WordPress as Metaphor

Over the years, I toyed with several “content delivery systems,” eventually settling on WordPress, as, at the time, it was stable, robust, adolescent, and yet, showed great promise.

I’ve not been wrong, not about this one.

A year ago, maybe a little further back, I queried a group of my business peers — online peeps — what their favorite WordPress plugins were.

As an example, one plug-in, and I’ve not settled on just one, but each site I build I tend to make sure a back-up plug-in is installed. Not the whole site, just the database. All that matters, as the rest is mere window-treatments. I want a weekly back-up, off-site, of the critical data.

Included in my list plug-ins, at one time? Yoast SEO, as I would plug that in any to any site I built, and a few other tweaks, one largely of my own making, then, that SEO plug-in got a major upgrade.

It happens. It went from useful with a paid-upgrade available, to mostly up-sell. I still run the free version on one site, just as a, kind of, SEO check thing. But only a reminder on that one site.

Built into that plug-in, was the “site map xml” function. So as I deleted the plug-in, I had to try various other ways to make a site map. “Site map” is small directory of a site‘s stuff, updated, whenever. Helps people like Google and Bing find us.

Like the old card index at the library? That’s about the same thing as the “site map.”

WordPress as Metaphor

For a few months, I used different site-map plug-ins across various sites I administer. However, why WordPress as Metaphor works so well? That function is now built into the current “factory software” — WordPress’s own JetPack. “OEM,” in old-school verbiage.

Less tinkering, runs fine, right out of the box.

Over the years, I’ve watched as a many functions that used to require add-ons, plug-ins, fiddling, tweaking, and other adjustments? More and more of that is handled by the updates, upgrades, and the system itself.

Adjust as need be, make source corrections, and motor forward, “Putt-putt.”

Retrospective here and here.

(WP Theme endorsement)

#WordPress