Alex Hardy

Joe Trotter, in post entitled “God I Hate WordPress”, writes:

I have a penchant for knowing - just, well, knowing - when a blog or website is powered by Wordpress. You know? Way too many links in the sidebar or header, usually styled the same way? Info all over the place? A candidly modified Kubrick theme? Referring to static pages as, omigod, Pages?

*Looks around my blog design. Hmm.*

WordPress sites tend to be a bit simple and standardised in layout, but I would have said the same of CSS-based sites in general a couple of years ago. At the time, I remembered the learning curve and put this down to designers getting to grips with new techniques.

WordPress, like Movable Type is just a database and a set of tools for content creation and presentation. It can’t be held accountable for the shortcomings of a site’s design. That would just be a poor workman blaming his tools.

Templates also have their place. They allow people who lack the design skills, or perhaps simply the time, to get a site up and running. I have valued my first few months using the standard Kubrick theme because it was a discovery phase. It removed the barrier to writing, and allowed the content of my site to develop organically.

When I released this design for my site, I made no bones about the fact that this is Version 1.0 and that I had been modest in my attempts to customise the standard layout. As I observe trends in what I choose to write about, future redesigns of this site will support that to greater degree.

If Trotter chooses to abandon WordPress as a backlash against its ubiquity, I think that’s a bizarre decision. If as he says, he seriously aspires to have a blog as highly regarded as John Gruber’s Daring Fireball, it will be the quality of his writing that achieves that. It will have nothing to do with his blogging platform of choice.

Posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 10:12 am under Design, Toolbox, Web standards. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.