I’ve always thought that as a ColdFusion developer, I should use CF for my own site. It wasn’t even something I’d thought about. I’ve used both BlogCFC and Mango Blog for my own site, and still use both on various other sites. I’ve been really happy with both, and have no plans to swap them out on any other sites.

I found it really easy to add all kinds of functionality using ColdFusion as a blogging platform, and that’s why I’ve stuck with the CF blogs so far.  But then I did a little work on my cousin’s blog last year (check it out if you like illustration), and was intrigued.  Since then, WordPress has made a bunch of updates, and the admin interface is simply beautiful.  I found a very simple template, made some changes to the CSS, and everything worked.  My last step is usually to bite the bullet and open up my new sites in IE6 – to see how late I will be up fixing it.  For the first time ever, I had absolutely nothing to fix.  I know this is due to the good work of the template designer, and not necessarily WordPress, but it speaks to the magnitude of people working on this platform.

I still think ColdFusion is the best platform for a ton of things, and personal sites may be one of those things.  As a developer though, I can appreciate the amount of work that has been put into WordPress, and when a piece of software fits your needs so perfectly, it’s hard (and irresponsible) to ignore it.  The reason I love WordPress is the same reason that I love Macs.  They just work, and they look great.  It may seem silly that the look of the admin interface is so important to me, but if I need to look at something every day, I like it to look good.

I must say that I’ve got a bit of guilt about this.  I almost feel that I’m betraying the CF developers that have put work into open source applications that come close to meeting my needs.  There are still plenty of CF open source applications that I use daily and support, and I don’t see that changing.