My New Blog

I’ve relaunched my blog, on a new system. All new posts will appear here – and old ones will gradually be ported across.

What will surprise people who know me or my work is that this site now runs on WordPress.com – when it used to run on Drupal on my own server. Why is this? Have I lost faith in Drupal? Absolutely not. In fact, this move demonstrates quite the opposite.

When I launched my first Drupal site in 2004, the software was essentially a blogging platform which could be customised to develop more complex sites. Since then it has grown to become the most powerful and versatile framework for building websites. It powers websites for the White House, large media publications and some very large global companies.

This means that although of course Drupal can still run a small blog like mine, it’s overkill. It’s like buying an Aston Martin and just driving it 2 miles to the supermarket once a week.

I believe in using the right tool for the right job. At my company, Code Enigma, we build some very large sites in Drupal — and Drupal is definitely the right tool for that. But for a simple blog, I believe it’s overkill these days. Also, I need to be able to focus on my work and writing — rather than spending time updating and managing my own server and software (and we have a policy of not hosting personal projects on Code Enigma systems).

WordPress.com is just so simple and easy. For a simple blog, it really is the right tool. And it’s Software As a Service (SAAS) — they handle all the hosting, software and updates. I did also consider DrupalGardens, but decide that this was also too powerful for what I needed.

So, welcome to the new steveparks.co.uk, and watch out for more blog posts soon.