Mark on WordPress

Engine-awareness

Posted in blogging, software, wordpress by Mark Jaquith on February 21st, 2007

One of my favorite things to do when I come across a new WordPress-powered blog is to type ?s=wordpress into the address bar, which searches their site for posts mentioning WordPress. I like to get a read on what people think about the engine that powers their thoughts. While I enjoy the ones that offer praise and appreciate the ones that provide constructive criticism, the best result is when I get zero hits. That’s when I know WordPress is doing its job: when people aren’t even aware they’re using it because they’re so busy using it!

I’ve heard a lot of Social Media Prophets proclaim that the tools don’t matter, that it’s all about the content and the connections being formed.

Ideally yes, the tools shouldn’t matter. The tools should be so intuitive that our awareness of them fades to nothingness. But as long as ?s=wordpress keeps returning hits, they do matter. In fact, the sure sign that we’ve reached the point where the tools don’t matter is when the statement “the tools don’t matter” is so obvious a statement that no one would waste time making it.

13 Responses to 'Engine-awareness'

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  1. Javier Aroche said, on February 21st, 2007 at 1:04 pm

    I love ?s= to create my site search tags XD (just like lorelle does)

  2. Lorelle VanFossen said, on February 21st, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    Tools matter without a doubt. Invisible or visible. Which is why I scream so loudly about some sites without a search form anywhere. I’m forced to use ?s=helpmefindstuff. That’s when a useful tool comes in handy when in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing.

    I think about all those who don’t know and what they are missing. And then pity the blog owner who doesn’t know what they are missing when they don’t offer the most basic of tools.

    Thanks for being the wise one again.

  3. Aaron Brazell said, on February 21st, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    Why not just subscribe to a Google blog search on “wordpress”? :) Less manual labor.

  4. maol said, on February 21st, 2007 at 3:52 pm

    Too bad there are so many sites with /wordpress/ in their URL. Links to those also show up as results, even if the word wordpress is not used in the article.
    Other than that: I’m often surprised to see that there are people who don’t know the power of GET requests in the browser addressbar.

  5. Mark Jaquith said, on February 23rd, 2007 at 5:58 am

    Aaron,
    Because it’s noisy. I do pop in from time to time… especially when a new release comes out, but there’s a whole lot more there than “WP users talking about WP on their WP blogs.”

  6. Wordpress.org for Authors said, on February 28th, 2007 at 10:11 am

    [...] to their liking. But i guess there’s no way around this issue - Mark Jaquith recently wrote about how the tools we use to project ourselves and our work online still do matter, and that [...]

  7. Mikel said, on November 17th, 2007 at 8:59 pm

    Respectc

  8. Rumus said, on November 20th, 2007 at 9:36 pm

    Hmmmm. Interesting…

  9. Mihal said, on November 21st, 2007 at 12:14 am

    Good Lock+

  10. Katy said, on November 21st, 2007 at 2:47 am

    Very goodo

  11. Mikel said, on November 21st, 2007 at 7:48 am

    Good Lock0

  12. Sam said, on November 29th, 2007 at 9:30 am

    ERR è

  13. Rumus said, on December 4th, 2007 at 8:34 am

    Very good%

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