I love the concept behind Connected Courses which is why I am joining in, but I fell out of love with WordPress a few years ago and we haven’t really got back on speaking terms.
I know that the wonderful people behind Connected Courses are WordPress evangelists, and I may even be persuaded to move back, but I found myself an alternative to WordPress that really works for me and I’m sticking with it for now.
There are loads of Squarespace v WordPress articles out there (e.g. http://wpcurve.com/squarespace-vs-wordpress/) so I am not going to go into a comparison here, but I just wanted to point out 10 reasons why I chose Squarespace for my needs:
- Fixed price. – Yes I know it probably works out more expensive, but unlimited bandwidth, unlimited pages, hosting and custom domain for $192/year seems reasonable to me. (And I have one single annual cost).
- All templates are switchable at any time and fully dynamic. In my early days with WordPress I was having real difficulties with desktop v mobile display of my sites. I know things have improved, but with Squarespace it just works.
- 24/7 support, with a promise of a response within 1 hour. Living across the pond in the UK this really makes a difference. On at least 3 occasions (on this site on another I use Squarespace for) I have needed to use support urgently and they have not failed me.
- Integrated plugins that all come for FREE. (I know that there’s nowhere near as many as WordPress, but they all work and are all of quality).
- Integrated SEO – I have more and more traffic coming via search engines, not just direct links.
- Stats – Apparently data is the new gold and with Squarespace it is built in. I get stats about visitors geographic location, platform (OS), browser type and whether they came direct or via other sources (see below).
- Connected socially – I can connect my social media to my site, sharing posts etc. But also I can pull in media from my other sites (images etc). I also recently added Disqus for comments.
- Beyond the blog – I always struggled to move my WordPress experience beyond a blog and into a site – I know there are some great WordPress sites (ConnectedCourses is an example) but I never quite got my head round it.
- WordPress required too much of my attention for me to get the most out of it. Squarespace is ready to go, quick and less fiddly for me.
- Mobile apps for blogging, sharing portfolios and checking up on your metrics!
Ok – so it’s pretty easy to find lots of reasons for using WordPress too, but it’s just not for me (at the moment).
So I guess I’ll see you all in Connected Courses, I’ll be the one without the WordPress blog 😉
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For those of you now reading this blog post on this self hosted WordPress blog you might be wondering what I am on about. Well it was during the process of learning and conversations on Connected Courses that I was converted back to WordPress.