Leaving WordPress – and Finding WordPress?

UPDATES BELOW on TypePad and Blogger! (This post has turned into a short history of my exploration of three blogging platforms, my reactions as I went along, and what I finally decided was right for me.)

I’ve been thinking of braving the commercial blogging world for my Work Coach blog. Yes…I’ve read the forums and know I may soon be raking in pennies rather than megabucks. But then again…ya never know. Plus I think it will motivate me to grow the blog into something even more meaningful for me – hopefully still keeping it warm and welcoming.

Although I’ve been a huge fan of WordPress.com, moving to WordPress.ORG just seemed to be a little scary. Where would my lifelines come from? I decided to look for a place that promised more hand-holding and less need for a techie brain. I’d already tried Blogger and wasn’t a big fan, although I know many are happy enough there. A friend told me about TypePad, where I am now taking advantage of their trial period.

While I think TypePad’s a pretty good place for an absolute beginner or someone who’s never sipped at the WordPress well, I found it clunky and less than user-friendly when it came to navigation. For instance, there’s no edit link on your posts! Now I did find a jerry-rigged fix that involved some CSS in Advanced Template, I think, but quite honestly…I just had visions of my whole blog blowing up. And the TypeLists were just not as easy for me to work with as our good old widgets here at WordPress.com.

And so, although I had dismissed WordPress dot org as something way beyond me, I started looking at it again. It actually appears to offer an amazing amount of cool code and generous geek user support out there. Also cyber-friends using it assure me it is the way to go. They just love it.

If you’ve been reading the message boards of late, you’ll see a lot of really pissed users raking the WordPress gang over the coals for 2.5. Migration glitches aside (I’ve worked on major system implementations and migrations to new platforms and it’s often a rough ride at first), we’ve got a good thing going here. And it’s all free to WordPress dot commers. While I would have appreciated some notice and maybe a bit more input on things, I gotta say that what we have here runs rings around the other two biggies I looked at.

And so…ever so gently and with some trepidation still remaining, it looks like I’ll probably be moving my Work Coach blog to WordPress.org. I still have a lot to figure out, but having found Blue Host (they have an easy handy-dandy download of WP 2.5 from their site, or so I’m told), I feel pretty good that going with them will be one of my first steps toward the oft-reviled and yet temptingly multi-faceted and hopefully exciting world of commercial blogging.

Thoughts. Advice. All appreciated. Wish me luck!

NEWSFLASH (4-14-08): I’m reconsidering this move after spending a whole day checking out 3-column WP.org themes and what it would take to customize them for my purposes. Not sure I have the desire to get that far into code and I am not crazy about any of them as is. TypePad has its pluses and minuses, but I see WP.org does too.

And so my research continues. Hopefully I’ll know within the next 9 days when my free TypePad trial expires! But even if I do wind up at TypePad, I think WP.com is an amazing place and will probably keep one or two blogs here too.

Will update this again when I know for sure what I’m doing.

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FINAL DECISION ON TYPEPAD (4-19-08): No way! Even though I am not in love with any 3-column theme I’ve found yet for WordPress.ORG (I’m still looking), in all other ways WordPress runs rings around Typepad as far as I’m concerned. Although I know TypePad is a fine platform for many people (especially beginners who want to have ads), it doesn’t offer the flexibility, administrative navigability and (visual) comment differentiation I want, need and have come to love using WordPress. (TypePad does have a nice clean look though!)

Not even sure if I want to take Work Coach commercial any more; part of me wants to keep it as something I do from the heart – not that earning a few dollars would change that part, I hope. But if I do go commercial, I’m most likely going with WordPress.org and Blue Host.

Just had a thought. To be fair and to make sure I’m not missing out on an obvious good alternative, before making my next platform choice, I’m going to give Blogger another chance. It’s been over a year since I tried it and, with Google being who Google is, I’ll bet it’s had some cool changes with more to come. Here I go. Stay tuned.

Later this same day: I was wrong about Blogger having changed much at all since I last tried it at the end of 2006. Wouldn’t you think Google would bring it up to the 21st century? It’s ok, but it’s no WordPress.

Most critical to my decision, Blogger doesn’t allow me to edit comments. Since my comment responses often contain advice/encouragement and I often go back and add more info or tweak my words after I post the comment, I need to be able to edit them. But ya can’t. (I do understand that it protects others from having their words changed which is an understandable design decision, but I at least need to be able to edit MY words on my own blog!)

And so Blogger is OUT!

Ok. Gotta say it. WordPress rocks. It’s an amazing system, no matter how many things needed a little fixing after the implementation of the new 2.5. Implementations are often a little rocky at first. But what they delivered is phenomenal compared to anything else that’s out there. And I am NOT paid to say that.

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NOTE: I’m still officially on break here. Just had to share all this.

Tags: Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress