When I announced the move from WordPress to a static page engine, I wanted everyone reading my site to be prepared. I know there are going to be subtle changes and wanted to prepare everyone of the switch. One reader, Sun, that I've talked with on a couple of posts, came back with a couple questions on why I was moving the site over to Pelican.

You are not interested in implementing static pages within WordPress? I’ve been running dynamic for years, but recently ran across WP Super Cache as a featured plugin. I installed in 10 minutes and I noticed a great increase my WordPress page loads.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/

I am not sure about your motivations for switching blogging platforms (hosting cost, speed?), but WP Super Cache might be a good solution if you are looking for speed improvements.

He raised some good questions about why I was switching. I’ve tried WP Super Cache and it helped somewhat, but my switch to Super Cache was also at the height of some WordPress DOS attacks. I added CloudFlare and Wordfence in an effort to keep things up and running. This got more and more involved with having to monitor hacks on WP credentials and other patches. Over time I realized I wanted to be in the business of creating stuff, not maintaining it.

Beyond the maintenance of WordPress, the efforts to get content into WordPress was also starting to drag on me. I had really hoped WP/Automatic would have taken their purchase of Poster for iOS and make it even better. Poster was one of my go to apps on iOS that allowed me to easily push posts/text around the way I wanted to quickly get posts up on the site. The default WordPress app for iOS doesn’t have any extensions or x-callback-urls (that I know of) to easily push content from iOS apps. With the workflow I'm developing for my static page blog, I will literally be able to click a button in Editorial and have it post to the site in less than a minute. Same goes for posting from OS X with Automator. ¹

Sun was correct on the second reason for the move - there is a cost for maintaining my site. I don’t have ads on the site to offset my hosting and domain costs. I’ve looked into having ads to help offset my costs, but unless I go the sponsorship route, most ad companies require the first ad to be in the first 'x' number of pixels of the site. I’m not changing my site design for a few bucks a month. So finding a way to affordably keep the site up is also part of the move. Could I move the entire WP setup from where I am now to another hosting provide? Sure I could - I even planned on doing that first. But it still didn’t fix some of the drag I was feeling on being able to get content easily and quickly up on the site.

One part of the reply to Sun, and other interactions I've had with other readers, made me realize that this site needed to continue to have a way to interact. I'll be looking at adding Disqus to the new site so I can continue to interact with everyone. Being able to interact with everyone is part of why I do this. Adding Disqus wasn't originally on my punchlist before going live on the new site, but after talking with Sun, I've realized how important this is. So I've decided to hold off throwing the switch until the new site has Disqus up and running. Getting feedback and talking to people who really interact with the site is what makes this all worth while.

Thanks Sun for helping me make the site even better!