Why the switch to a new blog?

Serendipity served me quite well for many years, but creating new blog posts has always been rather cumbersome. The old site did not support mobile browsers very well with the current theme. I also got the impression that the S9Y development has pretty much come to a halt, so I did not feel like investing more time in this platform.

I also realized that I was posting more and more stuff on Facebook and Google+, partly because it was easier to quickly share a thought or a link and it was easy to engage in discussions on these platforms. But I actually prefer to publish my thoughts on my own site, outside of the control and analytics of a third party.

When I first learned about the P2 theme for WordPress, I was hooked. It provided a very quick and easy way to share a thought directly from the home page, almost like Twitter, but without the silly 140 character restriction. It also offers threaded comments, with a low entrance barrier to participation.

In addition to that, WordPress was very easy to install  and set up (their “5 minute install” reminds me of MySQL’s “15 minute rule“), and I really like the clean and uncluttered administration interface.

Another reason was the entire WordPress ecosystem, with a vibrant community and ongoing Open Source development, built-in support to publish postings on social media sites, plus an excellent Android app to quickly share content or draft longer articles right from my mobile devices. So as a blogging platform and replacement for other social media sites, WordPress and P2 serve all my needs.

So here I am – I look forward to becoming more productive and creative from my own site again!