Tag Archives: WordPress

Articles I Like: WordPress and the Block Editor

The PolyBlog
May 13 2020

I’ve been blogging recently about changing my website setup and one of the key elements of that is shifting from the “Classic Editor” of WordPress (pre-version 5) to the “Block Editor” (post-version 5). Nicknamed Gutenberg, the block editor has attracted a LOT of negative pushback from the WordPress community.

A recent article on WP-Tavern noted that whenever they write about the block editor, or Gutenberg in general, they get twice as many negative comments from people than on any other topic. This is not surprising as it radically changed the workflows of creating, editing and publishing posts on your blog. I lived through the work world when large organizations went from DOS-based editors to Windows-based editors that were WYSIWYG and the reactions are very similar.

However, the article’s explanation of how all these users are misguided was based on two premises:

  • Blocks are the future of WordPress
  • Blocks are the greatest thing since sliced bread

I don’t disagree with the first one and the second is hyperbole. What the article completely ignores is that nobody disagrees that blocks can be great. What they complain about is that the interface available to work with them generally sucks for those who are well-versed in the old editor.

Ironically, he posts a bunch of data on naysayers that is a “drop in the ocean”. Some of his stats:

  • “Only” 27% of WordPress sites are running the old WordPress;
  • Of the 73% running the new WordPress with the block editor, more than 5M have installed a Classic Editor plugin to allow them to edit without the block editor, and it’s growing at a steady rate of up to 1% per month.

Here’s a reality check. Many WP sites are set, as recommended, to automatically upgrade as new versions come out. Yet 27% have said “no” to upgrading to the latest version. When commercial products are released, if more than a quarter of all users world-wide say no to a FREE upgrade, that is normally considered catastrophic. And when the number of users who said yes but who are running tweaks to cripple some of the “new” features are over 5M strong and growing in number? That’s a sign that something is WAY off in your product.

However, the article notes that since blocks are the future, it asks how can we move forward constructively? I’m far from an expert in either WordPress or development, but I’ve been a user of WordPress for a long time and have suffered through the conversion to using the poor quality block editor. Here are my thoughts on what I would like to see in future versions of WordPress.

Blocks and the block editor are NOT the same thing

It would be really good if people who are discussing blocks and the future of WordPress would recognize that people hate the BLOCK EDITOR, not blocks. Telling them how great blocks are makes no difference to the conversion rate if they use the block editor, get frustrated, and switch to the Classic Editor plugin. Amazon made it easy to click one button and the site would ship you what you were looking at…no information to enter on your shipping location, credit cards, multiple approvals, etc. Click and done. Because success online is predicated on the ability to remove friction. Right now, the biggest block (no pun intended) to conversion is that the block editor creates unnecessary friction.

Why are 27% of the users not converting?

For many sites, the stat is really misleading. There are thousands of sites out there that were created, people wrote one or two posts or set up a basic website, often for a side-hustle, and then? Nothing. It fizzled. Maybe they realized blogging wasn’t for them. Maybe it was for a business that never went anywhere. Maybe they realized it was way more work than they expected. For whatever reason, it stalled. Yet the site is sitting there live, running WordPress, and showing up in the stats. To be fair, some of the “positive” numbers for those with upgraded sites are also equally dead, but they have auto-update on. It would be better if the stats broke it down the way the plugin library does, such as when the content was last updated, i.e. some estimation if the site is a live site or hasn’t been updated in 3 years.

For others, they may have no real view about the block editor, as they’ve never heard of it. Their current site works, and you don’t try to fix what ain’t broken (security issues aside, which many don’t understand)…some of them don’t upgrade ever unless forced to i.e. when something breaks.

The popular theory amongst the haters is that many of them are in the “I’m afraid of Gutenberg” camp and don’t want to upgrade or they’ve looked at it and said, “Meh”. For me, the far more important number is the 5M who looked at it long enough to decide to use Classic Editor. THAT group has engaged and found it lacking. I find it amusing that the OP dismissed these numbers considering 5M installs makes it the fourth most popular plugin in the repository. More people are using it than are using WooCommerce or Jetpack. That is shocking.

Focus on the differences between content creation, editing, formatting and desktop publishing

If you take yourself out of an online environment and think instead of print marketing and communications in a large organization, you can quickly see four key stages in a publishing process:

  1. Initial content creation — the writers;
  2. Reviewing and approving the copy — the editors;
  3. Page formatting — the layout designers; and,
  4. Product design — the publishers.

