Welcome to the new Blog!

I started this project out thinking I could get it done in under a month... but alas-it's taken a lot longer!

I'm no longer using WordPress as my blog platform for reasons which I will get into in a minute. I am now using my own custom built CMS; it's actually using my Pro Login software as it's base and I modified it to work as a blog system. I'm really happy with how it turned out! I started this project in my spare time at the beginning of May, and for the last week I worked fulltime on it to get it finished.

Now that I've finished the core of it, I can get back to writing articles! I know my May Income Report is delayed, but I hope to have it out by next week! A lot of users have been commenting and contacting me about the blog too- I apologise for not getting back to you within a timely manner. I just really wanted to get the new blog system finished.

So why ditch the almighty WordPress? Well my main #1 reason was because of the bloat it came with. I had to login to my blog at least once a day to update some new plugin, theme or core file. It took forever for me to figure out how to customise something and it came with a lot of crap I didn't need. The theme files I were using felt too bloated, loading too many javascript libraries that I just wasn't using.

All in all, I felt like WordPress just wasn't what I needed. Switching to a framework I'm very comfortable in (CodeIgniter) I am now able to get new features coded a lot quicker. I could have stuck it out with the WordPress API and made my own theme, but that would have taken a lot longer. I'm also sick of relying on the WordPress Plugins- every other month it seems one of them is compromised in security and I have to load a critical patch up before someone attempts a hack on my site.

Check out my new PageSpeed results too!

OLD:

NEW:

I still have lots I can improve on my PageSpeed results too, so I'm hopefuly I can push the numbers even higher.

So I am now using my own custom CMS. Whilst programming it, I made sure to update the layout with a new coat of paint, fix a lot of issues and present blog articles in a way which makes reading them more pleasant. I've tried to import all my old WordPress content over, but a lot of it is still messed up and will require me going through each page one by one until they're all fixed.

To get an idea of what it actually takes to program a custom CMS, here our some of the features I had to code:

• Custom Article System, with friendly URLs, including categories and tags
• Comment Section, with moderation and spam protection
• Image Database for articles (allows me to put images into articles easier)
• Subscribers
• Shortcode system
• Email Alerts
• Convert old WordPress content to new CMS
• Admin section to allow me to moderate the system
• Crons to help calculate social shares, sitemaps etc.

I can't wait to program some new cool features for the blog now. I'm going to update the products page to be more than just a list of posts (probably use some of the Envato API); I'll be allowing users to register on the blog to have their comments auto-moderated; create a custom Amazon Affiliate script for advertising; more work on the backend to view my Google Analytic Stats and so much more.

Over the next week I'll be updating my blog posts to remove any broken leftovers. Thanks for being patient!

Patchesoft

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