If you’re reading this blog, then you must have noticed that I’ve changed the theme and the URL of my Blog. Well, those are just the superficial changes. I even changed my blogging platform. I used to use WordPress to blog (Of course, occasionally). But now, I switched to a much more comfortable platform, Tumblr.
Till now, I haven’t had any problems with Tumblr. In fact I like the service.
So, here is a little comparison of the two awesome blogging platforms.
WordPress: In a word, terrific. It has almost all features a blogger desires. It’s very easy to setup and use. It has a very neat admin interface. Nothing complex. You have a ton of plugins to customize your blog. There’re good themes, not great, good (the free ones). I’ve used WordPress for over two years. I have always loved it.
Then what made me shift? Well,
- You cannot have your customized URL for free. You need to pay some amount for that.
- Even if you pay the amount for the customized URL, you cannot install any plugins because WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to do that.
- You’ve to purchase the upgrade (which by the way costs you around $99/year if I am not wrong) for customizing your blog with the plugins you desire.
- A better way to use the powerful WordPress blogging platform is to install a copy of it from WordPress.org on your own server and you’re free to customize it to your needs. That might sound like a great option. But it is not if you’re not planning on shelling out your hard earned money to merely host your personal blog on a server. If you’re willing to pay for your server, then go nuts. WordPress is an amazing platform to blog on. Although it has a few drawbacks.
The main drawback with WordPress is friction. The platform has a certain amount of friction which makes the usability a bit less pleasing. I know this statement might piss off the WordPress fan-boys reading this blog, but it’s a fact.
WordPress doesn’t make me feel like blogging often. I tend to postpone blogging. If I feel like sharing something, it doesn’t provide me that frictionlessness (wow, that’s a big word). This is because of the options you have to post content. Yeah, they do have different post types, but still, they’re not up to the mark.
WordPress’s iPhone app is not that great. I have had it installed on my phone for more than a year and I haven’t used it even once. That is definitely a deal breaker.
This is the exact point where Tumblr kicks in.Tumblr excels where WordPress fails. Frictionlessness.
First off, the Tumblr iPhone app is very good. I love it. It is so easy to use and it makes you feel like sharing more stuff. There’re many post types such as Image, Audio, Video, Chat, Quotes and Text. I have used all these post types (except audio) on my blog. WordPress has failed to handle such types well. So this is the point where the friction to share kicks in when using WordPress. When you feel like sharing an image, you think twice and opt for some other image sharing service like Instagram.
Secondly, the free themes offered by Tumblr are lovely. It’s ultra easy to customize your theme to make it look the way you want it to.
The other good thing about Tumblr that I loved is that it doesn’t charge you for using a customized domain name and the service itself is free.
These were the exact things that I was looking for to get rid of my Rackspace server. I was literally paying $132/year for a WordPress blog that I use occasionally. There’re other services which offer free WordPress hosting, but they’re very slow. That is obvious because their services are free and you really can’t expect more from them.
Before I actually made the switch to Tumblr, I even considered Posterous. Posterous was good but not as good as Tumblr. Tumblr has features that really impressed me to make the switch.
And that my friends, is the story of The Switch.
