

Blog: roll my own or just use Wordpress? - czep

I&#x27;m not a serious blogger but like to create posts about once a month.  I hate vanilla wordpress, but its feature set and ui is much better than anything I could write on my own.  I wrote a basic blog app using django, but I hate having to support it.  Have others struggled with this choice, what did you decide?
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davismwfl
To me it is more about what do you want to do more, create and support your
own blog software just so you can post once or twice a month or just use
something that works so you can write. From my own experience if I have to
create/support the code, I stop writing consistently and fail to post.

Wordpress is a bit of a beast, but it just works. The security concerns while
not improper, are just not that worrisome for a basic blog. Wordpress can be
plenty secure if you keep plugins to a minimum and follow best practices.

Ghost is a great option, and way more back to basics blogging to me. e.g. it
gets rid of all the noise of trying to be everything to everyone which
minimizes the security risks etc. This would be the direction I would
recommend personally.

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mtmail
Avoid the headache of upgrading software when you really want to focus on
writing. There are more blogging platforms besides wordpress.
[https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/) or
[http://squarespace.com/home/overview/](http://squarespace.com/home/overview/)
come to mind.

~~~
MalcolmDiggs
Thumbs up for Ghost. Switched to Ghost a few months ago and absolutely love
it.

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detaro
Wordpress has way to many security problems, especially if you use plugins, as
that I would want to administer it myself. Especially since wordpress is so
popular and you can assume that vulnerabilities are actively exploited very
quickly.

A static site generator, something hosted or even a more modern, less popular
platform takes away a lot of that pressure.

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dsacco
This isn't really true.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has a good security team and an
active bug bounty program. They respond to reported vulnerabilities,
especially serious ones, extremely swiftly. Furthermore, a good hosting
service will eliminate almost all the security issues Automattic doesn't
catch.

If you get a good host (e.g. WPEngine) you can automate backups and security
updates, and the host will constantly monitor your account for suspicious
activity and known-vulnerable plugins. It will even notify you if you install
an unsafe plugin and automatically uninstall it.

I run my own information security blog on WordPress. I have comments disabled,
I'm careful about what plugins I install (because let's be honest, there
aren't many you really need) and WPEngine constantly scans my entire
installation for suspicious activity or evidence of an intrusion. Aside from a
0day, there isn't much an attacker can do to compromise me.

Looking past alleged security issues, WordPress is a very established, robust
and mature CMS for people who want stability and customization for their blog
platform. I highly recommend it.

~~~
detaro
So you don'd administer it yourself, but use a managed service. Which is
exactly what I suggested as an alternative, because it means that you have
someone monitoring it and taking care of it and don't have to take care of
quickly installing updates and stuff.

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thenomad
Having done both, repeatedly: use Wordpress or another blogging platform (I
hear good things about Jekyll but haven't used it).

The feature set issue looks small, but becomes bigger the more time you spend
on the single piece of blogging software. And the bigger and more sprawling
your homebrew system becomes, the slower it is to add additional features, and
the more likely you are to introduce bugs or security issues...

On that subject, security's another major problem. SEO comment spammers are
persistent, and if they discover a way that your blogging code isn't secure,
they'll hammer you. WP, provided you keep it up to date, has a lot more eyes
making sure it's secure than you do.

(Counter-argument: if you're not going to keep the install up to date, don't
go WP. You WILL get hacked.)

~~~
czep
I tried jekyll and it is an excellent compromise, providing all the goodness
of a flexible templating and layout system with the ease and server-lessness
of static pages. Combined with s3-website, it took me about 3 hours to rebuild
my blog (mostly time spent editing old posts into markdown).

Thanks for all these recommendations!

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Someone1234
Wordpress.

It is extremely customisable. There are tens of thousands of themes and many
themes can be heavily customised within their own right.

Even assuming you wrote your own blogging platform you still have to write a
lot of the useful Wordpress addons like WP Super Cache, Google XML Sitemaps,
and so on.

I'd honest think it would be a better use of your time to write your own
Wordpress theme end to end, than to write your own blogging platform, at least
the theme you could likely sell (as opposed to your own, unsupported, blogging
solution).

I'm no Wordpress fan boy, but it "just works" out of the box, and the only
real downside I can name is I wish it didn't have so many security issues (and
"apply this now!" critical patches).

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bzalasky
For something that gets updated once a month, I'd go with a static site
generator. I like [https://middlemanapp.com/](https://middlemanapp.com/). If
that seems like too much work, you should just write on Medium.

Having used WordPress heavily in the past, I wouldn't go near it for my own
site. It's a great option if you need a CMS for non-technical contributors,
but I find I can get things done much faster writing in my editor of choice.
As others have mentioned, security is something you need to stay on top of...

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dusenberrymw
[http://jekyllrb.com](http://jekyllrb.com) is a great static site generator
for blogging, and can be paired with GitHub Pages for free hosting.

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runjake
I avoid WordPress self-installs due to its poor track record on security, so
I'm currently using [http://jekyllrb.com](http://jekyllrb.com).

However, there's something to be said for just being able to open up a page on
WordPress and start typing away.

The (albeit small) speed bump to getting a new post going in Jekyll has kept
me from posting/writing many times. It's slightly cumbersome. I may switch to
WordPress.com or something, soon.

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r3bl
I used Wordpress for six months before I have decided to move to Jekyll, and
it _is_ amazing!

Jekyll sits somewhere between Wordpress and manually coding your own website.

I have listed all of my reasons here, so you might want to take a look at it:
[http://r3bl.github.io/en/why-switching-to-github-and-
jekyll/](http://r3bl.github.io/en/why-switching-to-github-and-jekyll/)

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justfalcon
I'd stick with Wordpress. Find a template you like, it'll be worth the $40-60
to not have to constantly support a custom app for something like blogging.

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Bioto
If you enjoy coding and are willing to spend hours at a time upgrading and
maintaining your own blogging platform go for it. If you want to just post
content then go with a blogging platform, but before you settle on one try a
few of them out!

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jpetersonmn
"...is much better than anything I could write on my own"

Seems like that's your answer.

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Mz
I am less technically proficient than a lot of people here. I know a little
HTML and CSS and I used to hand-code my own sites. I moved them to Word Press
to try to stop spending all my time on coding and, instead, focus more on
content creation and general development. I was very frustrated with Word
Press because of the amount of time I spent a) updating the backend and b)
looking for a better template that I liked more than whatever I had settled
for initially.

I ultimately moved everything to BlogSpot. I am much happier and I spend much
more time on actual development of content and layout and so on.

/Unpopular Google loyalist pov

