UPDATE: Kevin Tracy pulled out of this plan at the last minute. Read about it here!

KEVIN TRACY: I wanted to let my loyal followers know that what Rachel's press release said was accurate. I've made up my mind and I'm reluctantly transitioning KTracy.com back to WordPress.

Why I Thought Static Webpages Would Work

To be clear, I think Static Websites are awesome. KTracy.com as a static website is pretty great, in my humble opinion. The staff here has done an incredible job creating this iteration of the site. It's a bit incomplete, but that's partially my fault.

I have no real desire to create dynamic content. Once we post a press release or share a photo, I don't have any intention of modifying it later or accepting comments or social media shares. Remember, I loathe social media and really don't care what trolls have to say. If visitors feel very strongly about anything on my website, they're invited to send me a message through the contact form.

Furthermore, static websites are blazingly fast. A lot of websites tell you to limit the number of file requests your server needs to fulfill to speed up a site. Yes, we use several small php and text files to make everything work here, but it is still crazy fast and efficient.

I was also excited to have the freedom of experimenting with my web design to cater to the content rather than follow formulas created by WordPress and other CMS platforms.

Why Static Webpages Didn't Work

The answer here is pretty simple. Updating a static website on a mobile device is an aweful experience.

As we stated early in this process, our long term goal was to find a way to incorporate the IndieWeb standards into KTracy.com as best as possible while maintaining static layouts. In particular, I wanted a way to share an Instagram or Twitter-like feed of thoughts and photos to my site from my Google Pixel smartphone using a micropub tool.

If you read the tabloids, you're likely aware that I've been living my best life and have had a pretty full social calendar with my girlfriend. There have been several times I wanted to share some fun thing with you all, but having ruled out social media and not being able to post on this site from my phone, it just didn't happen.

Ultimately, I've decided that micropub and micoroformats on a static website aren't likely to be terribly functional without a custom CMS that I'm not competent enough to write.

Non-WordPress Alternatives

There are faster alternatives to WordPress. I'm particularly fond of Grav. However, Grav and all other CMS alternatives lack the complete collection of IndieWeb plugins that WordPress offers. Unless you want to create a CMS from scratch, the only way to get all of the IndieWeb standards incorporated into your site is with WordPress.

Another problem is e-commerce. Grav's e-commerce plugin, as of a couple months ago, is not being supported. Additionally, the plugin does not provide the same cross-platform functionality as WooCommerce; which is only available as a plugin for WordPress.

Lessons Learned

Static Pages are Better Than Dynamic Pages for Page Speed and SEO.

Micropub Is Useless Without a CMS.

KTracy.com Needs WordPress for WooCommerce.

WordPress Contains A Lot of Junk That Slows Things Down

The Vision

With all of this in mind, I envision a website that uses WordPress for basic CMS functions, but utilizes PHP and HTML instead of functions for menus and common theme elements by creating php includes.

Additionally, this will hopefully enable the creation of some static pages utilizing the same theme as WordPress without the jarring experience of having two different layouts between the pages. This would permit us the ability to never load some plugins on pages that don't require them, speeding up the average load time across KTracy.com.

Pages, such as press releases, old photo galleries, and other content that will never likely change would still be created as an entirely static page. This ensures we continue to have the bonus SEO points for quick-loading pages that bring people to KTracy.com.

WooCommerce products; which I think will be front and center on the site again; and Microformats posts will be created using the WordPress database on the KTracy.com server.

The only thing we're losing that I like is the efficiency of finding and creating cross-reference page links. Yet, the tradeoffs are worth it in my opinion.

The Plan

What I really like about this vision is that we're not losing all of the content created in 2021. All of our press conferences, press releases, and more will still be available in their existing format with only a varied theme.

Since that's now possible, I want the transition to be relatively smooth. Because this is going to involve a lot of trial and error, I've asked my staff at KTracy.com not to shut down the site during development. Instead, they've been instructed to develop in a test environment. This usually presents some problems in implementation, but resolving those problems should be less disruptive than shutting down the site for several months. In the meantime, I'll still be able to create new content for the site and have it not get lost after the transition occurs.

Because theme development for WordPress has gotten messy, I've been told by the KTracy.com staff that this may take a long time. Whereas most website development strategies take about 60 to 90 days for us, the next iteration of KTracy.com may take six to nine months to complete.

While that work happens, this iteration of KTracy.com will continue to be updated and will keep you informed of our development process and everything else happening at KTracy.com.