The blog’s return to WordPress

I’ve been back on WordPress for the last few months!

Did you notice? It’s very easy to not have noticed, since I’m using the same theme on my site that I was using with Ghost. At some point I may load a new instance of Ghost up to see if I can see a difference between the two side by side.

Why move back? Well there are a variety of reasons!

Newsletters

I have recently started a mailing list so people can get emails from me when a new blog post goes online. MailChimp can be used without an issue here with Ghost, but for a myriad of reasons I won’t get into now I didn’t want to use MailChimp as my newsletter provider.

It’s always possible I could have coded something myself for the page to do mail lists to my provider (MailerLite by the way…) but I already have the licenses to several different pieces of software that allow me to easily add users to the email list.

Markdown not as big a deal

Since I’m still doing all of my writing in Ulysses anyway, it does not matter all that much if the editor is a regular rich editor vs a markdown editor like I use. I still suggest giving MarkDown a try if you haven’t already, as I find it makes it much easer to write.

Sticking with what you know

I have quite a bit of experience in WordPress as well as some background doing web development in PHP (mostly time in college, but still I used it). I found that I had to do a little more research the few times I had an issue than before when I was working with WordPress. In time this would have gone away, but it was a “Switching Cost” that I was not expecting to pay so quickly.

Walk The Walk

If I’m going to be offering building and supporting services for WordPress, I should probably be using the product myself. While not the case, it can give an impression of distrust if I’m not using it myself.

Would I no longer recommend Ghost?

Absolutely not! It is still a fantastic blogging platform to use. I would say my recommendation from when I switched before stands. If your plan is to simply post blog posts to your blog and like something a little more nerdy, Ghost is a great platform. If you’re doing more that what is immediately available out of the box, WordPress may be a better platform for you. WordPress being around for so long means there I already likely a prebuilt tool that can solve your exact problem.

Have you ever switched platforms?  Let me know in the comments!