Re: this post on blogs v WordPress.
I actually agree with many of the points, and I did respond in comments. However, I wanted to get in my two cents here instead.
Point one is that you get more bang for the buck by making a blog. Agreed, if you have a paid LJ. However, most LJ users DO NOT have a paid LJ. Therefore, they cannot save any money by making a blog. I should also note that with LJ, a paid user has extra features. With WP, for a self-hosted installation, you need to have money in the first place to even have the basic features. Of course, with WP.com and other WP free sites, you can have a free WP blog, BUT then of course you can’t install your own plugins.
Point 2 is correct, but on LJ you can also choose not to have ads, currently. Also, while many fandom blogs do not have ads, there are also quite a few that do. In any event, neither LJ or the blogosphere is an ad-free place.
Point 3 is correct, although I should not it’s not like most people were willing to leave LJ over these issues anyhow.
Point 4: The author overestimates how much skill the average LJ user has. Many people don’t know FTP from a whole in the ground. Editing a few lines of a script is scary.
Plus, while I love WP, it honestly takes TIME to maintain an up to date WP install if you use plugins and like changing your theme. It can be super easy to maintain WP, IF you do not want to run it like an LJ and use certain features.
Also, while there is documentation, that means you have to do it yourself, vs. LJ, where maintenance matters are handled by the staff.
Point 5: Granted, but this does not address the issue of how to make friends-locked posts and use filters. While there are plugins out there that do handle this, the fact is that this is not an out of the box feature supported by WP core.
Point 6: LJ’s interoperability does suck ass, but I think for a lot of LJ users, this is not a huge concern anyway.
People keep using LJ because of the lock-in feature, and because there are certain features there which are difficult to find in other places. I’m hoping nowadays that Dreamwidth does have some effect on LJ fanfic fandom, and that some of the big communities and more influential users do move there.
3 Responses for "LJ vs. WordPress"
The issue of comparing a blog site to LJ for me is they are not the same thing. Just like I don’t think LJ is the same thing as social networks such as Facebook. Yet it has similarities with both these type of sites. If I ever made a blog (which I have contemplated) it would not be as replacement to live journal. With live journal I feel I can blab about practically anything and lock posts that I don’t want everyone to see. If I ever made a blog I would want it to be focused on a specific topic. A live journal is more a reflection of myself whereas I feel a blog is an outreach to readers.
Another thing live journal has are the fandom communities. There are places where you can meet people with similar interests as you and then become “friends” with them and correspond on the personal journals.
I figured I’ve answered some of these points on my blog, but, well, it’s either throw my two cents in here or do work, so… :P
No no no no no! This is one of the myths I’m trying to dispel; people who do have paid-for blog love giving away free domain and subdomain hosting. It’s kinda… I guess it’s kinda a status thing almost.
I mean, I’ve got people on free domain hosting who in turn have people hosted (for free) in subdomains of their domain.
That’s what I’m saying; you have to know this network exists, and I guess a lot of people don’t.
Like I said in my reply to you, I’ve run both paid and unpaid hosting for about ten years. I give help to friends and family, and I work professionally in a role that has me providing IT support.
In my experience, it’s very rare to come across someone who’s completely technically incompetent. Like, I’ve seen 14 year olds who are better webdesigners than me and 50 year olds who are fine with FTP.
If you give them the benefit of the doubt, most people aren’t stupid, and I refuse to treat them as if they are. I mean sure, some people just don’t want to learn. Period. On the other hand, many people do but are too nervous about approaching something they get constantly told is FOR TRAINED PROFESSIONALS ONLY. Well, this is me telling those people that it isn’t; the learning curve is a gentle slope, not a steep cliff, and there are plenty of people at the top throwing down ropes. /shrugs
It’s not a “myth” though, in the sense that I’m saying it. You’re saying that people are willing to pay for you and give away free webspace. I’m saying that someone has to pay for it, and that there is cash involved. However, not all people know someone who does have webspace, and is capable/willing of creating a blog for them. Also, personally speaking, I wouldn’t want to be hosted by someone else, ESPECIALLY if they were not someone I did not know well. What if they go away on vacation and their domain goes down? What if we have a falling out and they delete my site out of spite? I’ve known these networks to exist: before I used LJ, I used Greymatter and was part of a social network that used blogs, ad this would be a common practice. Generally, this social network moved to LJ and rejected self-hosted blogs. If you want to discover why (some) people prefer LJ to WordPress, you may want to investigate such cases.
I don’t believe people are stupid and incapable of learning. What I do think is that WordPress is on average more inconvenient for the inexperienced, especially for people who want to use a lot of plugins to make WP emulate the core features of LJ. I never said that it was for trained professionals only. What I mean is that using WP to emulate basic LJ features (installing all of those plugins) is harder than using LJ. There are also many little inconveniences associated with WP, which do not happen on LJ (such as needing to login for different blogsites).
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