Did you hear about WordPress Calypso? What is it? If you’re a busy person, you’re wondering if you can safely ignore it. At first, it does sound like a paradigm shift. A 100% JavaScript version of WordPress that would be incredibly disruptive to Apache, NginX, PHP and so on. With WordPress powering 25% of the web, wouldn’t that be a dramatic change?!

Technically, that is possible. Based on my understanding of Node.js, it’s an excellent language for creating web servers, and I think it could replace Apache, NginX and PHP on the backend, with Javascript. But as it turns out, that’s not what Calypso is.

Calypso really only affects amateur bloggers using the free WordPress.com blogging platform, which is the equivalent of a Blogger.com or Tumblr. Auto-matt-ic (the for-profit company behind the free blogging software) seems to be building something more Facebook-like with Calypso, further distancing itself from WordPress.org, the blogging software used by the greater Internet blogging community.

For the rest of us, Calypso is essentially an admin “skin” that our customers/readers won’t see. There won’t be any speed improvement for us, because nothing has changed on the backend for WordPress.org users. And from what I’m reading, there’s no roadmap or plan to change the WordPress.org backend over to Javascript.

Because every plugin and every theme would need to be rewritten from scratch. The hosting industry is not equipped either. The hosting industry has a hard enough time keeping up with new versions of PHP and Ruby.

From that perspective, a 100% Javascript WordPress has the same chance at success as any other blog platform that’s starting out today with zero traction. From a practical perspective, is a Node backend more useful than a PHP backend that already gets the job done? No.

Ideally, I’d like to see a Node-based blogging software replace NginX, PHP-FPM and PHP on the backend, just for the sake of simplicity. That would be a fun project, but I can’t imagine anyone paying me to do that.

I can’t blame Matt Mullenweg and Automattic for going this route. Building something unique is fun and rewarding. At least on their own WordPress.com server, it sounds like they’re making significant changes to their backend architecture. But trying to hot-glue this Calypso code into WordPress.org will create unnecessary confusion and conflict. Because the goal of WordPress.com is completely different from the goals of bloggers using WordPress.org.

I suppose Calypso could emerge as a standalone product that doesn’t use Apache, NginX or PHP. But in my experience, few people are brave enough to switch to a barebones platform with no tools, plugins, themes or community. I’ve seen this play out before. Lots of work and the reward is insignificant–eventually people move on with their life.

What about WordPress.com? Is it really that much better now? It’s still the same random collection of blog posts with no central theme, topic or purpose. I took a quick peek last night. It doesn’t seem like a major improvement to me. The menu interface is convoluted, with toolbars framed within toolbars. I found old blog posts that couldn’t be edited because they “did not exist” even though I was able to read them. As far as the advertised speed, it didn’t feel faster or slower than any other blog.

In conclusion, I think you can safely ignore Calypso, unless you’re planning to fork Calypso to build a Blogger.com competitor.