Each of those stages requires different tools. Sure, in a blogging environment, the webmaster is frequently doing all four tasks as well as acting as chief bottle washer, but that doesn’t mean they need the same tool to do all four tasks at once.

Microsoft understands this and designed Word to gently merge the first two, with a slight hint at the third. If you are writing, you see a basic page to type on. If you want to switch to an even more basic layout with no distractions, you can. Those two windows primarily allow you to create your content. Computer code editors used to do the same, even FrontPage. They had a text window and a separate code window for working in. If you wanted to see what it looked like, you went to a preview window. In Word, if you want to switch to print layout, you can. Or web layout.

For the next step up, page formatting, very few people doing graphics and layout design of a page actually compose in their graphics layout program. They write in the editor, and then copy the final content in to do the page layout in the layout interface.

WordPerfect fought this battle when they went from DOS to Windows version with the WYSIWYG reactions mentioned above. People HATED the new windows version with onscreen proportional fonts because you couldn’t tell where there were two spaces instead of just one. Editing seemed nightmarish. Or it did until screen technology caught up and people could see where things were lining up or not on the page as you went. WordPerfect did it to give people layout capabilities and better preview functions, but it totally disrupted existing workflows.

But after fighting that battle, WordPerfect decided the future was graphics layout, like the recent block editor change. “See your page develop!” So they merged features with Corel and suddenly people had to deal with a desktop publishing program rather than the simple editor they knew, and sales plummeted. They didn’t have a captive audience as WordPress does. So people voted with their feet. They don’t stick around to complain if they’re paying the bill. The fall was catastrophic as it diluted the brand. WordPerfect tanked and even Corel Graphics tanked. Two “good” products merged and people using the one for editing and other people using the other for graphics both combined to hate the merged product.

After you get through creation, editing, and layout, there are still the publishers who decide how big the page or magazine will be, what type of material will be used, how good of quality, etc. Usually that is decided in advance, and the page layout designers work within that framework, as do the editors within the parameters of what’s possible for page layout, as do the content creators within the parameters of what’s possible for writing.

In my opinion, the Block Editor is a poor man’s attempt at having writing, editing, layout and publishing options all in the same window within WordPress. WordPerfect tried it and died. Just about all publishing programs did. Microsoft still sells Publisher, but few compose or edit in it. It’s the final tool, not the first.

In my view, there should be four separate tabs/screens/windows for “creating”. We’re talking about the USER INTERFACE here, not the content of the site, so it shouldn’t be anything more than that.

Just as the old classic editor had a visual interface and a code interface, a composition window should have the ability to do inline formatting of text (much like the basic ribbon elements you see in Word). Font choices, font styles/text formats, basic paragraph styles (indent, bullets, justification, ), and the ability to do basic insertions (media, links, and tables).

The edit window could look like a stripped-down version of the block editor. You would see all the paragraphs as blocks, for example [for those going from classic editor to block editor now, it would be the equivalent of switching over and saying “Convert all to blocks”, handled seamlessly]. I would still include all the styling from the basic composition and it should be available for every block. Compared to now, it would be a merger of the basic paragraph block with the classic paragraph block to give you an advanced paragraph option. Personally, I think if the current Block Editor had this level of a paragraph block, many of the complaints about editing flows would disappear as they would have almost all the power they have in Classic Editor now. You might not even NEED the composition window, although Word still has a bare-bones/distraction-free interface option as well as their full editor.

I would add a third level window that would be a true page layout editor. You could move blocks around, almost like a page builder, but one level down. It would be the equivalent of a basic desktop publisher. A lot like the current block editor, but with the ability to see where blocks are going to wrap or not. You COULD work in this from scratch, as the styling options would be available still (to save you from having to switch windows for a quick edit), but it would also have a lot of extra tools for adjusting how things line up on the page.

For me, I think it could also go to a level 4 window, what I would call the publisher window. I’m torn on the exact level of power in this window, but to me, it should give you a graphical replacement for a page-builder with a full grid layout. Basically more granularity in the tweaking of the layout. However, at that point, you’re basically giving the user almost full control to not only “build pages” but also to almost create their own themes on the fly. Obviously, the website owner wouldn’t want that kind of power in the hand of a basic writer/user on the site, but it could/should be available to the admin.

