This may sound like a contradiction as this article progresses, but I am extremely thankful to WordPress for providing their website building platform. I can now do things with this wonderful CMS platform that I could never, ever do before with just a straight HTML website. So thank you WordPress.

My reality is that I am an older person who loves to learn, but can not concentrate and focus like when I was younger, and WordPress utilizes the more popular PHP code combined with CSS and HTML. I self-taught myself HTML and later Dreamweaver back when there were virtually no learning sources. I literally pieced together how to create a website from a website magazine that I found at a K-Mart store, totally by accident while waiting for someone, and I learned from two free web hosting sites, Tripod and Angelfire. These websites would let me look at the code that was created by an action, and I then used that to learn HTML.

Learning “Macromedia” Dreamweaver was by trial and error. Later, after Adobe bought out Macromedia, I found a couple of books at a book store and also used the tutorial that came with “Adobe” Dreamweaver for learning the new product. But none of these were very clear and it took a couple of weeks to totally grasp how the new Adobe Dreamweaver worked, to “get” the whole site manager thing. In my defense, I was not young even then.

But times continue to move on, and I grew older and the web designing world moved on to bigger and better platforms called CMS Content Management Systems, such as WordPress and Joomla.

I tried Joomla, I even bought an online video study course. I got it, but I didn’t like it. All the nomenclature changed from what I was used to, it was slow to use, it wasn’t logical to my Dreamweaver impressed mind. I tried, but just no.

I could not see trying WordPress, it was just another Joomla, wasn’t it? But still, I needed to advance to a CMS, so what to do. But why did I need to move on to a CMS? CMS is like comparing a bicycle to a car. The bicycle works, it gets you around, but the car has so many more features, such as protection from the weather, a radio, air conditioner, a big trunk to carry things, seats for extra passengers. Get the idea. A basic HTML website shows pages, nice pages, but just a pages, like a magazine. A CMS opens the world of opportunity to interacting with your readers, via plugins and themes that “do” things. You can create an interactive directory, readers can click on things and select options, or be shown different results. Unlike HTML, the content is not all visible at the code view when building a website, much is stored in a special folder, called a MySQL folder and the code is written to call forth specific content depending upon each action. See Wikipedia for definition – MySQL.

Back in the HTML days uploading a website to the Internet was easy, you just grabbed all of the files and send them via FTP up to the web hosting service you using, or opened the file manager at your hosting service and added your files. Because of special files and folders required for CMS, like MySQL, it now requires a plugin to quickly move a website. A website can be moved manually, hosting services that I am familiar with provide the tools for creating a MySQL folder, but a good migration plugin is much faster and easier, I use All-In-One Migration, free for small websites, but a cost for larger sites.

I could complain, and often do, that some WordPress plugins cost money, but then Adobe has taken their products out of the hands of the common folk with their monthly subscription pricing system they implemented several years ago. Over the years I bought low cost, used versions of the extremely expensive Dreamweaver software on eBay. That was back in the good ‘ol days that if you bought something you owned it and when you updated to a newer version you could get some of you money back to pay for the new one by selling your old software. I despise monthly and yearly subscriptions. But I will say that with WordPress plugins the subscription ending does not usually end the use of the product, it just means you no longer get updates and tech support.

All that said, I finally dove into WordPress. This website is actually my first WordPress website. It is basic, and still uses the WordPress Twenty Eleven theme without a child theme. Nothing fancy, I just put some of my thoughts here, on the rare occasions that I have thoughts. LOL But this is where I learned the WordPress CMS platform.

So I rambled and lost track of my point, happens to the older mind. LOL The “Love -Hate” relationship. I love WordPress, I love what all I can do with it, all of the options and plugins available from third party coders. I just love WordPress. But I hate WordPress, it is slow, which not only consumes time but interrupts the creative process. All of the plugins are great but require hours and hours of research to find the right plugin for the need. Storing media is bulky, slow, and unorganized. I can no longer simply flip over to the code view to fix something like I could with Dreamweaver. Once all you needed was HMTL then they added CSS, but now you also need to now PHP, which I only know a little. With Dreamweaver I could put everything where I wanted it, now I have to get a plugin like SiteOrign to help me with the CSS and page building. Where once I would whip out a website, now I spend most of my time finding plugins to do what I need done and that is progress. Also I am constantly losing content due to saving errors, usually caused by interruptions from my ISP Internet Service Provider. I am learning to save constantly, which again slows everything down, but I finally found a service to help with this, ServerPress, which creates an environment to work a WordPress site on my computer rather than online.

Yes, I can now do more with website design and content, but at the cost of time. Yes, I love WordPress and all it can do, but much of the fun and joy of creating a website is gone with the endless hours of research to find themes and plugins, and the turtle slow process of building a website and adding the content.

Would I turn back the clock? No, definitely not. Do I wish there was a better way? Certainly, but until then I will continue my love-hate relationship with WordPress.