I have to tell you, I was stunned by the news. Mark Jaquith reports that Zeldman is now on WordPress. What!
Jeffery Zeldman, man about blogging, web design, web standards, and none too shy guy for blasting away at the web world, has left behind his 11 years of hand-coded HTML pages to embrace WordPress. In Zelman.com Reloaded and Why WordPress, Zeldman explains why he decided to give up the tried and true for WordPress and its PHP driven database and template generating blogging system.
Let me put “nearly eleven years” into perspective. It’s 3924 days. And it’s about how many times I opened an HTML editor to update this site’s content. I loved every minute. It took a great publishing environment to make me switch…To the extent that a content management system can, WordPress thinks like a writer. The workflow is intuitive enough not to trip me up when I’m halfway into an idea. It stays out of my way, giving me only the tools I need, and only when I need them…Even though this is the web and not print, as a designer I still care how the type is going to sit in the page. Over 90% of web users never change the default font size. WordPress’ live preview, continuously updated as I write and save, shows me what most readers will see, and lets me revise for better copyfit with one tenth the effort I used to make….There are other great web writing tools out there, but this is the first I know of that lets me see my site as I’m writing. It helps layout, it helps tone, it helps everything…
…I’m supposed to like WordPress because it’s open source, not proprietary, but I have nothing against developers who choose to protect their intellectual content. I’m supposed to like it because it’s free, but I don’t mind paying for software — I like supporting people who create things.
I use WordPress because I like it and it works for me. Most of you reading this already use WordPress or Movable Type or Squarespace and they are all great products. I’m not trying to sell you anything.
Wow! This is the exact same reason why I left behind my static HTML site started over a decade ago. Excellent! The process of importing all those years of posts and articles into WordPress from straight hand-coded HTML was time consuming and complex, but I’m thrilled with WordPress, too.
Site Search Tags: import, importing, wordpress, zeldman, blogger, choice, choosing, choose
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen
Lorelle on WordPress 
2 Comments
Very interesting.
I love hand coded HTML but I have to admit that I have been thinking a lot lately about designing sites that use WordPress as the CMS. The Widget functionality makes it all the more compelling as it allows easily swapping navigation items in and out.
Interesting turn of events, indeed.
I can’t blame him though. 🙂