Why would I do all this? Because CORE shouldn’t be tying one tool (editing or blocking) to one editor interface. Not everyone works the same way or has the same needs for tweaking. So why not provide four switchable views (and NOT call them derogatory terms like basic, pro, etc.) and allow website builders to allow those views for different levels of users?

Wait…where do different types of blocks come in?

But if you were going to do what I outlined above, what would you do with blocks? I think we should stop treating them like they’re some super tool that is the solution to everything that everyone needs. We already have a model for rolling out more than the basic design elements and letting people choose what pieces they need.

a. Theme directory — Do you want a new theme that will change your whole look and feel? Great, here is 2020 to start and you can add any one of millions of other ones.

b. Plugin directory — Do you want a plugin that does x, y or z? You add it to your install, activate it, and voila, your site has that functionality.

I think we should add a block directory. Maybe it is like Gutenberg where you get 20 defaults, but if you want to download one of 5000 other different ways of doing a table with different styling options, you look in the block directory. Oh, look, here’s one that uses bananas for the lines in the table! How perfect for my market-fresh site, I’ll just DL *that* block and add it to my page. It’s just a code snippet with class wrappers. Do you want a table that looks like the Brady Bunch TV grid? DL the Brady Bunch table. And make it so that it can be added to your install OR just to THAT page. I shouldn’t have to install multiple block collections as plugins to be able to use one or two out of a collection. I don’t have to install bundled themes or bundled plugins, so why would I require bundling of blocks?

Many of the block editors already come with page layout options, as do many page builders, but I feel we give those plugins way too much power over the install when it isn’t needed. What if, instead, we had a page layout directory?

What would this all mean?

For me, it would drastically help new users by showing them that they can prepare content in four separate and logical stages — composition, editing, layout, and publishing — if they want to, and at each level, they have just enough options to give them flexibility without overwhelming them with detailed block options before they’ve even written their first paragraph or added their first picture.

More importantly, it would stop WordPress from following WordPerfect down a painful path that mistakes content creation for websites with publishing.

The three text blocks that I use in WordPress

The PolyBlog
May 13 2020

I previously wrote about Deciding to play with Blocks as an adult, some of my favourite blocks, and whether I could even switch over to the Block Editor in WordPress. I had installed a bunch of block plugins and created a long list of possible blocks to use, including the default ones, JetPack, Advanced Gutenberg, Atomic Blocks, Kadence, Qodeblock, Stackable, and Ultimate Addons.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that having 60+ blocks available would slow down the back-end of the website when I was editing; I assumed they were more “available-on-demand”, i.e. that they wouldn’t be loaded during editing until you embedded them.

However, I had already created some reusable blocks for sign-offs to various posts, and I realized that they seem to be loading last when editing a page. For example, I would be editing an old post, go to insert the sign-off, and it wasn’t there “yet”. I would wait a few more seconds and it would show up in the available list, but otherwise, it was whirring with no option available, while it loaded all the other blocks into memory first.

Equally, having such a long list makes it hard to be inspired by anything either…psychologists call it the “paralysis of too much choice”.

Or I would confuse options. For example, I would go to do something simple like inserting a quote, but I couldn’t remember whether I preferred the blockquote from Ultimate Addons or the just default quote. Or perhaps one of the four different testimonial layouts that all do similar things.

That’s where the Block Manager comes in. You can disable the blocks you aren’t using. I tried creating a series of pages for testing out all the different blocks, plugin by plugin, but it didn’t really help with comparisons. Again, if I want a quote layout, I don’t want to pull up six different test pages to remember which quote layout I liked. I decided I needed to go about this more systematically.

So I created a simple grid in Excel with the 7 or 8 plugin names across the top, and then just started listing the various blocks by row. If a plugin had social icons, as almost every plugin does, then I would list their equivalent block beside the next one. I could then see at a quick glance the “types” of plugins down the side, and the options to the left. And now it’s time to prune. 🙂

Keeping the obvious text ones

The most basic block of all is the paragraph block. It is the fundamental building block of all text entries, so obviously that one must stay. I also have a lot of legacy pages created in the Classic Editor, so the Classic Paragraph has to stay, at least for now. It allows detailed formatting inline, which the new default doesn’t as easily. I’m surprised none of the plugins have created a new “Advanced Paragraph” option with similar features, but I know part of the reason is that it would seemingly violate the spirit and intent of the new block editor. If you want to style text, you use the top menu and the side menu, not inline menus that have it all together.

