First, I’m about to start a major rebuilding project related to this site. I will be getting it off WordPress and returning it to a static HTML site. This is because, well, reasons. They’re many and varied.
A couple of them (possibly not the most important) are: security, server resources, comment spam, comments in general, control, I have finally discovered scripting and have created my own little templating system that means I can package a 3000+ page site in seconds and just use Filezilla to upload it.
Comment spam is a pain in the ass but tolerable. I don’t like it but I honestly hardly notice it because all comments are moderated. I delete them every few weeks and that’s that.
So really it comes down to I’m doing it just because I want to. And because as AI becomes more and more capable, WordPress and other dynamic web content becomes less and less secure. I’m not worried about it; I just don’t want to deal with it (if it happens)!
But I accidentally on purpose built a static site setup that is nearly effortless and will let me have absolute control over every page on my site. If I want a page with fourteen columns, I could make it. WordPress might let me, but I’d have to learn block coding and design, and I’m just…tired.
I’m tired of WordPress. I’m tired of SEO (I never use it anyway but still). I’m tired of the web being the way it is now.
I decided a while back, when I realized I really needed to update an older WordPress theme I use on a different site, that I also really needed to learn the WordPress block editor and full site editing, specifically if I want to update that site layout, and I realized I just don’t want to learn it. Just don’t want to.
WordPress is not the blogging platform it used to be. It still runs blogs just fine, but most blogs aren’t really blogs anymore. They’re businesses pretending to be blogs. So I guess WordPress knew where things were heading and adapted accordingly. It is a full fledged CMS and it hasn’t been user friendly for an amateur web developer in a long time.
If you haven’t stayed up to date with every change, getting up to date in one fell swoop feels impossible.
Back in the day, I learned the things I needed to learn to build a theme from scratch in a few days. Now, I’m certain it would take me weeks. If not longer.
I’m just not up for it.
Second—
Ah crap.
I already forgot the second. I shouldn’t have gotten distracted by the WordPress thing.
Let me think.
Oh yeah! Obsidian.
I’ve changed my mind. I started using Obsidian again more heavily a few weeks ago, and this time something must have clicked (or my use cases were just way more suited to it) because I have completely changed my mind about it.
I really couldn’t tell you the difference this time, but I have been discovering some formatting and other options (callouts, extract, outline, code blocks) that make it feel at least as formatted as something I paste into OneNote and more useful by a long shot. In fact, I’ve moved things out of OneNote and I don’t miss it at all.
What really changed things for me was the discovery that I could code little custom scripts for myself using AI (for things I had never gotten around to learning to code before), and I’ve been learning some myself through examples, asking for thorough explanation, and experimenting. I now have a solution to the sync issues. I use a little script on my computer to move files from my Obsidian uploads folder in OneDrive and into Obsidian on my laptop.
It’s not “sync” but it’s darn close to it.
I do have to upload any file I create in Obsidian on my phone to OneDrive. But it creates a kind of built in version control because OneDrive refuses to overwrite files with the same name when I upload something.
I’ve found that for my own workflow, I’m giving up almost nothing to have total control over my documents and all of them in a format that is safe for a long-term archive.
I’m in the middle of coding a custom script set that will turn my raw LibreOffice Writer .odt files into upload ready PDF print books. It’s been a whirlwind of learning and coding that will depend on no service to do.
So I better get back to it. Only a few scenes today to finish writing first. Which brings me to another topic but I’ll save it for another day.
A little hint: I’ve discovered that I’ve been working against my own abilities as a writer, and the discovery has kind of been the answer to everything painful and hard about writing.