Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
II
During this transfer, all sorts of things can go wrong because the files go to a different machine,
with a different folder structure. The links between files are easily disrupted by the transfer, and all
sorts of hassles ensue.
WordPress.com handles all this through a very controlled process. You never upload the title and
text of your post at all; that's handled by the Add/Edit Post page. For graphics and, if you choose to
use them, audio and video files, you upload files one at a time using another tool, and only then use
the files in your blog. You never have to worry about creating a set of link relationships on one
machine, then transferring them to another machine. (Automattic might move your blog around on
their servers, but you never see this happen.)
If you move to a WordPress software-based blog, you take on these hassles. Different hosting
providers might protect you from them to a greater or lesser extent, but you're never quite as pro-
tected and carefree as in WordPress.com. However, on a WordPress.org blog, you do have much
more power to do things your way.
HTML Support
The late 1990s saw an explosion in Internet-related business called the “dot-com boom.” Internet-
related companies that had never made a dime in profit, and some that had yet to even generate
any revenues at all, were valued at many millions and even billions of dollars. Those that could
actually show profit were valued at far more; AOL, famous for helping millions get dial-up sub-
scriptions to the Internet, acquired publishing and film giant Time Warner at the peak of the boom
in 2000. A decade later, the merged company is seen as being worth more without AOL than
with it.
HTML was at the center of this boom, and the pressure on HTML to do more and more, so websites
could do more and more, was enormous. Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and Netscape (Navigator)
were the two main companies competing to add new HTML tags to their respective browsers.
(Navigator eventually provided the base for today's popular Firefox browser.)
CSS went through a similar boom. In its early days, it was less standardized and less well-
supported than HTML. A reliable CSS core that's in widespread use today has evolved.
It's still common today for a web page to not work well on some browsers. In particular, highly
functional sites such as banking sites will often work reliably only on recent versions of Microsoft
Internet Explorer on Windows-based systems, leaving users of other browsers and other systems,
such as Safari users on the Macintosh or Firefox users on various platforms, in the lurch.
Although many of the additions to HTML became more or less standardized, savvy providers—such
as the folks behind WordPress—count on HTML only for a core set of agreed-on functions that
work not only on personal computers but on all kinds of devices, from smartphones to screen
readers for the blind. You can count on your WordPress blog to be accessible to a very broad audi-
ence indeed.
The Visual and HTML Tabs
Let's take a close look at the Visual and HTML tabs to get a feel for the differences. Figure 6.2
shows the editing area for both.
