Deelip.com Moves to WordPress

For the past few days some of you have been trying to leave comments on this blog and have not been able to. At least four readers took the trouble of letting me know after which I asked them to send me their comments and I added them myself. The problem was that some idiots at Google decided that their crappy untested code was worthy of being released.

I need to explain just how crappy the code was. The image below shows the comment form on my blog.

As you can see the word verification image is trimmed and there is no edit box in sight to enter the word into. Neither is there a Submit button to click. Scrolling the mouse wheel scrolls the entire page, no matter where the mouse is. As a result, nobody could place a comment. Now take a look at this second image.

As it turns out there is an edit box and submit button. The only way I could find to access it was by clicking and dragging the middle mouse button downwards, something that I have not done in years in a browser. This happens in Internet Explorer, Firefox and even Google’s own Chrome.

I had all my employees try this on their computers in office and at home as well. Everyone reported the same problem. And judging by the fact that four readers spread across the world got back to me with the same problem, leads me to believe that Google did not test their code before releasing it. It looks like Google has already laid off their testing team and is now expecting us to do the testing for them.

I have been experiencing nothing but pain with Blogger. Getting into the details of Google’s past blunders will only get me more angry. But this was the final straw. First thing this morning I searched for “move from Blogger” in Google and found that everyone was moving to WordPress. I decided not to question the wisdom of the majority, downloaded the latest version of WordPress and installed it on my Windows dedicated server. I then imported all of the 345 posts and 1072 comments at Blogger into WordPress by clicking a button.

So now Deelip.com uses WordPress as its blogging software. WordPress is basically a bunch of PHP scripts talking to a database. If you want to upgrade to a newer version you simply click a button in the WordPress control panel and it downloads and updates itself automatically. But the best part is that you upgrade when you want to, not when some idiot at Google decides that its time.

As far as features are concerned, you cannot even think of comparing Blogger with WordPress. What’s more, anyone with basic PHP knowledge can extend WordPress by writing plug-ins. Simply write a PHP script and drop it into the plugins folder. There are all kinds of people writing all kinds of free plug-ins for WordPress. I just installed three of them – a comment spam blocker, a traffic statistics reporter and a plug-in to link my blog to my FeedBurner account. When I get some free time I intend to write a few plug-ins myself. Come to think of it, I should have done this a long time ago.

When Google launched their Chrome browser, I downloaded and installed it. It lasted just one week on my computer. And I gave it far more chances to prove its worth than I would have given any other piece of software. If you want to know why I sanitized my computer off Chrome, I suggest you search for “Chrome sucks” on Google. You will be amazed. And these guys are now planning on building a Chrome Operating System, which they claim will be a “natural extension” of the Chrome browser. Looking at the images above I am starting to visualize a train wreck.

I dread the day when Google decides to build CAD software. Hey, wait! They already do – Google SketchUp. I hope they do not lay off the @Last programmers who created SketchUp and who probably are still working on it. If Google leaves SketchUp in the hands of the people building software like Blogger and Chrome, heaven help us.