Yes, there was already a blog Berni’s ~page existing, before this one. I explained in my previous frontpage, why I selected Serendipity (aka S9Y) for my first blog and finally I came to the conclusion, that I was simply wrong.
S9Y is a pretty nice blogging software, if you really want to write articles periodically and don’t need more advanced features like static pages, tags, enhanced customization of navigation. I’m pretty sure, all of those things can be done with S9y as well, but it’s always a question of flexibility and time.
I’m doing a lot of coding stuff in my various jobs and for other opportunity, but when I decided to open my own weblog it was not only, because it’s fancy and hey – everyone does. I also had in my mind a supportive, easy to handle administration front end, that could be flexible enough to have some static content which is always displayed above the articles, some convenient cross linking, support for frontpages, a plugin framework, a lot of (working) themes and so on and so on…
To be clear here: WordPress (aka WP) does not fulfill my requirements completely either, but it is more at the edge of what I expected. And finally I did not get rid of the feeling, that S9Y is not updated as recently as WP is.
So I decided to take a break during Xmas ’07 and move my content from S9Y to WP. I thought to last about a few hours, at the end it took my nearly a week. So again, forget all the nice promises, and yes, it’s very likely that you need to take a close look at the CSS and PHP sources to get the results you always dreamed of. I hope you fell comfortable with the new layout and the backside engine as well, at least in terms of navigation there should be a superior enhancement.
This blog was initialy using WordPress version 2.2. Here are some tips, specific to this distribution:
- Replace the existing editor, which is pretty bullshit. Even the „advanced mode“, accessible via
SHIFT+ALT+V, is redicolous, if you like full control over code. I recommend to install Dean’s FCKEditor For WordPress. - Add the WP Navigation Tool (NAVT) plugin. It gives you complete control of navigation elements, like sidebars. On the other hand, you need themes, that support WP widgets.
- Use tags (e.g. through Simple Tagging) if you want to realize grouping content with using catagories.
For tips to the current version 2.7.1, please refer to my upgrade experiences. If you are still unclear, which version to choose for your own blog, read my tips.