Just want to do a pit-stop for my WordPress blog right now.

Theme

The theme used is Twenty-Twenty Four, a simple theme by Automattic. It does the job, innit.

I tweaked the colours based on a draft of a static site template I was working on.

Plugins

I am currently running the following plugins:

• ATmosphere: Enables posting to the Atmosphere, the network that powers Bluesky as well as standard.site-powered platforms like Pckt and Leaflet.
• Disable Comments: Does what it says on the tin.
• EWWW Image Optimizer: Pre-installed by DreamHost.
• Phoenix Media Rename: Lets me rename media files on the site.
• Simple Star Rating Block: Allows me to insert a star rating easily, including half stars.
• SimpleTOC: Allows me to insert a simple table of contents.
• WP Super Cache: Pre-installed by DreamHost.

The future of the site

You won’t be surprised to know given my ADHD, overthinking and all that shit, but I am considering moving to a static site again, at the moment using Hugo. I built a template for it already, and I really like how it’s turned out. Going to this provides legitimate benefits for me:

• Pages and posts are just Markdown and HTML with Go templating, making it extremely portable.
• I don’t have to pay anything for hosting – I can use GitHub, Netlify, CloudFlare, etc.
  • There are good paid static hosts though, such as Neocities and Nekoweb.
• If I don’t like the theme, I can tweak it to my heart’s content or make my own much easier. Much harder on WordPress.
• No network connection errors while writing.
• Faster load times, especially on CloudFlare or Netlify.
• Easier to code with and for – no need to wrangle plugins just to not have comments or a nicer image gallery.

The main thorns for me preventing a full migration to static are:

• Using Markdown and Hugo shortcodes for writing at the moment, nowhere near as convenient as WordPress and Gutenberg
  • I also prefer Typst for this too. Thanks, Videah.
• Having multiple sections that don’t map well to Sequoia. I would realistically only be able to have a “blog” section mapped to my Bluesky account at the moment. Not to mention, how would I migrate the site to use Sequoia instead?

If I don’t move to a static site and stay on WordPress, I will move this site to WordPress.com instead, as I don’t feel I need to manage the hosting of a WordPress site myself, and hosting it will be much cheaper. Things seem to be on the up with Automattic, too, with Mullenweig seemingly – and deservedly – being pushed out of the company.