I Moved My Website to Leaflet

This post is a brief write-up of how I arrived at this decision. It is a reflection on my personal opinion and preferences - if you are a photographer, writer, or other content creator, your personal mileage on the topic of "CMS versus atmospheric publishing" is likely going to vary.

The WordPress Era

My first attempt at a website to display my photography goes back to the year 2009. I bought a web hosting package, installed WordPress, and purchased a photography-focused "premium" theme.

After a couple of years, that theme felt like overkill for my "ambitious amateur" efforts - so I changed to a lighter theme I had found on ThemeForest. Unfortunately, that new theme ended up being abandoned by its developer a bit more than a year after I had purchased it - and with each version update of WordPress or php (of which there were a whole lot), some part of it started to act just a little more strange.

Adding on to the frustration was the need to have plugins for SEO, caching, image compression, anti-spam, contact form and more. Each plugin update came with the risk (or should I say, promise) of breaking something, resulting in loss of precious time from error search and from tedious communication with entitled pricks plugin developers.

The Kirby Experiment

Then last year (2025) in spring, I decided to pull the plug on WordPress, and migrate my photography site to Kirby CMS. Instead of using a database, Kirby is file-based, which really gives it an edge in terms of performance. It is sleek, modern, and appeals primarily to a php-savvy, developer-type of audience (to which I do not belong). Its ecosystem also offers a few themes and plugins that I was hoping would mostly shield me from having to do much technical work and admin stuff - and indeed, I found a theme that I liked, and had my site up and running in a fairly short time. I had to do some coding and configuration in order to integrate a comment plugin and do some general customizations - work that I didn't particularly enjoy, but ultimately I was able to get it done, and to proudly announce the migration.

Unsurprisingly, it turned out that this was still an environment in which regular updates to the core CMS and other components are common. I was getting increasingly tired of doing any of that, and ultimately completely skimped on it.

Taking a step back - What do I really want?

I want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with @getkirby.com. As a CMS, Kirby brilliantly does what it is supposed to do. It is lightweight, fast, immensely customizable, and has built a supportive community of communicative developers and enthusiastic users.

However, having spent more than 15 years on WordPress and a bit more than a year with Kirby made me realize that I am not looking for a better CMS. I am really looking for no CMS at all.

Instead of being a website administrator who has to tend to updates, configuration and php coding, I want to be a photographer and blogger who owns a website.

I just want to upload photos, write some short text around them, hit "publish", and be done. Putting my photography online is less of a portfolio or client image delivery problem - what I really need is a blog with strong photo support. More often than not, my street and travel photography is part of a narrative like

"Here's what I saw this morning on my way to work."

"Check out this delicious lunch we had at a neighborhood cafe."

"Impressions from a walk around a historic town in Finland."

A minimalist publishing platform looks like a great fit for this kind of content.

Enter Leaflet

Having spent time on BlueSky, I got increasingly interested in - and excited about - the possibilities offered by the AT Protocol and its ecosystem. With standard.site allowing blogs, articles, and publications to be represented consistently, and with the emergence of publishing tools like Leaflet, Pckt and Offprint, it looked like this might be an environment I could use for refashioning my online photography presence.

All three mentioned publishing tools are great - but looking at @leaflet.pub was really love at first sight for me. The writing interface is sleek and intuitive, offering exactly what is needed - as a result, the creating and publishing experience is quick and smooth on both desktop and mobile. Also, the entire Leaflet team have been incredibly nice and responsive, and even accommodated some of my feature suggestions in order to enhance the way in which photography can be presented and consumed on a Leaflet site.

Other things I like about this approach:

I retain ownership control over my content, which lives on my (EU-hosted) AT Protocol PDS.

If there should ever be a need to switch publishing software, I can move my content to another standard.site compatible blogging service.

My content can be easily discovered by AT Protocol search engines and readers (as well as by standard search engines).

So, as of today, www.norbertwoehnl.com proudly points to my Leaflet photography site. 🎉😀