When I set out in my mind to create a bit of a travel back in early 2012 for Kitty and I to use while travelling through Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong I quickly threw one together using the “Build me a WordPress Blog” type function within my GoDaddy account.
The result was functional and quite neat. However the automated offering meant that it didn’t update as cleanly, nor did plug-ins work exactly as expected. Probably because of the version/update lagging.
So upon our return (and despite the lack of use) I jumped onto http://download.wordpress.com and grabbed the latest release and ran the install over the existing one, suddenly we had a cleaner interface, and every plug-in we wanted just worked. We still hardly used it though 🙂
So when it came time to make this Blog dream a reality I reached for the same tool.
Well lets put this into a timeline:
- 3pm – Decide today I’m “Going to do it”
- 3:15pm – Buy Domain using GoDaddy (already have an account so that’s just a few clicks)
- 3:30pm – It probably didn’t take 15 minutes but there’s always a minute or three between clicking the “Shutup and take my money” button and having the domains available to bind to the hosting control. Anyway I did it. Now I can hear you screaming “You host with Go Daddy? What are you? Stupid?” – Yeah it’s cheap and somewhat cheerful, but it works for me. I have more hardcore Hosting through http://stormhosts.com which has been excellent for a number years.
- 3:45pm – The Domains are bound to the file system, the permissions set so the config script can do its thing. The MySQL Database created.
- 4pm – I’ve hit the Install page and bam the famous 5-minute process works.
- 6pm – I’ve tweaked the design, set up my preferred initial plug-ins, written a page and a couple of posts. I’ve also fed the fleet of cats and tinkered with settings on our other WordPress site.
Yeah it’s safe to say that 3 hours go-to-whoa for anything in IT is not too shabby, especially when it’s multi-tasked around other things. The result, while not bespoke is neat and clean, much better than my stagnant design skills could achieve and best of all everything is just a one-click config away.
So yes, I rate WordPress, and I rate it highly.