I probably first heard of WordPress when I was 13 or 14. I first started using it around 16 or 17, when I bought two domain names, ganwen.cn and ganwen.com.cn, and set up a blog.

As I got older, I deleted a lot of posts. Why? First, they felt as childish and funny as rereading my old Qzone status updates, and leaving them public felt like humiliating myself in public. Second, because of the climate for free expression in China, I didn't dare to voice too much criticism publicly.

But the blog stayed online all along, even though I rarely updated it. Later, well, I fled to the Netherlands, the domain changed to ganwen.nl.

Today I'm finally saying goodbye to WordPress. I've hated it for years: all the bugs, the hacks, and all sorts of compatibility problems. Switching away from it was such a hassle that I kept putting it off.

It was the progress in artificial intelligence over the past two years that made the migration possible. Before I knew it, WordPress had been with me for at least 12 years. Although I hate it, I'm grateful that it was with me all those years.

I've now finished rebuilding and migrating the blog in Go. I'm really looking forward to seeing how artificial intelligence develops over the next ten years.