Serendipity

I’ve received at least four emails and blog comments that amount to ‘Why on earth would you choose Serendipity when WordPress is the best’. So, because I want to nip this in the bud and hopefully never comment on it again, here goes.

1) It wasn’t a big decision where I evaluated the possibilities. I knew a friend who used it and was happy with it and he’s doing my web support. He gave me a quick demo a few weeks ago. I was also, as most of you know by now, in a bit of a hurry and wanted to import my old blogs quickly.

2) Although there have been one or two enquiries about how I’m finding Serendipity, most seem keen to tell me how good WordPress is. (In fact, I suggested WordPress to one or two people because I’d found their technical support much better than Blogger’s, as I mentioned in a previous blog.) However, for those who are interested, let me point out that (so far) Serendipity is doing a great job for me and I’m really enjoying it’s ease of use and flexibility. Rest assured that I’ll let you know if that changes.

3) A minor point, maybe, but given that Serendipity has only just been released, who is to say that it won’t be the market leader in future and people will wonder why anyone uses WP? i.e. change is constant – just ask the Movable Type crowd. In fact, just ask the Blogger crowd. (No … don’t get me started!)

4) It is only blogging software, after all. I suppose I’ll change my view on that when I suffer a spam deluge or it deletes some of my posts, but it seems to me it’s not the most important strategic decision I’ll make this year. I would have thought the ‘decision’ to base it all on MySQL was more important, but that doesn’t seem to be up for discussion, probably because there are so few free options.

5) I think the key is to have some control over the host, rather than the particular software I’m using. I might decide to use WordPress at some point in the future, but I expect any future move to be much easier than the consolidation of three old blogs, two Blogger and one Tripod, that I’m going through at the moment. Particularly as I’ll have a bit more control over the process and software choices.

What I’m surprised no-one has picked up on is the rather stupid use of http://oracledoug.com/serendipity as the URL. That kind of limits my future options, doesn’t it? 😉 I confidently predict I won’t be changing the link if possible, even if I change the software, if only to wind up the WP mafia 😉 I wish I’d chosen http://oracledoug.com/blog and anyone who wants to criticise that decision is more than welcome!

Hopefully this is taken in the spirit it’s intended. It’s not a dig at anyone, but please stop emailing me to ask me why I’m using Serendipity and whether I’m stupid. I don’t email you asking you why you eat carrots.

(I’ve no idea what that means either)