This blog actually started off on Textpattern circa 2012. Then came the microblogging trend and all the cool kids had tumblelogs, so that’s where I went.

After the Yahoo! acquisition, I was worried about what would happen if they decided to shutdown the platform. I looked at WordPress, Medium and other alternatives but couldn’t make up my mind, so the the journal lay dormant for a few years. During this time, I started spending increasing amounts of time on social media — Twitter and Facebook, and Instagram later on. But I couldn’t shake the thought of losing all my posts on these networks should they fold. So going the self-hosted route seemed like the best way forward.

Historically, I’ve treated WordPress like a stepchild. I always felt it was ​“cheating” by marketing itself as a CMS, given its origins as a blogging tool. Whenever I had to build websites — either for myself or for clients, be it for personal or work projects — I’ve looked to Craft, Expression Engine, Textpattern, Anchor, Concrete5 and others over the last 6 years.

But 6 years is a long time! I’ve since discovered that WordPress is solid as ever (for blogging), and the announcement regarding Gutenberg was what got me excited about WP again. I still think it’s one of the boldest moves the community has made in its history.

Given my recent resolutions regarding reduced social media usage, I’ve felt the need to start blogging again. Writing is an excellent skill in a designer’s arsenal; plus it’s a great way to keep a record of all the changes in my personal and professional life. And if what I write helps someone out there, that’s a bonus.

Over the last few months, I’ve been importing all my old posts from various platforms into a single WordPress instance on a new domain.

This domain.

Once WordPress 5 was announced, I jumped in and manually converted each post into the new Gutenberg Blocks format. It was a little painful, but it’s done and I’m happy with the result.

In 2019, I’m going to be blogging here a lot more.