I have a penchant for knowing – just, well, knowing – when a blog or website is powered by Wordpress. You know? Way too many links in the sidebar or header, usually styled the same way? Info all over the place? A candidly modified Kubrick theme? Referring to static pages as, omigod, Pages?

Here’s what makes it worse: every single blog I want to be like, Kottke, Daring Fireball, Design Observer, et cetera – they all have these “I’m a blog but have actual class” air to them. And guess what – they’re all powered by Movable Type. I’ve been denying there’s a connection. There, quite simply, is. Wordpress has become so widespread, so recommended – it’s becoming the new Blogspot. And that – that mutiny of identity – is the path Six Apart has simply, artfully avoided.

On one level, blaming WordPress for inferior design is missing the point. Daring Fireball and Kottke.org are well designed not because they’re powered by Moveable Type, but because of the talent behind the designs. There’s no reason the authors couldn’t achieve the same design using WordPress. John Gruber writes:

I’ve never seriously investigated WordPress, but I’m nearly certain that if I wanted to, I could switch Daring Fireball from Movable Type to WordPress without changing the design at all.

Beyond professionally designed blogs, however, where the CMS matters less than the designer, there is a reason why wordpress blogs tend to look the same, and it’s not apparent from the surface.

When I put my site back up, I installed WordPress, being today’s default choice for most personal blogs and a one click install on my host. I’ve used Blogger, Greymatter, TypePad, and Movable Type. Wordpress, unlike any CMS I’d used, threw me into a sea of PHP. It glues everything together. That’s how WordPress is designed (When the average user opens a WordPress template and finds himself knee deep in PHP tags, it’s PHP, and claiming that WordPress is not PHP is pointless).

I went as far as buying a book on WordPress before coming to my senses and returning it the next day. I might learn PHP one day, but I had no interest in learning it simply to create my own WordPress design.

On a whim I decided to check out Textpattern. Even upon installation Textpattern seemed more intuitive than WordPress. After familiarizing myself with a few Textpattern tags, I was creating my own design, for better or worse. Textpattern uses PHP, but unlike WordPress, keeps it under the hood. Not only is the Textpattern default templates devoid of visual PHP, they’re also quite simple, allowing a better starting point for developing a unique design than WordPress.

Of course, the design of WordPress has it’s advantages:

The new WordPress modular template files system provides a method to define separate physical PHP files for the different components of your WordPress site.

It allows users with appropriate permissions to quickly change the layout of the entire site by uploading a new theme and essentially flipping a switch in the admin panel.

You can change the look of your site with WordPress in a matter of seconds, with thousands of templates. You can add a new module that does xyz with no programming knowledge. But if you decide to build your own unique design, you might run into problems. Without understanding the role of PHP in the WordPress templates I could never completely make it my own design. Sure, I could have spent a day learning about loops and PHP basics, but when Textpattern allows me to create my own design without jumping through hoops, why?

It’s a difference in philosophy. WordPress allows anyone to create a visually appealing blog with advanced functionality with little effort. But if using someone else’s design is preferred, straying from the basic WordPress template can be daunting.

Textpattern, on the other hand, is more of a blank slate. If your design skills are basic and creating your own site from the ground up is preferable, textpattern is the better choice.