anyway, great post!
I tried to clarify that WordPress hardly deserved the flack I was giving it. It’s an inevitable conclusion of separating the blog structure from a dedicated website that everyone has to use. (Which is a good thing, really.) After learning how to blog for the first time on Livejournal, and now operating mostly on Facebook, it’s just frustrating. (I do have a twitter, and I’ve played with it, but again, I have no network there and twitter isn’t set up to build one as easily as either tumblr or livejournal, which both encourage it far more.)
I understand why the most passed-around posts are the how-tos. I follow a few bento blogs and I’m always coming back to the tricks and tips. But I think maybe a conversation about the best kinds of bento food, about the mentality of planning ahead, about the pros and cons of importing expensive boxes vs. using glad bags would be nice to have outside of the “I’m telling you this” type of post. A sort of combination of practical and more meta commentary, I guess? I agree that I’ve constantly seen conversations die out because of platform restrictions. I have until recently refused to use Facebook to promote or publicize any of my political beliefs because the platform is so bad for it. There is limited space and only room for one conversational thread. WordPress has nested comments, at least!
I like blogging instead of forums. I’ve only been on one forum (yours!) where I felt really comfortable. Blogging lets me present the information in a format I like, and I can start the conversation with a post and see where it goes, instead of the meandering that sometimes happens in forums. And I feel if you start the conversation in an intense, contemplative way, you invite that kind of conversation from others.
I don’t know if we’re ever going to get the perfect platform. Ideas like OpenID were exciting, because you could travel from platform to platform with your friends to have the best conversation in the best place for it, although that didn’t work out perfectly. Have you seen the Diaspora project? It sounds fascinating, although a bit beyond my skills. I think it has the potential to be something more, because the amount of user input and personal control could possibly give a little more flexibility.
I live in hope, of course!
(I would also like the option to preview my comments before posting them. I like using HTML, but I’d like the opportunity to check if the tags are all right before I post…)
My hatred of wordpress results from attempting to build multiple websites through the platform, when it is so much easier to simply write the css or html code. Imagine web design as a professional paint set. With the necessary tools, one can create a a masterpiece. WordPress is like trying the same thing with cut-outs and glue. While making “something” is easy, trying to create something is maddening. People embracing wordpress and WYSIWYG’s like it is an attempt by the general populace to make easily maintainable websites, that they, as laypeople can update without the need to hire a webmaster.
My previous boss asked my friend, much more comfortable with WYSIWYG platforms then I, to design her website. She, as an artist needs to be able to constantly update her site with new information and media. The end result was fantastic, showcasing the material, without overtly drawing attention to its’ WYSIWYG nature. This has been the growing sentiment in the industry. Websites that are built by designers, but able to be maintained by laypeople.
WordPress is wholly unsuited for this function. In order to achieve proper “professional” design, one would basically need to design a format or “theme” for this purpose. That is where the professional (or unpaid professionals ;-)>) web-designers come in. I believe wordpress as the “WYSIWYG of webdesign” will be replaced eventually by a much more user-friendly system. WetPaint and Webs.com have tried and failed due to their excessive use of advertisers. What’s next?
To make myself clear, I agree with you. As a blogging platform, wordpress is user-friendly, easy to read and fantastic to edit. For my blogs, I have used wordpress almost exclusively. I am attempting to build my wordpress “skills” so as to better meet the market of today. It basically consists of breaking down a programmer base and starting anew. Will still be more then happy to help you work on yours if you still want me too.
I’m normally so mortified that I just delete my entire comment and repost it. An editing comment option would be nice on WP, no?
AND YES I WANT YOU TO HELP ME. I have ideas of what I want, but I can’t seem to get it quite right and then I just give up. I do like the header now, though. 🙂
The only time I’ve ever really used a WYSIWYG offline was a program called Sigil, to make epub files for ebooks. It was messy, but was a million and one times better than attempting to write out the code by myself, so I liked it well enough.
The thing is that I have used WordPress at an internship that was heavily modified so that the end site looked slick and professional and the laypeople (ME) had to keep it updated and interesting. Again, it was messy, but I managed once I had it figured out. I would like it if they designed something better, something far better, but at least WordPress is common? The unfortunate thing is that the “best” format won’t beat the most commonly used one. (See: Laserdisk) So the fact that people can figure out how to use WordPress and familiarize themselves with it now will make it harder for another, better program to break in in the future. (Remember Geocities???? ;D)
As a blogging platform, it’s not bad. I like that I can save drafts, and the amount of add-ons is nice as well. Plus the Android app is fantastic.
Well, I figured out how to edit comments! YOUR comments too!
…that’s a flaw. I should not be able to edit your comments. D: But I fixed your HTML?
Yes, you should not be able to edit my comments. What I found interesting is that I am not able to edit my comments. Due to the fact I do not have an account on the Macaulay Blog platform, I have no ability to edit or delete my own posts.
And, like any common mistake, I did not end my tag. Please ignore excessive bolding.
Some people here at Macaulay (and elsewhere) have argued in the past that instead of teaching people to use WordPress (or any other platform) we really should teach ever student html and css. I can see the logic in that–they really aren’t that hard to learn, at least at a basic level, and when you have that basic knowledge you can do a lot more.
In fact, in the early days of the program, all the seminar websites were created using Dreamweaver. But what turned out to happen was not that all students learned to create sites with html in DW, but that one or two students in each class, who already knew how to do that, did all the web work, while everyone else just told them what to do.
It’s always a difficult balance–there are those who say “I don’t care about how to do technical stuff. I’ll leave it to the expert and just focus on what I do care about (bentos or antique radios or differential equations or poetry or whatever).”
It could be that for most people, cutouts and glue, if they work and let you come out with a “good enough” product, really are the best solution!
Just what are the essential skills–for a general user–a citizen of the digital world? I think it’s a question for which we have to keep evolving the answers!
You can learn html and css, the basics, pretty quickly and easily. But then you’re really going to want to learn php and mysql. And you’ll also have to know a bit about Linux system administration and Apache configuration. At least that’s the dark path I got sucked down!