Interestingly, the default paragraph one includes an option for using a “drop cap” (a large initial letter for the paragraph, like old books, as this paragraph is styled), yet there are two other drop cap blocks that do almost the same thing. The ones from Atomic and Qodeblock give a few other options with them — the letter by itself, with a box around it, or in reverse (a black box with the letter cut out) — but I have no pressing use for the function unless I was trying to do some sort of odd “bulleted list”. I’ve disabled them and if I need it, I can settle for the default paragraph option. I also find it interesting that the default one shows the drop cap in the editor (as long as you are not editing the paragraph), while the other two only show up when you preview the page, which would easy to forget when doing editing on the fly.

Overall, the default paragraph and classic paragraphs are enough power for me. Scratch 2 other unnecessary blocks.

The next obvious one is the default Heading block (used above for the text “keeping the obvious text ones”). It gives me the options to do any one of the standard 6 heading styles, and I am trying to use it more liberally throughout my docs to enhance the structure. I tend to be verbose, so forcing a structure on my posts is helpful. However, there are two other big options.

Kadence has an Advanced Heading option which is decent. It moves the text alignment to the sidebar (rather than the standard options at the top for the regular header block) and adds configurable options for desktop, tablet and mobile phone, and extensive typography options (font family, letter spacing, line height, capitalization, highlighting, margins, padding, and shadows).

Ultimate Addons goes in a slightly different direction. Their default is centred and it allows you to add a description below the heading. It would be great for a page title, for example, or perhaps in pages in a very long post. Or perhaps even if you wanted to use it as a quote layout (the quote in the big text and the description could be a citation/source). The typography options are not quite as extensive as Kadence, but it is an interesting option.

However, to be honest, I don’t have a huge need when it comes to headings. Almost all of my headings are simple ones at the H4 level that don’t require extensive tweaking.

And if I do want that for a one-off situation, I can do it with lots of other blocks, without installing extra ones. I’ll stick to my three default ones.

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.

A few of my favorite WordPress Blocks…default, JetPack, Classic Editor

The PolyBlog
April 15 2020

I know, I know, you’re picturing me wandering through the Austrian hills singing about WordPress right now, aren’t you? No worries, I’ll wait over here at my computer keyboard while you think of raindrops on roses.

Oh, you’re done? Okay, good. In my last post (Deciding to play with Blocks as an adult), I gave a bit of intro to my decision to finally use the Block Editor on my website. Consistent design for a series of posts, a little bit of improved styling on my overall blog, and some improved efficiencies in workflow got me over the early molehills and ready to conquer the mountain.

Default blocks

The Block Editor comes with a healthy series of default built-in blocks, ready for anyone with WordPress installed to start using. The overarching “base block” is the PARAGRAPH block. In effect, this is like your “NORMAL” paragraph style in Word. If you start typing, this is the block it uses. It is designed for text, and there is some basic formatting available. Mostly things like BOLD, UNDERLINE, colour, etc. Some are at the top of the page, some are in the admin sidebar. ** Note, you only see these if you are in the BLOCK EDITOR mode; if you are in CLASSIC EDITOR mode, it looks like it always did…white text with a style ribbon at the top (like Word).

The second one is Heading block, and it is really nothing more than applying the HEADING style to a bit of text. Pretty basic.

Once you add an IMAGE BLOCK, things get more interesting. For example, it gives you the option to turn your image into a circle layout, something Classic Editor didn’t ever do easily. Not much more in the way of formatting, but decent improvement. An option to create a GALLERY is there, with pagination, but nothing amazing about it. Any decent gallery plugin will do the same, including JetPack.

Further options include a stylized LIST with a few more styling options than normal, a sample AUDIO block that I doubt I will ever use, another image block option that looks a lot like a header called COVER (large images, ability to put text over top of it, like a banner), a FILE block that allows you to click for downloadable content (for which I already have a better plugin), a decent VIDEO block, some basic TABLE options, SEPARATORS / DIVIDERS dividers for content, some CUSTOM HTML text, a strange VERSE block (to publish poetry and control ASCII layout), a couple of decent CITATION and PULLQUOTE layouts that improve considerably on the old QUOTE options, a BUTTON (nowhere near as good as most plugins or shortcodes), some options to have multiple COLUMNS of varying widths (including styling for background colour), options to add a group / “more” or “page break” / spacing options or insert various WIDGETS, and natural embeds from a long list of popular websites.

