WordPress Wonderland

As noted in one of yesterday’s posts, I’ve been increasing my WordPress knowledge while upgrading to WP 3.1b1 on the alpha site.  There are four elements to my current ruminations on the subject:

1. I am learning new features and functions in the product.  For example, I am starting to broaden my knowledge of builtin features like shortcodes.  I really like the fact that you can enter a short ‘code’ string, like this:
   [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq62aKUZHq0]

   and have it rendered like this:

   
   There are a staggering number of shortcodes that are supported on WordPress.com sites.  A list of hem can be found here.

2. I am blown away by the sheer number of plugins that exist for WordPress.  Thanks to the whole community for their continuing submissions.  Ingenuity is rewarded in many ways.  So I reward all the unsung plugin writers with my praise.  Your tireless efforts are appreciated – even if they aren’t yet financially rewarding.
3. I am learning all about hosting my own WordPress site.  This isn’t new either.  I’ve had a test site running for quite some time.  But my initial dabblings were with all of the plugins that SEO folks use.  However, while all of the SEO tools are interesting, the whole process of SEO makes me feel like I need to take a shower.  Yes, marketing is important.  But I am really trying to maintain the illusion that I am “above” all of that stuff.  For this reason, I stopped my WordPress quest a few months ago. Nevertheless, the new version of WordPress is causing me to reconsider that decision.
4. I am really weighing the option of migrating from WordPress.com to either a site that I host myself or a site that is on a “real” hosting service.  Can I host this on my own test platform?  Absolutely.  Do I want to have all sorts of spurious traffic coming through my home router?  Absolutely not.  So I am looking into a good hosting platforms. Do any of you have good suggestions? [Note: I am not asking for spammers to fill my comment system.]

 

Let’s hope that my newfound fascination with WordPress actually results in a vastly superior blog.

-Roo