About 2 years ago I took my WordPress blog and converted it to a middleman based site and I thought I would never look back. Well today things have changed and I am moving back to WordPress.
So you might think, there must be something bad about Middleman or static sites in general for me to move back.
To quite the contrary, there are many use cases where Middleman and static sites just shine. For what I want to do with my site and my current direction it just isn’t a great fit.
Why WordPress? It’s all about serving business goals
The number one reason that I am switching is to better serve my business goals. There are many things that I have been wanting to do, or to experiment with, and I get bogged down with two things.
First everything I want to play around with on my site using Middleman, requires me for the most part to write code to do even very simple things. Secondly I tend to be a perfectionist with my own work, which means instead of spending say an hour working on things, I spend 8 or more.
So what types of things can I do easily with WordPress that were not possible with Middleman. Here is a short list.
- Easily identify and set SEO page names and descriptions via Yoast SEO
- Quickly build a landing page via Thrive Content Builder. And then mark it noindex and nofollow via Yoast
- Quickly create content download, video landing pages, or other sequenced landing pages via Thrive Content Builder
- Quickly experiment with different offers by placing relevant advertisements on specific pages or topics via Thrive Leads
- Quickly build advertising sequences and AB Test variations of copy, design and placement via Thrive Leads
- Easily set and forget AB Headline testing via Thrive Headline Optimizer
- Easily build a number of forms that can be used for surveys, contact forms, or other purposes via Ninja Forms
- Create and change content in an easy way so someone else could do it (NOTE: Netlify’s CMS is getting very close to this).
- Easily add images, structure and formatting to existing popular articles via Thrive Content Builder
- Promote and build products in a way that is largely hidden from search engines, quickly and be able to iterate via Thrive Content Builder and Yoast SEO
- Have other people in my team work on the website.
- Be able to easily split content off into different properties in the future.
- Be able to quickly change the visual look of the site.
- Identify hard to read articles via Yoast SEO
- Search functionality (there is a way to do this via Middleman but it is a pain to set up)
This list really can go on and on. The basics that I was looking for is to have a simple system that people other than myself can use, be able to quickly and easily iterate, to build products and product launch sequences without much effort, to be able to test and analyze what is working well and what’s not.
The Process
When I first decided to go through this process I though about using a script by someone else who went through a similar process. After taking a look at it and looking at my hacked markdown files full of html and other weirdness, I decided to migrate all of my articles by hand.
The fastest way I found to accomplish this was with the use of Ulysses III and its newly available WordPress publishing feature.
This was my basic process.
- open article in sublime text 3, select all and copy
- create new file in Ulysses III, paste using option – command – v (paste as markdown)
- publish to WordPress
Of course I did this is a batch, copying and pasting everything into ulysesses, and then I published each file in succession to WordPress.
Then in each article (from my new article page) I went through one by one.
- updating the date published
- adding the featured image
- embedding the YouTube video if shown
- deleting the YML front matter
- deleting the marker for MORE
Why WordPress provides you a better experience
If you have been following my blog or videos on YouTube this change, with a few hiccups, should result in a much better experience. First I will now be able to write and publish content easily from my favorite writing program Ulysses III and more importantly, from any device and even out on the road. I am hoping this will result in an uptick in my content schedule and more great content to read and consume.
Additionally, I am quickly developing products to build upon what I have created on the blog. Some of these will be free products and some will be paid. But you will quickly see more ways to dive deeper into the same subjects that you were interested in.
Finally, since my goal is to have a good user experience on this site, you will find much more relevant content as you read and watch my videos. If you are watching my grids video you will find out about my ZURB Foundation Crash Course and if you are reading about ZURB Ink (or ZURB Foundation for Sites) you will be pointed towards my ZURB Foundation for Sites Workshop.
I am not a big fan of having marketing messages pushed on me from every direction. I mean, I go to some sites lately and get not just one pop up but a pop up for every paragraph. (Does this even sell more, is anyone even listening?) But I digress, my goal here is to provide tony quality content in a variety of ways to consume it. Most of my content will be provided to the community at zero cost and my goal is to make it as relevant to your interests as possible.