Out of all of them? I would use the base paragraph block, heading, image block (although rarely), the video block, and one more…there is a MEDIA AND TEXT block that lets you insert an image and put text beside it, as well as some basic formatting of the overall block. That isn’t completely easy to do in CLASSIC EDITOR. I don’t think it gives me enough styling options, but it lays out simply and nicely:

Media to the left, text to the right, un resized. Colour settings allowed.

JetPack

The JetPack plugin adds some extra functionality too. Much of the added functionality is around the ability to embed material from Google Calendar, Calendly, Eventbrite, Map, Markdown, OpenTable, Pinterest, Recurring Payments, Repeat Visitor, and Revue. I could, in theory, see a benefit to embedding a calendar entry or a map int eh future, but the rest are worthless to me.

It also adds options for some extra tools tools like a subscription form (already covered by a better plugin) or slideshows and tiled galleries (already covered). That really only left me two I could, in theory, use. One is another embed option, but this one is from a huge library of GIFs available online. Normally people have these GIFs in their social media accounts or chat messages. This plugin adds it for your website.

Of course one would have to use it sparingly for it to be useful. Another plugin I liked was called Star Rating, and I would consider it for my Book Reviews and other things, if I didn’t already have a better way to show that.

Classic Paragraph

Last, but not least, I’m including a block that is added by CLASSIC EDITOR. You get one called CLASSIC PARAGRAPH, which is a simple paragraph option but it gives you your full formatting style bar back. Also, while a single default PARAGRAPH is one paragraph per block, CLASSIC PARAGRAPH can have entire posts or pages within them, if you want. It’s better to separate the paragraphs though as you can then move any paragraph around with a click of a button.

Overall? I can get it to do what I want, but I feel constrained still, even with Classic Editor that lets me do anything, without giving me a ton of extra functionality that I’ll use right away.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a really scary button. There are some built-in layout options that come with the defaults, and it is like having templates in Word that you DL from the ‘net. Or buying a theme for your overall site. It is a collection of “sets of nicely formatted and grouped blocks” that with a click of a button will give you an advanced layout.

For me, it is scary because it is not something small like tweaking a block or a paragraph here or there. This embeds huge swaths of design elements all at once — with no real regard for whether any of it fits within your default theme’s settings. It’s powerful, sure, but it seems like an overly blunt tool to me. Some would give you a good starting point though. In the meantime, let’s try some other BLOCK PLUGINS.

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.

Deciding to play with Blocks as an adult

The PolyBlog
April 14 2020

My wife’s friend’s husband, James, has started a blog and will be blogging about his experiences growing up in Ontario with some expected emphasis on simpler pleasures of childhood like toys, comic books, and TV shows (you can check out his blog here –> https://70scanadianmanboy.com/). The premise got me thinking about some topics I have had in mind for a while, as well as “toys” I have now, and it led me down a rabbit hole thinking about my current website.

I do have the tendency from time to time to “just play”. And I recently decided to revert to my own childhood and play with Blocks.

When WordPress went to version 5, they switched from a classic editor interface to a more graphical one called Blocks. The basic premise was that they were upgrading from a word processing program (like Word) to a graphical layout program (like Publisher). And like Publisher, it focuses less on the words and content and more on how all the elements fit together — page layout and design.

But outside of the virtual world, I have Word and Publisher at home. And I never use Publisher. I have no need for it, as I can do everything I want to do in a program like Word. Truth be told, I suspect about 80% of the people using Word don’t know how to use more than about 10% of its power. And that was the rub for me with Blocks.

Entry into the World of Blocks

I did not transition gracefully to the block editor when WordPress v. 5 released and they dropped the classic editor as the default. I immediately did what most people did, which is add Classic Editor as a plugin. And promptly went right back to using my admin site exactly as I had before. That was 2 years ago.

Since then, I’ve seen lots of stuff on Blocks, but most of it is irrelevant to what I do, which is regular blog entries. Not a lot of formatting involved, nor page layout, and to the extent that there is, I tend to fix it by designing one page/post I like and then just duplicating a template version of it whenever I need a similar layout.

