Well the website isn’t going anywhere just yet– it’s been granted a stay for at least another year. That leaves me with a decision to make; do I revive this website and post to it for the next 12 months, or do I leave it stagnant until it’s time to pull the plug?
It’s a conundrum that is a little bit more complex than it might seem. This website has its share of problems. It seems like my theme breaks a little more with each new WordPress update. Every time I have something tweaked and set up just the way I want it, everything crashes and burns, and I have to make the decision to either scrap it and rebuild it differently, or spend precious time re-configuring it to work again… until the next WordPress update breaks it all over again. Third-party plugins can be great but they are constantly breaking.
However, the alternative that I have been using, Squarespace, has issues of its own. For one, it looks like Squarespace. There is a good amount of flexibility with their development tools (my wife was able to make her site look absolutely incredible) but it took at least a week or two of dedicated work to make it look that way. Not only do I not have the motivation to do that, I don’t have the time. On top of that, I can’t help but feel like Squarespace was only ever meant to do two things; e-commerce and portfolios. Those two things, it does very well. But, while it has a blog feature, it was obviously not the focus. Blogging on it is shit. Hopping in and writing a quick post is not a thing in Squarespace. It’s a whole process to create a post. It’s not fun.
That is where WordPress, for all it’s aggravating flaws, really shines for me. I am a blogger. And wordpress is far more user-friendly in the posting department. I can hop in (like I am now) and just jot down my thoughts. There is no tweaking of the formatting to be done. Featured images and excerpts can be done inside the post. Everything is done by the time I click ‘publish.’
And it’s cheaper. Squarespace is fucking expensive. There’s no way around it. $30 a month for something that is not generating even a passing income for me right now is a lot of money.
BUT, WordPress is horrible at showcasing work. Yes, it has galleries, and slideshows, and lightboxes, and those are all fine, but the security on WordPress is barely passable, and any kind of paywall, at least in my experience, can be bypassed quite easily by anyone with a working knowledge of html.
HOWEVER, WordPress offers me 100% control over everything, whereas Squarespace kinda keeps everything in a little walled garden. Sure, there’s a lot that can be edited and manipulated, but you’re really only changing things in pre-approved methods allowed by their engine. In other words, if they don’t want you implementing a CSS, you’re not implementing a CSS. WordPress is completely open-platform, and it can be (and has been) torn apart and rebuild to suit whatever a person’s needs may be.
The main reason I always liked this WordPress site was mainly its ease of use. The initial setup and visual style always takes the most time, but once your theme is customized and everything is set, all you have to do is post. And there’s not much out there that is faster or more convenient. I barely post to my Squarespace site, and I can’t help but wonder if the reason for that is because everything requires so much time. Not only am I writing the post, but I am formatting the text, dropping images that then have to be moved around and scaled using their grid-based, drag-and-drop system (that always seems to have more fucking padding than it needs. THEN, after I’ve done all the formatting and nudging and scaling, I have to click on the mobile view and do it all over again, because the two are exclusive. I hate that.
WordPress will squeeze and scale and re-format that shit on its own. And while it might get janky sometimes, and some things just won’t ever look right, 90% of the time it’s fine. And let’s be honest, I’m not creating a fucking masterpiece here.
So that’s my problem. Do I go for the cleaner, more professional look of a more expensive, less fun website, or stick with the fun, janky, inexpensive and accessible website, that very well might be giving up the ghost in a year?
I guess we’ll find out.
