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I’ve noticed that my post-Worxlab online presence has been somewhat inconsistent. The sheer amount of change I’m going through makes life interesting to navigate.

But there is an emerging theme, and that’s to strip away layers that no longer serve me, or stop me from always moving forward.

And I find that Wordpress is now a barrier to me writing. Sounds odd considering the ample tools available within it. But I’m finding myself more concerned (and honestly more paralysed) with the look and feel, and the engine more than the actual words.

So I flipped the whole process on its head. How can I put writing first and find the quickest way to get those words on my website?

And I think I’ve found it.

A quick explainer — Wordpress is a highly complex engine designed to give today’s writers a shop window to the online world. There’s so much it can do, and even more if you install plugins.

Here’s the thing — that engine is permanently running to engage users and search engines. And being always on means it needs a lot of maintenance. And all these moving parts means more things can break, and offers more opportunities to bad actors.

But my writing needs are far less complex. I don’t require engagement or to please SEO bots. I simply need to show static pages. So I don’t need an engine.

And without those moving parts, the site is more secure and inherently faster too.

THE PROCESS

The start is distraction-free writing. I’ve been using Apple Pages for years, but I’m now moving to IA Writer. It can be made to look entirely barebones, but also natively writes in Markdown, essentially text markup for formatting.

I have a folder structure in iCloud for all my work that acts as the master document. And then a Python script turns the markdown into static HTML and uploads it to the web server.

The beauty of this is that my original writing is the master document, and the HTML is generated from it. This means that should I change hosts, I just change parameters in the script. And if I get hacked, I can quickly upload it again.

When I got into my head that the writing was the most important thing, the rest was easy. I’ll have no Wordpress installation to maintain, no worries about a plugin update pulling my site down, or Wordpress savvy script kiddies find vulnerabilities and defacing my installation.

What I end up with is a workflow that has fewer dependencies. I can write Markdown in any text editor. Python is a very popular coding language rather than a product. And beyond that I just need hosting.

The end result will be simpler, faster, and cheaper. And I’ll have greater control over it all as well.

Essentially this is simplifying my digital life and letting me focus on what is important.