If you’re an experienced Block user, and a convert to the Cult of Blocks (trademark pending), you’re likely sputtering, “But, but, but…”. Yes, of course, I *could* do all those things with a Block editor. But like using Word for my documents instead of a desktop publishing program, I didn’t need to, my trusty Classic Editor worked just fine.

About two months ago, my resolve to stick with the CE started to weaken. It’s a slippery slope to want something to look just a little bit better, for the design to be a bit more consistent in look and feel, or for a workflow to be just a little more efficient. And I slid all the way to the bottom.

In terms of looking a little better, I saw a design about 5 years ago where a website put the date out to the left of the content, stylized it to look like a Google Calendar button, and coloured it in red and white so it would “pop”. I’ve seen other themes do the same, but almost always with some fatal flaws. Not the least of which is that it often had just the month and day, no year. That goes against every grain in my design fibre, having a date like “March 15th” and not knowing which year it was. Many do it deliberately to fake something looking more modern/up-to-date — the post could be 10 years old, but the date makes you think it was more recent. But I thought it was still cool, and I wanted it on my site if I could. With Blocks allowing you to control and format layouts, could I do that with my site? It had made me curious for awhile. Sure, 200 BRs provide a lot of friction to sliding, but if the slope is steep enough, any friction can be overcome by momentum.

In terms of consistency in design, I have Book Reviews on my site, and I’ve either chosen or been forced to change the layout and content of my BRs for varying purposes 3 previous times. When there were only 20 reviews and again when there were about 50 reviews, I changed my approach and content for my reviews, and it wasn’t a big deal to quickly go through them, open them up, tweak the layout, close them down, and be done. I did the same when there was around 100 because of something dramatic that Amazon changed in the way I could link to images of book covers. When I finished, I ticked a box to say “done” and fully expected to continue on my merry little way with that template / layout until I die. I know consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but I like the idea of a consistent look. So I was determined not to change it again unless something dramatic happened or I was forced to change it. And even then, I thought, “No going back. Old ones stay as they are.”

Yet, over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing with the back-end of my site for TV Reviews and Movie Reviews. And that process has given me insights into how I layout my Book Reviews, with some alternatives that I didn’t do before. But the TV Reviews and Movie Reviews have different elements, and as I figured out how to do those, I realized that I had some inconsistent layout in my BRs too. Plus I could upgrade an element of design.

Finally, the inefficiencies in workflow were brought home when I attended a virtual WordPress camp from San Antonio a couple of weeks back. I joined the web conference specifically to get a better feel for Blocks, and while I misjudged a few sessions and their likely relevance, one that was more about workflow showed incidental uses of Blocks that were quite useful. Ways, for example, to create and save a “reusable” block in my template for use in all my Book Reviews — and if I later want to edit and tweak it? It will make the change across ALL of the BRs. Plus I found a way to collapse my BR index from six separate pages to a single sortable one, complete with filters too, and that requires a change to all 200 BRs to make them consistent. I could “cheat” and create a redirect, but it wouldn’t look right. At least not to me.

So I put on my deep water waders and headed away from my safe shores into Lake Block. In my next post, I’ll talk about learning to swim again, but I’m still alive, and switching from one editor to another quite frequently. Later I’ll even talk about the calendar “block”.

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.

So you want your own website…

The PolyBlog
December 4 2018

Since a lot of friends know I have my own website, it isn’t uncommon to get questions about how they get their own website, dipping their toe in the vast sea of having their own presence online. Usually I frame the discussion around three questions.

A. Do you want your own domain?

This is almost always a no-brainer for people as they often think in very specific terms and have some domain names in mind. My domain, polywogg.ca, is registered to me and only me. It is the same for every company on the planet that has a site, usually. They all register a domain name that is unique to them.

It isn’t the only way to go. Lots of people use free sites at various hosters and end up with sites like “http://AndreasWorld.wordpress.com” or “LoveOfBooks.blogger.com”. Their “unique” presence is still there but the hoster’s name shows up too. For some, they don’t care about that; for most, they do.

If you care about having a site that only has your name in it, you need to register a domain. If you don’t, you can go with lots of hosters that will give you an address like above. Or even trick out a bunch of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Now, the REAL question is more difficult, and for me it’s not a question. I do not and will not register a domain with the same company I choose for my hosting of the site. Let me explain.

