Dear WordPress,
In short, you rock.
The longer version goes like this:
I used to write on blogger and other sub par blogging platforms. One of my friends started a blog on WordPress back in ’08 and called out “red rover, red rover” but I refused to come over.
Then I started this little site (at that time under www.literating.wordpress.com) and over the course of a few months you courted me over to your side of the playground with your customizable dashboards, your superior statistics and your content-oriented approach to blogging. Good content ranks above anything and everything else here.
I thought it couldn’t get any better. Man I was wrong…
These last eighteen months you have continued to tweak our experience. You added the top bar for easy navigation. You added an insta-stat button (soon to redirect to the dashboard!), the follow button up top for registered users, down low for unregistered and in dashboard for blog authors and administrators. In addition, you created the notification flash in the top righthand corner. At first this only meant we’d know when someone commented or what have you, but NOW we can both see via icon what type of notification we’re receiving AND we can respond to comments on our blog or to those elusive follow-up comments on other blogs. You know the type: those comments that get lost on the threshing floor of content consumption.
Over all, you’re taking your already fantastic content-focus and adding the perks of social media sites. You keep integrating, networking and streamlining our production-oriented culture here, and I think that’s just grand. Short story long, these subtle tweaks have made WordPress an even better place to write, which, in my humble opinion, is truly saying something. Keep tweaking.
With love, kudos, hugs and kisses,
Lancey
i couldn’t agree with you more. i was over at tumblr for a while and i couldn’t figure out what in the hell was going on. nice template choice too. i had the exact same one before i bought a premie, mainly because i loved this one, but it has no sidebar…
Yeah, I used to use one with a sidebar back in the day but it got way too cluttered over time. I like it clean, like Mark Neunschwander’s site (from the lieber award post a couple of days ago).
I’d rather dump everything on the bottom and keep it all in pages, but I understand your switch.
All hail the WordPress.
You have stuff on the bottom? I just assumed you were running a barebones blog. I never scroll down that far. I wonder what percentage of readers do.
A decent amount. I get several clicks down there for various things. My primary purpose, however, isn’t the widgets. It’s content and web presence for my freelance writing business. Those get hits like nothing else and render the other stuff on bottom irrelevant.
However, regular readers still know where to go for the search bars, archives and categories.
That said, I also understand the philosophy of a sidebar. It’s just detrimental for what I’m doing.
You are certainly right with everything you say there. Its also nice to have a form of social media, where changes are both productive and appreciated.
I was just lucky that word press was the first and only blog site that i have used.
Haha, yeah you were. Seriously, it’s almost like a community of creative manufacturers. I love it.
thats how i’m finding it-I wrote a blog after a month from beginning, in which i commented on the amazing amount of knowledge and creativity just floating around WordPress. Its fantastic proof of what can be learnt from others.
Truth. That and the amount of synergy working with other people who are more concerned with producing great works of art and culture and everything else than they are with consuming it.
Great article you have there my friend
Thanks, jake. Good to have you back.
Yap since akismet fix my site
Haha. Sweet.
[...] VS Production—As I said in the gushy post about WordPress’ awesomeness, I value production-oriented social media over consumption-oriented. Facebook is the latter—a [...]