Wordpress makes puppies sad

_Yes, Wordpress makes me sad. It seems to make others feel sad too, which is good, because then I don't have to feel alone on top of being sad.

It turns out that a musician friend of mine is on an extended artistic pilgrimage to Brazil. He thought it would be a good idea to keep his pals posted regarding his adventures while he was gone, and he decided that Wordpress would be the best medium for his broadcasts. "Not so!" he reported from his urban jungle location. He complained of bugginess, blank pages and general headaches. In other words, he complained that Wordpress made him sad too.

I can empathize. A long time ago (maybe 2003) I was building a website for a client, and the client asked if I could put together a blog for him. At the time, I didn't really know anything about blogs or why anyone would even be so presumptuous as to assume that someone would read theirs.

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I did my due diligence though, and searched the internet for interfaces that would make it possible to do this thing that my guy wanted. I ended up discovering, after finding what seemed to be overwhelming evidence, that Wordpress was the way to go. It was used by very smart people -- both those types who were programming-savvy, and those who just wanted a get-it-up-and-running system to feed the world their deepest thoughts. It was also the skeleton of the content management systems of giants like CNN and Time Magazine. It was therefore, good enough for me.

I started out doing an experimental site for myself just to see what would happen. Wordpress was really cool. It was virtually automatic compared to programming HTML by hand. (This was of course before Facebook had overwhelmed the internet with its almost idiot-proof communication vehicle for the common man. It had photo sharing and media posting, chatting, all learn-able by regular people.)

I was in love with all the Wordpress templates where you could, with a simple click, change the entire look of your page without altering any of the content you'd toiled to create, both pictures and text.

I decided to start filling up my Wordpress blog with "stuff" just to get comfortable with its topography; stories, anecdotes. You know. All was well for a year or so until something, I can't even remember now what it was, happened. Essentially, I lost my blog. I had to go in to my host's database, using my programming skills (which are more than totally unsophisticated, yet far less than world-class) to locate my dear stories and ramblings.

Yes, I found everything and I started again. I simplified too. But then other things started happening. The details are blurry: The site wouldn't load. Pictures would disappear. It was slow. Features didn't work. Tech support was only available on what were essentially bulletin boards. In other words, if you had a BIG problem, forget it.

Oddly, there were thousands of sites around the world that seemed to be functioning flawlessly using Wordpress. What was my problem then? I certainly had no idea. Neither did tech support at my primary site's host (I won't name names.) who I pleaded with to help me determine if there was something wrong with my database files which I had deployed from their ecologically friendly, wind-driven server farms; whether there was something wrong with Wordpress, or, whether I personally had actually broken something.

By the time I'd gotten to this point, I was actually spending more time coaxing and nurturing my experimental blog than I was writing material for it. It was clear that it was time to either study harder and become a more skilled programming drone, or to simply cut and run. I cut and I ran. I was done.

I decided that I needed a "blog for dummies" system. This Wordpress thing was way to deep for me. If that meant that I simply wasn't bright enough to understand it, then so be it. I'd deal with that ego-slapping burden later. But for now, I needed to get my site up and running, and I didn't care how.

I began searching for the alternative. There was the Blogger interface. (Now a Google partner.) Then there was something from Yahoo as well as a few others. This was back in 2009. 2003 in contrast, when I started this whole escapade, was the stone age if you compare it to the way things are now.

I finally fell onto a site called Weebly. (Weebly how this site that you're now reading was made.) Weebly is a site-building system for sissies. It's for sissies that don't want to be burdened by programming and CSS code and HTML5, sissies who need to write something down, stick a picture in, maybe an audio file, and get on with the next thing in life. It was a no-brainer like Facebook, like MySpace. It was for me.

Tech support isn't perfect; it's email-based, and there are some quirks, butcha know what? It's a whole heck of a lot easier to use (for me anyway) than Wordpress.

Sure I had feelings of guilt and worthlessness when I had to face the the possible reality that I was just a web wannabe, a hack designer and programmer, but think of the hours I've saved not stressing over why my site doesn't work.