Goodbye WordPress
It's been 12 years and 8 months since I've blogged here on my personal website. Crazy, right?
I don't have much to say because if you're reading this, you likely already know I'm writing TimeMachiner or have seen my website before. But now it looks different. Now I'm on a whole new system. For the first time ever, my website is not using WordPress.
WordPress has been my go-to website building tool forever. It's quick, easy, and I can host it myself if I want. When I set up TimeMachiner a few years ago, I went with WordPress. It's a CMS (content management system) that easily spins up, has a ton of plugins, and can be whatever you want it to be. It's open source and overall it's fantastic. Things were good.
Then in September of 2024 WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg decided to take two decades of goodwill and flush it down the toilet. He decided that a company that sells free and open WordPress as a business was no longer something he liked because they do not contribute enough code improvements back. Even though this is not a requirement to use WordPress, he took issue with it and took the company WP Engine to task.
Basically, Matt Mullenweg is using every aspect of WordPress that he controls to wage war against WP Engine. It's very messy and each day brings new bullshit he pulls. Lawsuits, kicking people out of the open source project, telling employees who don't like it to quit in exchange for 6-month's pay, and even taking over plugins because he can. I can't even make this post newsworthy because I know after I hit Publish, there will be new nonsense.
So, to know what's going on before and after this post, you can keep up with The Verge's story stream here. That should stay updated.
I can't support a guy who acts like this. Same as when I moved off Twitter because of Elon or Facebook because of Zuck, I've left WordPress on my personal site. It's not worth the energy to support a guy who has shown he sucks.
That's the story. This is my new home. Same web address; different look. But I was able to bring all my content here from WordPress (I'll give them credit: the export feature is fantastic) and it is all here in its messy pile of digital bits.
If you're reading this, thank you! Give TimeMachiner.io a look since that's the easiest way to find my latest writing. Be well.