On WordPress, Why It Rocks

Edit: I offer to install your self­hosted Word­Press, and explain how it’s done in this post. I also point out why you should move. Whether it be jimdo, tum­blr, blogspot, live­jour­nal. Word­Press is always the best solu­tion. I also hate GFC.

Those of you who got the ques­tion­able honor of read­ing my rants, com­ments, reviews, tweets.. know that I love Word­Press, and start to dis­like Blogspot/Blogger. Not those who use it, just the plat­form. I espe­cially dis­like GFC and would like to have every­one over here, where great reviews are writ­ten and stun­ning books are read.

Yes, on WordPress.

And is it any won­der? Come on, let’s face it, the coolest blogs are over here. (No, I’m not includ­ing mine this time.)

You know, I would even help you. You buy your web­space (mine costs ~30 bucks a year, there are cheaper and more expen­sive ones) and I’ll do the rest for you. Huh, what do you think?

I mean, yes, you have to find your favorite theme, but I’ll install it, I’ll install all impor­tant plu­g­ins, explain how Word­Press works, I will freak­ing do that. All you have to do is export your blog­ger (jimdo, live­jour­nal, tum­blr) posts, mail me and there you go.

Please?

Do you really need rea­sons? Really? How is that:

1. Cus­tom every­thing: Post types, post for­mats, pages, textfields, com­ment­forms, search­forms, cat­e­gories and tags (click to see a picture), …
2. Plu­g­ins: We have every­thing here. You can even make your blog a freak­ing SHOP, damn it. Want to check the Word­Press Plu­gin Direc­tory out? Do it here.
3. Com­ments: You know what I mean, right? Is it even pos­si­ble to prop­erly answer to com­ments on Blogspot? Is there a hier­ar­chy func­tion? But here, you get the per­fect com­ment form, tem­plate and noti­fi­ca­tions. (There is a plu­gin that enables you to only be noti­fied if your com­ment has been replied to– No 300 emails anymore!)
4. WYSIWYG Edi­tor: For those who don’t use HTML, we have the per­fect WYSIWYG Edi­tor and it is cus­tomiz­able. Tables? Head­ers? Lists and nested lists/blockquotes? The “more” thing? We. Have. It. All.
5. Word­Press Stats: You don’t need any other coun­ters, you have Word­Press stats and it works prop­erly. You know what I’m talk­ing about, don’t try to pre­tend you don’t. ; )
6. Themes: There is no pro­fes­sional col­lec­tion of blog themes as there is for Word­Press. You go from free themes to those you might have to pay for, but every theme designer who is worth the salt in their blood, knows how to do a Word­Press theme. We have Frame­works, blogth­emes that are done and can still be cus­tomized – i.e. via Drag and Drop!

Add to that the com­mu­nity, the many things you will LEARN, the pro­fes­sional look and here you go. Word­Press. And come on, it is 2012. Isn’t it time for you to become one of us?

Why Blogspot and Blog­ger suck won’t do:

Seri­ously? Seri­ously?

Next to deac­ti­vat­ing your accounts and blogs, next to mak­ing it impos­si­ble for you to fol­low OTHER blogs not hosted by blogspot? Next to all the times GFC does not work any­way, and next to the read­ers you lose because your blogs needs an hour to load because you took the lib­erty of includ­ing snowflakes, you really need other rea­sons? Next to not giv­ing you the chance to say NO to updates? Really?

Blogspot is cute, yeah. But you ain’t cute, you are a kick-ass book­blog­ger, right? Blogspot is your evil step­mother, tak­ing away your free­dom and all of that.

So, get the heck up, pay the 20–30 bucks a year and get your­self a WordPress.org blog!

Who did it, who’s been here all along, and who plans to do it: The Gram­mar­ian Reviews, The Bewitched Book­worms, The Story Siren, Dear Author.. The first three explain why, too.

Some point out how easy it is to change things here on Goodreads, oth­ers point out that it’s hor­ri­ble to know that Blogspot could delete your blog at any time with­out your con­sense. And all agree on this: Word­Press rocks.

Oh and have you noticed how the most amaz­ing author blogs are hosted by Word­Press? Ilona Andrews, any­one? Jea­nine Frost? Both have themes from here, if I recall cor­rectly, by the way:

So, in con­clu­sion we have this:

1. Word­Press rocks
2. Blogspot does not
3. You should move your blog
4. I will do it for you, if you don’t have the time or patience to do it. For free. (Or for a book ROFL)

But wait, maybe you’re all indipen­dent and want to do it your­self. It’s easy, too:

1. Down­load Word­Press (here)
1. Maybe test it on a local server for free, to see if you work out.
2. Work out
2. Buy a wespace and domain (as I’ve said, I paid roughly 30 bucks)
3. Cre­ate your own data­base, write down your name and password
4. Down­load Filezilla (here)
5. Open it, fill in your other name and pass­wort to access your webserver
1. Open the wp-config-sample.php and con­fig­ure it (fill in your data­base name and password)
6. Upload Word­Press
1. Open your web-address, do the 5 min­utes installation
7. Click on Tools – Import/Export and Import your Blogger.xml
8. Install some plu­g­ins and your theme
1. Maybe do a research to find the best ones!
9. Inform your fol­low­ers, change your feeds, update your twitter/goodreads/facebook/networked blogs
10. Your blog is now made of awesome!

Some of these things might take more time, but not that much. I’ve heard there are actu­ally peo­ple who want you to pay 100 bucks for that. (Includ­ing WordPress.com, but I can see why there) but in my opin­ion, it is worth maybe 10–20 bucks, because look at the above, please. If it’s your job and you offer ser­vice and know that there are dozens of peo­ple.. Yeah. But I still think.. 10–20 bucks. Or a Mass Mar­ket Paper­back ROFL. ; ) Or for free, because it ain’t my job.

So from now on, if you want to move or know some­one who wants to, I’ll freak­ing do the job for you, just come over here and stop using GFC!!! >_<

If you are a for­mer blogspot blog­ger and have moved to Word­Press, or if you are a nor­mal Word­Press blog­ger, please share what you think about Word­Press. (You can just copy­paste the: “WORDPRESS ROCKS” part, of course) Oh and no, you can very well tell me why you like Blogspot, but I can’t imag­ine any­one mov­ing from Word­Press to Blogspot and think­ing that it’s been the best choice of their life.. Care to prove me wrong? (And while you’re at it, you can also teach us how to breath under water. *grin*)

Edit: I did not mean to offend any­one. This is my sort of humor and if it did insult you, I am sin­cerely sorry and apol­o­gize. I won’t re-write this post, because I’m not a fan of it and I don’t want to any­way. Your blog plat­form does not change the per­son you are or your blog’s con­tent and I thought that it was obvi­ous and that it was obvi­ous I thought so.