I moved my websites off of WordPress several years ago due to the security problems I was having and the complexity of customizing themes. There were just too many files in too many places to modify when customizing a theme to suit me. So I switched to Grav and found its straightforward approach was what I needed.
Over time, the direct coding required for Grav became a problem because I would take breaks, sometimes long breaks, between posting and site modifications. When I got started again, I almost had to learn Grav all over. Looking for a way to use a more drag-and-drop interface, I switched to Squarespace. And it was a good, if somewhat expensive, thing. But now I’m looking at a $200/year subscription with few options for transferring my content to another host or platform.
All this switching around reminds me that I should recommend maintaining your domain name registration somewhere separate from your hosting. I use Hover and have for years. Whenever I’ve changed hosts, or even email providers, it’s been easy to go back to Hover and redirect my domain to wherever I need it to go.
All that to say WordPress has changed a great deal since my last experience and for the better. Its security holes seem to have been made smaller and I’m not getting any SPAM, yet, for the test site I have running. And better still is the Full Site Editing features of the current versions. This block editing approach works a lot like Squarespace and makes it easy to modify a site’s theme and create new content.
The wide range of themes available for WordPress is another thing in its favor. Many are excellent and some are even free. I’m experimenting with the free Mesa WPEX theme using my own customizations and I like it. The design is clean and attractive with the ability to fine tune it to my needs and preferences.
Plug-ins are the blessing and the bane for WordPress users. There are so many available to do about anything you can think of, too much temptation arises to keep adding and adding. Each plug-in is a potential security flaw and the more plug-ins the more the possibility of plug-in interference. I will try to keep plug-ins to just the ones I am sure I need.
WordPress is already the leading platform for websites on the Internet. The block editor and the range of supporting themes make WordPress even harder to beat. It looks like I’ll be using it for things I want to make online.
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