For several years I’ve been maintaining a page dedicated to the film director Whit Stillman, who has probably escaped having other sites created about him because his most recent film, The Last Days of Disco, was in 1998. I filled the gap, quite enjoying something as simple an un-techy as a fan site. But the old page was getting a little unwieldy, and if he does get another film off the ground Mr Stillman would deserve something better.
Admittedly, I’ve been thinking that thought for at least a couple of years but have never got round to it, probably because my brain’s ability to feature creep made it an increasingly onerous task. Eventually I realised I should keep it simple. I dithered between building it as a straight Movable Type website, with a minmum of hacking for once, and trying something new, ie, WordPress.
When I realised WordPress allowed a site to have a set of hierarchical pages outside of the normal weblog flow I realised it was exactly what I needed. I was facing stitching together two MT sites to have the same effect and WordPress has been a dream. Nearly everything has Just Worked without too much fiddling, resulting in a brand new site about Whit Stillman.
No, it’s not much to look at yet. Believe it or not I’d like it to be more colourful and interesting, but most of the colourful and interesting WordPress themes looked far too much like weblogs. So I went for plain and simple and may try and brighten the place up at some point.
Although WordPress feels like a strange land I’m loving the immediacy of the dynamic publishing and the swiftness of experimenting with themes. Had it been around when I began all this stuff I’d probably have opted for it over MT simply because it’s all done in PHP. I’m not going to switch — life’s too short for that and MT has plenty going for it — but it’s nice to finally confirm that there’s another viable option out there.
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Liz at 10 Jul 2006, 6:09am. Permalink
I love Last Days of Disco. I hope it gets rereleased on dvd as i cannot afford the 75 dollar price.... anyway, do you know where i can get stillman's contact info? I've always wanted to write a fan letter!