When I put my website online, I need two things:

a. A registrar who tells the internet that polywogg.ca is registered to me and also tells all its internet friends where to find my website (the technical numerical address of my site); AND

b. A server of some sort that hosts the files and content for my actual website.

A registrar and a hoster. I need both. And lots of people who are hosters will also offer registrar services. And some registrars have also gotten into hosting. A fully-integrated service, as they pitch it.

Yet there is an inherent conflict of interest for them. Sure, they have to do it all properly and everything, but when you register your domain, it actually records four pieces of information — a registrant ID, a tech ID, an admin ID, and the DOMAIN NAME SERVICE (DNS) address where your website can be founded (like your REAL IP web address that the internet servers use, not the word form users see).

For most people registering a personal site, the DNS will be given to you by your hoster; the admin ID is likely you; and the tech ID may be whoever is helping you set up the website or just you. Regardless of who is doing the registry, these three things are pretty much the same across the board. The problem comes with the REGISTRANT ID.

This basically says who owns that domain. When you do the registry yourself, it should always say you. However, here’s the kicker…sometimes companies that offer cheap registries and hosting packages actually find it easier to just register themselves in that field. They may also register themselves as the tech or admin ID, which is not ideal, but not too problematic, they’re easily changed. But the owner / registrant ID requires the registered ID holder to agree to any changes.

Most people don’t think anything about this. And if you ask the hoster, they’ll tell you there’s no issue. You just move the registry to somewhere else. But unless you have that in writing, why would you simply trust them?

There are countless stories on the web of BADHOSTER X registering a domain “on behalf of” customer Y. Fast forward five years, the person’s needs have changed in what they’re looking for in a website, and they see lovely HOSTER Z sitting over there with exactly what they’re looking for at the right price. No problem, Y will just move from X to Z. And then X says, “Whoa, wait a minute. We want your business. Let us do blah blah blah.” And so they delay and cajole the person into staying. And eventually it turns acrimonious as the person just wants to leave, and BADHOSTER X won’t relinquish their ownership of the domain. They’ll let the DNS address point to another service, but they won’t do it quickly (they serve their own customers first), and what a surprise, they’ll only do it after paying an admin fee. If you’re Mr. or Ms. Big and Popular site, sometimes they’ll say, “Oh, look at our sliding scale…we’ve been discounting, so now you have to pay our full admin fee based on usage, and oh look, they want $1000 to transfer your domain.” It’s extortion, pure and simple, and yes, it is indeed illegal.

Is this a frequent problem? No. Is it a possible problem? Absolutely. They also might just jack the rates after year 1 for your renewals (you have to pay a yearly fee to keep the domain registered to you).

When I went to register my domain, all the experts said “do it separately”, it’s just less risk of future hassle, and while a bit more manual, not egregiously so. And I did. I found Canadian Domain Name Services in Canada, registered all three of my domain names with them over time, and that’s the only service I do with them. They now offer hosting too, but I don’t need that. I just need the basic service I signed up with them for, and it works perfectly. No muss, no fuss, no extortionary practices if I decide to move my website hosting. Which, by the way, I have done four times in my website’s life. Just deciding that the previous hosting wasn’t what I wanted. Three clicks later (almost), and I was with someone else’s hosting package, so I just closed the previous one. And if any of the hosters gave me a hard time, I didn’t care — I just went to the registrar and pointed away from that hoster to my new hoster, leaving me with an up and running site. By contrast, if I was in dispute with my old hoster, they could literally hold me and my website hostage if they were also my registrar.

And yes, ALL the current hosters will offer you deals on your initial registry to get you to join, and almost ALL of them will register themselves as the owner of the domain. You decide if you want to trust them with that part of your site.

In the end, the question is easily answered by a simple metaphor…if you paid a lawyer to register your business, would you let them register themselves as the owner?

B. Do you want a dynamic site or a static site?

If you read any web design advice on the web, they’ll tell you that static sites are the worst possible thing to do. But they mean something different than what this question means.

What they mean is that sites need updates and new content in order to generate buzz and traffic. New things to encourage people to visit your site regularly. What they mean is “dynamic content”.

In my case though, I mean two things — is there going to be dynamic content (as per above) and are you going to want to change the look and feel, menus, etc. on the site over time?

