It’s probably a measure of where my mind is at the moment that this post was supposed to follow on from the previous one by a day or two. Not four weeks. But we’re here now, so let’s just carry on.
Far back in the mists of time (1993), HTML was released to the public. I started writing web pages in July 1994.
Black text on a grey background. Images were about to arrive, tables would have to wait until HTML 2.0. So for me it was always about the data, presenting information is a way it could be indexed and discovered easily. All before we had <metadata> tags, of course!
Writing web pages with all of the tags in the correct place was always a bind, which is why we had various ‘helpers’ such as Word macros that would convert your text into correctly formatted <body> text. The rest you had to supply yourself.
Nowadays I’d just take this text (written in Word), copy it and paste it into WordPress’s block editor. Job done.
Alternatives
The trouble with all of the alternatives is, to be fair, in part because of two limits I’ve set myself.
Firstly, it must be self-hosted. I don’t want to rely on a platform that might disappear (and do who-knows-what with my content).
Secondly, it must be able to be self-hosted by current hosting package. This is the larger problem as some of the alternatives which have self-hosting options I can’t host on my package; they need Command Line accesses, or rely on software that hasn’t been installed (and which I can’t get).
That rules out quite a few modern platforms. Older platforms using php seem to be on their way out. Even b2evolution, which forked from the same forerunner as WordPress, is no longer being developed.
The DIY approach?
Writing pages by hand instead of by CMS or wannabe-CMS has a few advantages. In theory, the page will be faster to deliver. (In practice, I tried it with one of my posts and the difference was miniscule – a few microseconds, at best.)
It means you don’t need to worry about cookies, as you won’t be using any – so no cookie permissions, privacy notices, etc. But you will have to toughen up access to your site’s folders.
WordPress handles images so that different sizes are delivered based on the browser – smaller versions for mobiles compared to desktops, for example. You’d need to come up with a way round that – but there will be code snippets on the Internet, somewhere. And you could have proper image libraries instead of the half-arsed WordPress versions.
You could also create a page/uploader that converts your plain or Word text into valid HTML. Probably.
The trouble with using other people’s code snippets is that you have to keep them updated as the language develops. Stuff I grabbed years ago that worked in php4 doesn’t necessarily work in php8, so a learning curve for me. I’ve adapted code in the past, I can do it again. Probably.
Damned if you do…
Either way, it’s going to be a big undertaking. Go the hosted/self-hosted route and I’ll have to export my existing site and then try and create a compatible template/skin/theme.
Do it freehand and I’ll have all of the same issues, plus the making sure I write valid HTML, and other bits. And converting my theme.
Not to mention all of those plugins. Which, helpfully, are really just php scripts adapted to work in the WordPress environment. Some of them will be disentagleable. Hopefully, the useful ones!
Part of me wants to give it a go. The part of me that is curious, and bored while not working. But more of me wants gainful employment, and none of me wants to start on a project I’ll have to abandon.
Decision, decisions…