Jan Olof Bengtsson

I have had only a few problems with WordPress, and I have discussed some of them in earlier posts. Recently they decided to move the Site Stats to the WordPress.com site, so that the Dashboad sidebar is no longer accessible on the same page; it takes a time-consuming new, extra click to get there, and still more clicks to get elsewhere in the blog. Moreover, the new Stats Page is not as well organized as the old one: it takes ages to scroll down to see some of the stats.

This is a considerable drawbacks. Yet the advantages of WordPress still outweigh problems of this kind. The charming “Happiness Engineers” – no irony: they are wonderful – always responded remarkably quickly and, wiht the exception of the new Stats Page, have always done everything they can, even at the time when I paid nothing.

I have of course considered starting my own personal website. Although I could make such a website that is as good as this WordPress site (most personal websites are much worse in terms of design and organization than standard WordPress Themes), I can’t really see what I would add on such a site that isn’t already available here. Standard WordPress blogs are often much better in the most important respects than personal websites. There is not even any need to “stand out from the crowd” through some more extraordinary Theme. That often just distracts the attention from what should be the really important, the content. I like the clean, simple, stripped-down, basic, and shared design and features of WordPress and my Theme.

If it started going in the wrong direction, like Facebook which has simply abolished most of the important and valuable functions it used to have, or if the bugs and  problems accumulated, I would certainly start my own website after all. But this is very definitely not the case. WordPress is excellent. I try to bring the few and minor bugs and other problems to their attention, so that they can continue to develop it towards perfection.

As I have often stressed, there are of course fantastic technological potentialities for the further development of this new form of publication and communication. I think all writers, of all kinds, should understand this. There is, one increasingly feels, something missing today when they don’t have a WordPress or similar site. At the very least, they should use them for advertising what they publish elsewhere. Blogs are personalizing, and potentially personalistic – as Facebook used to be.