If all you want is a relatively static site — both for content and design — then there are lots of simple hosters out there that offer HTML-based websites (simple web pages) with slick looking templates. You go to their site, sign up for a hosting package, choose a template, and voila, your site is designed. You add your info, some pics and graphics, and you’re done. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.

GoDaddy used to be the biggest player on the block for this. Then companies like WIX came along. They’re cheap, they’re slick, it all works pretty well. The only thing you’ll have to do is provide your credit card, click some buttons, and then go tell your registry whatever info the hoster tells you to enter (it’ll basically be something like “Your DNS entry is AndreasWorld.wix1.com” and you’ll go enter that in the registrar site — it’s basically like telling the post office where you live).

There are GREAT sites and templates available. Prices can be as low as $5/month or even lower if you pay by the year. So why wouldn’t everyone use it? Because it isn’t easy to modify the template. If you decide you don’t like the colour of the lines on a table? Well, good luck changing it. Maybe it’s easy, likely it’s not. Some features aren’t even available to be edited, regardless of your technical ability, unless you’re a pro.

Cheap, easy, fast, and relatively professional looking. But it’s not easy to update regularly (nor change the design).

Others, by contrast, want to basically add new content every day. A story. A photo. A post. A new page. Random thoughts. If this is what you are after OR you will be mostly static but with lots of sub-pages, then another solution is better. Officially it’s called a CMS — content management system.

The most common CMS available are blogging platforms aka blogs or gallery platforms aka photo galleries. If you’ll be mostly posting text, you want a blogger; if you are mostly posting photos, you might want a gallery. And of course, just to be confusing, most galleries allow you to have blog-like posts and most blogs also offer galleries. But if you’re mostly text, go with the blog.

There are two main blogging platforms that are like Wix or GoDaddy — already available blogging setups ready to go. One is called blogger.com, and the other is WordPress. Blogger is entirely a self-contained site, you can host your site with them (with your own domain, just like Wiz) and have a bunch of templates to choose from. Click, click, click, you’re good to go. A little basic in their offerings, but you can be blogging in minutes. Literally.

WordPress took a different approach. Yes, they offer both free and paid online accounts (as does Blogger), and the more you pay, the more power you have. Even the most basic site though is more powerful than the free site (and you can have your own domain as opposed to polywogg.wordpress.com). Like Blogger, you can be up and running in minutes, but there is more power under the hood, so it can be a bit more daunting.

The alternative approach they took though is that they ALSO offer their software as a full download and you can run it on other hosting platforms i.e. I am registered with a company called Web Hosting Canada, and can install WordPress to run on it. There are competitors out there too — Moodle, Joomla, Drupal, etc. Actually dozens, if not hundreds. But WordPress is the biggest player.

Running your own “install” of WordPress might sound daunting, and it is at first. But there aren’t that many menus under the hood, and they are relatively intuitive after you finish with setup. Plus there are thousands of templates available to tweak to your heart’s content.

Definitely more work, but the payoff is that a blog is inherently dynamic. Write a new article, post it, and BAM, instant dynamic content. If you don’t plan to do that, then stick with a static site.

C. What else do you want on the site?

After you get through the basics of a static or dynamic page above, you should be leaning one way or the other. Now I need to make your life more complicated. What else do you want on the site?

Do you want a guestbook? If you do, it is easier to do and control with a dynamic site (after all, static sites don’t inherently let you make simple updates like adding your name to the page).

Do you want a catalog of products that might change? If it’s a few services or products and they are relatively the same all the time, maybe just price changes, you can go with a static site. If you want a lot of products listed (almost like a gallery), you need a dynamic site.

Do you want sidebars, banners, advertising, changing menus, galleries, calendars? All argue for a dynamic site. The more “custom” you need it, the less the basic static sites are going to meet your needs.

What am I not telling you?

If you are going to hire someone to do the design for you, none of the above may matter. If they are good, they’ll set you up with a solution that meets your needs today and tomorrow. Of course, there may be a small conflict of interest in their advice in that they may get more money out of you if you redesign later.

So, in short:

  • Simple site, not much change in content, few pages, basic web presence — go with static site;
  • Changing content, multiple pages, regular updates, evergreen web presence — go with dynamic site like WordPress.

At least those are the basics.