Why I Stopped Using Wordpress
Sumamry:
Fun, Code Cleanliness, Unique, Security, Maintenance, Philosophy
At a young age I was writing crude websites with the basic HTML and Javascript knowledge I found for free online, I created fun websites with Javascript fireworks in the background and I could learn from any site by just clicking "view source" and easily figuring out what was going on.
Fast forward and I'm working a lot with XPath for web-scrapers, today it's a totally different environment filled with external scripts and totally unreadable source-files. Modern sites are a bloated mess, and for me, the fun has gone. For someone who enjoys simplicity and code cleanliness, running a Wordpress site did not make me happy, so for my new website I've created what I enjoy about the web, something: unique, simple, fast, easily navigable, with clean code.
Wordpress has plenty of security vulnerabilities, the maintenance involves database backups and regularly checking for security updates. A handwritten site is much safer and can be backed up with one cp command, this is ideal for self-hosting as I have other projects I'd like to focus on. This combined with being able to use my text editor of choice means that the even with the longer time involved initially setting the site up, working without Wordpress uses less of my time
Doing it this way I'm not stuck with the format which someone else chose, every detail was chosen by me, which I think is right for a hobby technology website. I also don't like the idea of viewing a web-page and having someone else code running on my computer so I wont force this on others. This site uses minimal scripting to go with my philosophy of only running code I choose to on my computer. I think that independent hobby websites are a step in the right direction of making the internet fun again