4 ms·
Blogging platform: Wordpress or Webby?
I'm relaunching my blog and I'm considering two platforms, Wordpress and Webby/Webgen/staticfiles. I plan to use disqus comments for both, and my requirements include easy embedding of media and syntax-colored code.
Wordpress:
* Simple to set up
* Can write in HTML or use WYSIWYTYG editor. Can post from external clients that support Atom Publishing Protocol or Wordpress's XML-RPC. Can easily post from anywhere.
* Disqus plugin incorporates comment text into the actual page without javascript, so Google can index comments at my site
* Plugins provide relatively painless media embedding
* No good source embedding, but gist.github's secret .pibb format (http://gist.github.com/15914.pibb) provides a stop-gap solution, and I'm sure I could get someone to write a plugin to automate that.
* It's written in PHP and MySQL, and I hate PHP and MySQL.
* Since of course I will immediately become famous and widely read, Wordpress's dynamic page generation could be a performance issue.
Webby:
* More complex to set up -- I have to write posts, run the generator on them, and then upload them to the site. This can be automated, but it's still a higher level of effort.
* Can write in HTML, Markdown, whatever. Can write in my favorite editor easily. However, if there's infrastructure for the blog on my personal machine, I can't easily post from other machines.
* Disqus integration would happen via javascript; Google would index comments at the disqus page.
* Media embedding is more difficult, though a few custom template tags can make this easier.
* Excellent and very customizable source embedding.
* Not written in PHP and MySQL.
* Static files scale very well.
On the whole, I'm leaning towards using Wordpress, due to a lower amount of up-front effort needed, but I thought I'd get your comments, if you have any to offer.
- sidsavara 18y agoI vote for wordpress. I don't know about the source embedding, but Wordpress performance can be significantly improved through WP-Super Cache (which basically generates static HTML files, IIRC). I use WP-Cache, and that has worked fine for me through a couple spikes (5K visitors one day when I hit Hacker News, was also Stumbled, etc). I think the main concern comes down to how important embedding source code is, and whether there are any good wordpress plugins that do that. I don't know the answer to that. Also, Wordpress is relatively painless to backup, move between hosts, upgrade, etc. I cannot speak for Webby, it may also be solid.
- dchest 18y agoOr, better, WP-Super-Cache. It makes static files.
- dshah 18y agoI'd pick WordPress. Sure, static files might scale better, but handling traffic is not usually the problem for most people. Getting traffic is.
- matthall28 18y agoWordpress all the way. Just use WP-Super-Cache. Scales very well.
- hbien 18y agoI'd vote for Wordpress, just use a cache plugin which will generate static pages. Unless you're going to do a _lot_ of hacking on it. Because if you don't like to work with PHP/MySQL and you're planning on hacking the internals a lot, you should pick a platform implemented in your language of choice.
- charlesju 18y agoI might get flamed for saying this, but I really enjoy using blogger. I have my blog at a standard domain name, www.charlesju.com, and I have that domain name go straight to my blogger account. I think Blogger really provides everything you need for a good blog: 1. Analytics through Google Analytics 2. Some extra $$$ through AdSense 3. Auto-saving editing for blog posts I just go tired of having to constantly worry about upgrading my Wordpress plug-in or making sure I pay for hosting and all that jazz, I'd rather just let Google take care of that stuff for me.
- shabda 18y agoWordpress - There are a lot of awesome free and premium themes to choose from.
- burke 18y agoWebby is sort of cool for static sites, but it didn't make a good blog at all, for me at least.