Recently I decided that I wanted to move all my sites to one blogging platform to “save time”. So I migrated several sites to WordPress. Using StudioPress and Genesis Blocks, which is an enhanced version of Gutenberg, made the transition easy. Yet, I watched my costs go up in one month. I run my server with DigitalOcean with ServerPilot as my front-end. Running 4-5 WordPress sites is a breeze, running more than that by myself requires a larger server configuration.
I was running Ghost as my blogging platform for Matsunaga’s Odyssey. Then I decided to move it to WordPress so I can make it more interactive with various social media. WordPress is great in this respect. So anything “blog” related should strictly be used with WordPress in my humble opinion. The new version of Ghost is awesome but right now, I will not make the transition back to it as my main blogging platform. WordPress plugins still beat Ghost’s integrations at this time. Ghost can be costly if you have a lot of traffic with these integrations though WordPress’s plugins seem to be moving towards more “costly” subscription models now.
WordPress Plugin developers are trying to make this platform the New Joomla which I am not happy about. Joomla became too costly with some features that should have been added by default with the main installation. I have watched this happen with WordPress. Hopefully with further Gutenberg and JetPack developments, WordPress can move back to what it used to be away, a default out-of-the-box CMS. Hopefully they can choose a flexible subscription model as well or else developers will move away from this platform with clients.
Sadly, there are some projects that WordPress is no longer suitable for. If you are creating websites that will not be updated daily or weekly, it does not make sense to use WordPress anymore. I started using JAMstack over a year ago and love it. I have leaned towards using the Vue.js framework which I love. I have three websites running Nuxt.js at Netlify which were easier to develop and deploy then WordPress. Netlify has a very generous free package. Their pricing is actually cheaper than me running my entire WordPress sites with DigitalOcean.
Hence I am deciding whether I should start to move sites over to JAMstack, especially my project sites. I have a restaurant site that will be moved over to JAMstack next month. I am planning to update my delivery site as well which is already developed with Nuxt. I can even run some WordPress sites and Ghost sites headless with Netlify!
It is amazing how over one month ago I was planning to go all WordPress then to realize that may not be the best option at this moment. It is an exciting time in the world of web development.
I will keep posting my thoughts. Be assured, I will keep Matsunaga Odyssey and SaigonNezumi.com with WordPress but many other sites may get migrated to a JAMstack equivalent.
Until the next post…
