Thread

One of my old standby pieces of advice on blogging used to be absolute: When you want to set up a blog quickly and you want just a blog, Wordpress is the way to go. This past week, I’ve learned just how wrong my own advice was.

I have only been using EE since November, and I have not set up a Wordpress blog in the meantime. Last week, a friend wanted a blog: She wanted more control than Typepad and she wanted a few unique design elements. We figured that Wordpress was the ticket.

I’ll say this for it, the interface is a thing of beauty. But after that, the amusement factor wears thin FAST. Especially when you want something that doesn’t look like every other canned Wordpress theme out there. Over and over, I found myself asking… “why the !@#$% can’t it just do this like EE?”

After a few hours of angst, I found myself just building what we wanted using the EE Core hassle-free. (We’ll go up to the Personal Edition shortly). I guess my point is this: Once you get used to being able to do darned near anything you want with EE, going back to the so-called “easy” world of Wordpress is frustrating. And confining.

Nevertheless, I hope the rest of the blogging world continues its love affair with Wordpress. In a sea of look-alike MistyLook-themed blogs, it sure is easy to look extraordinary by doing the most basic things with EE.

But please don’t spread the word: I want to continue giving people the very mistaken impression that I am some sort of Web development ninja.
:lol:

You make a good point.

I’ve been using EE for a while (even when it was pmachine), and I can’t imagine using anything else.

EE is the only way i shout for, if it comes to basic semi sized “blog-type” sites. After almost 2 year of EE for me and i still get “photoshop related” ideas with EE, like “oh maan, i can do this also if i just…”.

Sorry but i spread my word about EE =)

Cheers:
- Pete

I still have two sites using Movable Type (one is my own personal site - I know I know - cobblers shoes and all that) and whilst I expended a huge amount of time learning MT inside out to build these and several other sites when I go back now to update bits it leaves me cold! I won’t do any major updates on either site now as it would be time better spent on migrating them over to EE and I am leaving my personal site for use as a testbed when EE2 is released.

No-one has come and asked me for a simple blog for a couple of years now - I guess there are plenty of great on-line options available now but when I discuss peoples needs with them its always a lot lot more than just a blog that they really want.

One of my old standby pieces of advice on blogging used to be absolute: When you want to set up a blog quickly and you want just a blog, Wordpress is the way to go.

Yep. Unless you want something different than the WP blogs everyone else uses. Then…

I’ll say this for it, the interface is a thing of beauty. But after that, the amusement factor wears thin FAST. Especially when you want something that doesn’t look like every other canned Wordpress theme out there.

Yep. The CP is sweet, pleasant, elegant, self-explanatory, laudatory, organic, but the rest of what it does, all that high fructose corn syrupy CP gets into your gut and begins to crawl…

Once you get used to being able to do darned near anything you want with EE, going back to the so-called “easy” world of Wordpress is frustrating. And confining.

But, how can that be? EE’s CP is sooooo 1999. Tags are impossible for anyone but a programmer to figure out. Template groups, templates, categories, weblogs? They’re a nightmare to organize.

Not.

What’s the word on EE 2.0? Any new videos from the EE folks lounging around in Texas?