Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

Web guru extraordinaire, Jeffrey Zeldman, has spent the last 11 years hand-coding his web site and RSS feeds. No more —Zeldman has switched to WordPress. Now I’m even more miffed that I won’t get to attend AEA Atlanta.

So, why did Zeldman choose WordPress? Not because it’s open source. Not because it’s free. He chose WordPress because it lets him write his content without getting in the way.

To the extent that a content management system can, WordPress thinks like a writer. The workflow is intuitive enough not to trip me up when I’m halfway into an idea. It stays out of my way, giving me only the tools I need, and only when I need them.

In WordPress, it’s easy to create and edit categories, easy to write themelines for all my categories at once, and even easy to tell when I’m writing too many words for the page — because WordPress also thinks like a designer.

He also cites the “live preview” and XHTML compliant output as features that he finds useful. I think that all of us who have ever worked on WordPress have our chests stuck out a little more than usual today. Hey, Matt — say hi to the Z-man for me at SXSW, okay?