On Abandoning WordPress After 19 Years, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Command Line

I had spent a non-trivial amount of money on the "All-in-One Migration" plugin for WordPress, had already paid for the new server and installed the instance with a compatible version of Ubuntu that would work with the control panel. I installed WordPress, and when it came time to migrate the old version of the site, the backup file would not import! This was a problem. After nineteen years with WordPress, the plugin failed, and I stood at a crossroads. My day job required me to hand in the prototype for the mobile app we are developing, and I didn't have time to waste setting up my personal blog. I needed to think fast.

Years ago, I had tried Joomla. I tried it once, went with WordPress instead, and it became everything: the plugins, the database, the endless installs, control panel configurations, CloudFlare thing-a-ma-jigging...it all worked until it didn't. It was familiar. It was reliable enough. I was just too busy (lazy) to take the time to tinker with Node.js, Django or another framework.

I once looked at Django CMS. I also considered other Node.js frameworks the way a careful man considers proposing marriage- with interest but also terror. My research led me to a Node.js framework called Astro. It seemed promising until I read the documentation and learned that I would have to do the editing directly in the files. I was used to a CMS with a user interface like WordPress. So I kept searching. I needed a dashboard. I found Ghost. If you're reading this article, you're on my site, so that means it works.

It runs on Node.js. You can check it out if you go to ghost.org. Supposedly, it's fast, and WordPress isn't; though I never timed WordPress with a stopwatch, and my Page Speed Insights on my old site showed I was mostly above 90 percent on desktop, but around 70 percent on mobile. The installation on this new site was easy because the control panel I use for this server makes it simple to install Node.js, so I really only needed to go into the SSH and find the folder, run the command line that Ghost said to run in the documentation, and that was it.

The port configuration was less simple. It required a few command-line operations. WordPress, for all its supposed bulk and slowness, handles these things mostly automatically. It never once asked me to think about ports. Ghost asked me to think about ports. But, like I said, you are reading this so the site runs. You are looking at it.

The default visual theme of this site will change when I read the documentation and figure out where the themes are and how to install them. I will get on it after I finish writing this article, so it will probably be changed by the time you read this.

This site will differ from my WordPress version of misterscott.com. My old website was too "selly". It was me trying to show off my art, drawings, videos, and trying to convince people they should hire me to shoot, edit, write, or paint something for them for money. I don't care about that anymore. The site you are seeing now is more about teaching and inspiring. After over 30 years in film, and experience in web development, photography, writing, and the visual arts, I have accumulated a lot of stupid mistakes... glorious, educational mistakes. I made them so you don't have to if you subscribe to this blog and do what I suggest.

I have lived in Turkey, Ethiopia, Toronto, New York, Gabon, and travelled to places on every continent except Australia and Antarctica; documenting everything in written, photographic, and video form... I just haven't gotten around to organizing the files yet. It all sits waiting on hard drives like unpublished novels. I'll find an interesting way to share this material with you in a storytelling form. Having graduated with honors from university, I am just barely educated enough to know what I want to say. I can shoot, edit, write, draw, paint and design anything... logos (I designed the logo for a German water company), mobile apps (I am working on the same water company's app as we speak), storyboards, and I can draw and paint well enough to depict any message I wish to convey. So, this site will share the workflows, the errors, the morning thoughts that exist in notebooks and text files. What if I wrote everything in a short-story format? We will see. Or what about writing short fictional stories and posting them here? I'll share photographs and videos from countries I left years ago, but images that I never published. I'll figure out a way to present commentary on how I made them and the stories behind them.

The goal of this new website is community. The hope is connection with other creatives. If enough people subscribe (and if enough people recognize their own creative struggle in mine) we might build something together.

So definitely subscribe to this blog. I will attempt to never be boring. I will discuss crazy things. Everything here will be mine, though occasionally I might comment on what others have written or filmed or designed. By the way, let me know if this site loads as fast as Ghost promises it will. You can judge for yourself.