Amber Case

Author, Designing Calm Technology (forthcoming from O'Reilly Books). Formerly Director of Esri R&D Center, Portland.

IndieWeb Projects I use

Why do I use WordPress for my personal domain?

I am currently switching over from p3k to WordPress for my personal url. There are a number of reasons why I chose WordPress over p3k and Known.
- I first used WordPress when I came out (2003 or 2004) after using a number of other systems on my own server. I have a long history with it and it is familiar to me.
- I went away from WordPress for a while as it got a little messy and overwhelming. The amount of upkeep took me away from simply blogging. Also, the blogging interface kept me from posting frequently. At one point I hacked a WP theme to look like a social network update box, but code for the original theme was not very friendly to core updates.
- The P2 theme for WP and P2 Child themes really changed the game for me. I started using the P2 theme for WordPress for a number of private blogs and communication sites. I then started to use P2 for public facing sites such as cyborgcamp.com. P2 worked very well.
- At the same time, I found WP development and support for IndieWeb was increasing and improving. I felt that it would be a good time to switch over from p3k back to WordPress, using some of the new plugins. Micropub support by Snarfed was key to this transition.
- I was very happy with p3k but loved the posting interface of the P2 theme. I needed a bit more support for images and other quick blogging tools. P2 has a front posting interface that doesn't require going into WP further to make a post. It supports simple HTML, which I am used to writing.
- I can also use the WP iPhone app to make quick posts to my person site from my phone.
- I looked into Known but it required a upgrade from my cheap hosting company provider. I feel comfortable with WordPress simply because I've used it for so long. I don't just need a social posting system with IndieWeb support for my personal site, I need a bit more (book sales page, multiple pages, speaking inquiries, etc.) otherwise I'd use Known in a heartbeat.

IndieWeb Pages I like to watch or edit

Presentations on IndieWeb

Areas of Interest

Data ownership, wearable computing, UX Design, product development, low-friction data collection and personal servers.

User:Caseorganic.com