WordPress, and why it’s our favoured CMS

Would you use a knife to hang a picture frame?

It might sound obvious, but if you used a knife to whack a nail, you’d end up upset at an incomplete job (and most likely covered in blood). Software is absolutely no different. Well, except for the blood. Most of the time at least. You need to find, and use, the right tool for the job.

These days, the creation of a completely bespoke website from a shot of PHP, ASP, A.N.Other server side language and a dollop of HTML (with a dash of database on the side) is pretty much as dead as the dodo. It’s just not required, and anyone that tells you it is is telling porkies. Websites should be built from a carefully considered content structure, using solid re-usable blocks. If you can’t make sense of your content, what will your users think? And this is where the first Tool in the box comes into play – the Content Management System (CMS).

Take Control

The CMS allows you, in theory at least, to take control of your own site once it’s handed to you by your agency/developer/designer. You’re given the keys to the kingdom – the ability to add, edit, delete content on your own site. Gone are the days of hearing a sharp intake of breath and the words “I can do it but it’s going to cost…” at the other end of the line when you ask to change a bit of text on the homepage. To quote Braveheart Mel Gibson; “Freedom”. At least, that’s the theory.

Choose your weapon carefully

These days there are loads (and I mean loads) of players in this market place. Drupal, Joomla, Expression Engine and Mod X to name but a few. But while all impressive in their own right, they’re not all equal. Often they’re over complicated, falling way too much on the side of the developer level user – who don’t care that everything looks like shit but just goes kerazy over the fact it has so much functionality – rather than being powerful enough to do what’s needed while keeping safely and firmly in mind that it’s all about the client being able to use the thing in the end. It’s about the client managing their own content without needing you, the developer, to help.

That’s not to say that other CMSs like Drupal are crap – they’re not. In fact, I like Drupal a lot – it’s very powerful in the right situation. It’s just that it doesn’t put the client at the centre, and training clients to use it is generally a pain in the arse (from both perspectives). Which is why I love WordPress so bloody much.

What’s so good about this wordpress, then?

WordPress is about eight years old now, younger than some CMSs out there and yet it now powers almost 54,000,000 sites on the web and that figures jumps significantly every day. It’s closest competitor Drupal powers around a 1/5 of that. So what’s so good about WordPress?

• Improvement at a rapid pace. WordPress constantly strives to better itself. Buoyed by the fact it’s open-source and developed by a collective of like minded (fanatical) people world-wide, it moves at a ridiculous pace. A new version with extra security, features or improvements comes along once every two months at the latest. No sooner have the community downed tools on a version, there’s a “and here’s what’s coming next” announcement. It’s breathtaking.
• It’s simple. And simple is good. It puts the main features that you need to operate your site front and centre. You can easily create your site structure, add pages of content populated by a Word-a-like editor, and makes blogging a doddle. For most people, that’s all they need. It’s built to be used by people who need to control their own website without needing to be fluent in code.
• Plugins enable cheap or bespoke scaling of features. If you do need a bit more, once you figure out what it is you want you can pretty much guarantee that someone else has had the same requirement – there’ll probably be a plugin for it, and most are free. If it turns out that what you want is a little deeper than that though, it’s okay. Because it has the ability to be customised to do pretty much anything you want, and the developers out there that know how to do that are legion.
• Themes allow you to change the look and feel quickly. There are loads of people selling Themes out there which completely change the look and feel of your system with a mouse click. I love WooThemes in particular, because their code is lovely to work with and offer a lot more bang for your buck than most.
• You’re not tied to your original developer. Due to it’s reach, there are a lot of WordPress savvy people out there that can help you support your system. So you have absolutely no need to keep using the same company that provided your website in the first place. None of this ‘you bought it from us so we’re the only ones that can support it’ bullshit.

Our Choice, your solution

This is why First 10 use WordPress in pretty much all our client projects that require a website. I’ve not encountered a pure website project that doesn’t benefit from WordPress for yet. And we’ve done a few, so we know. And the best thing? The clients all love it. Genuinely, really love it. “It’s ace!”. “It’s so easy!”. “Wow!”. I’ve heard them all, and more. And that makes me all toasty warm inside, because that’s what technology’s for – making life easier, not more difficult.

So when is WordPress not the right choice, then? Well, that depends entirely on the project at hand. When the site is more than just a website, when it requires a lot more custom or bespoke functionality, often WordPress isn’t the immediate choice (though it can be made to do an awful lot with a bit of effort). E-commerce is a different kettle of fish, for example – remember what I said about the right Tools for the job at hand? I’ll discuss a bit more about that particular area in a later post.

For now, three cheers for WordPress. We (and our happy clients) salute you.