Goodbye WordPress, Hello Statamic

I have been waiting sooo long to write this post.

After two decades with the same CMS, I've made the switch away from WordPress.

When I started using it, WordPress was just out of beta. Facebook was just launching, and most of us were still on dial-up connections.

Before, I had been using an open source CMS that I built myself (don't you know) called back-end.org but WordPress 'just worked' and I was early in my business and being a Dad to twins and I needed to focus on building apps for my clients, not tinkering on the code that powered my website.

The WordPress experience hasn't been without its struggles:

• I've been hacked multiple times over the years through broken plugins
• Occasionally still find rogue inline links to pharmaceuticals
• Ditto random spam comments linking to suspicious download sites
• The codebase has always felt like something I didn't want to delve too deeply into (there be dragons here)

That said, it's pretty good software that seems to power half the internet and it has an army of devs globally. So whilst the thought of moving away has been of interest, the hassle factor has been super high, so it always fell to the bottom of my priority list.

Why Change Now?

The catalyst for change wasn't technical — it was cultural.

The recent public dispute between Matt Mullenweg (WordPress founder) and WP Engine (premium host for WordPress) has left a bad taste in my mouth, particularly Matt's behaviour screamed bully to me, so that was enough of a motivation to look elsewhere for a place to house my website.

Enter Statamic

There was a short list: it had to be Laravel based and I wanted an active dev community that I could potentially become a part of. Statamic was the obvious choice and I couldn't be more excited about this change. Here's why Statamic feels like the right move:

• Laravel-based: I know where everything is under the hood and the hosting I can do with my eyes closed
• Flat-file first: Markdown based, but option to switch to database when needed
• Looks good: The UX is excellent
• Strong community: The Statamic community is welcoming and supportive
• Hardened: The flat-file approach eliminates many common attack vectors
• Quick: OMG it's so fast

Looking Forward

The best part about this transition is that I'm actually excited about working on my website again. I'm looking forward to customising Statamic to become my personal dashboard on the backend, something I never felt motivated to do with WordPress.

First up is to tidy up a few loose ends and then release my theme as a Statamic starter kit called tl;dr.

Thanks Matt for the software and also the motivation to move to Statamic.