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While listening to some session at the WordCamp 08 in Hamburg, I was thinking why most of the people are using WordPress.
First a small history lesson about blogging software I was considering using for my blog.
Ages ago, when Textpattern was in its infancies, I was sure I would use either WordPress or Textpattern after trying to install both of them together with Movable Type. Movable Type was the blogging software of choice at the time.
I was a newbie regarding blogging software and server configuration at that time. Installation took me for
WordPress: about 5–10 minutes. Quite easy, no hassles.
Textpattern: about the same as for WordPress
Movable Type: about 45 minutes while dying with pain
So, no Movable Type for me.
Movable Type probably has changed since then, but they still rely on the foundation they then built. Getting lots of venture capital doesn’t help to make this software more usable. At least they gave non-technical people a way to get into blogging without having to get a server and set up their blog by themselves.
Coming back to WordPress. Because Movable Type was out and I wasn’t willing to pay for a blogging software – there are some nice commercial ones – I opted for WordPress because of the wealth of themes and plugins. I would probably have chosen Textpattern over WordPress because I really like the beauty of reduced design and typography, which was the main feature of Textpattern. Also Textpattern uses Textile, a built-in web text generator, which lets you style your text in less awkward ways than HTML.
On WordPress I use Markdown, which is a similar generator and available as a WordPress plug-in.
But there’s one thing, which would let me drop WordPress: PHP.
WordPress is built with PHP. PHP applications tend to be more of a security issue for Internet servers than other comparable solutions. Therefore I really would like to remove PHP from my server to avoid security holes. Okay, some people will hate me for having written this.
If I’ll get my stuff together I may switch to an all Ruby version running a self-built blog using Ruby on Rails.
We’ll see.
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