In my two previous posts I covered some of the technical elements of migrating my blog from a Domino based BlogSphere template, to WordPress, now I want to spend a few minutes talking about why make the move.
Back in February I blogged about the Future of Domino as a Blogging Platform, back then when I wrote it, and now, I believe Domino is an excellent platform to build a blog on, and having my Notes client (where I spend a good part of my day) also be my blogging client was a very nice feature. The absolute killer feature of course is the local .nsf (database) giving me offline access to my blog design, configuration, and content, as well as the ability to create content with no connection.
So while Domino has many merits as a blog platform, lets look at what is missing, to start with themes, and plugins. Take a look out there, there are thousands of themes, and plugins available for WordPress, some are free, some are for purchase, but you can very often find a tool you are looking for without having to start writing it from scratch, some example of plugins that I am running on my site
A-kis-met – prevents comment spam (in fairness never a problem I had using BlogSphere)
Simple Google Sitemap XML – Generates a valid Google Sitemap XML file
WordPress Mobile Edition – provides a mobile theme for my blog when viewed from mobile devices
In addition to this, I mentioned other plugins that were helpful to me in the migration process of my blog.
All of this is nice to have, but here is the real must have for me, mobile access to blogging. WordPress has clients for iOS, Android, and Blackberry, allowing you to post content, as well as moderate and reply to comments on the go. In addition anywhere you have a browser and internet access you have access to administer your blog. WordPress also works well with off line tools like Windows Live Writer, Scribefire, Qumana, and other blogging tools, which provide the ability to write posts while disconnected.
Finally, while I do enjoy working with Domino, I do it every day as part of my job, it has been a few years since I have done any projects in PHP, and MySQL, it is always nice to have the opportunity to work with different technologies, which this moves gives me the chance to do.
I am not sure that WordPress is my final stop on this journey, I continue to watch Posterous, who continue to make publishing content easier all the time (and support migrating from WordPress), if their mobile tool offering was more developed I might have made the move there. They just released their first iphone blogging client a few months ago, and have not released Android yet, though I believe it is in their plans. Right now though WordPress seems to be the right place for me.
In conclusion I think I can summarize the reasons for my move like this
This was exactly one of the reasons I posted the entry about Domino having a PHP stack (http://blog.balfes.net/?p=1930). If Domino supported something like PHP then applications with a plugin architecture like WordPress would work great and you could have the benefits of both worlds.
Mitch,
I have to say, as a Domino Blog user myself that I agree with you in the topics you explain. There are efforts going on http://www.mundolotus.com/ trying to solve some of the issues as the use of themes and the plugin creation.
In my opinion the Domino Blog is a superb tool but would need to be upgraded in order to support what you’ve written about. It should be included as part of the product and with extension points clearly defined, to provide a plugin creation developers ecosystem.
Maybe a state-of-the-art application developed in XPages that could be ( this is for IBM to listen 🙂 ) shown as the potential of Domino as a development platform.