Why You Should Consider Using Wordpress For Your Next Project
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007Wordpress is very well used and well liked within the larger blogging community whether it for use with a very personal or specialized blog or something larger that requires static pages and a number of additional features that reach outside the normal parameters of blog functionality.
One of the reasons that so many use Wordpress is that it is extremely configurable through plugins, hacking the actual Wordpress code, and the functionality that comes baked in to Wordpress from its initial install. Though WP is completely capable of fulfilling the needs of the average blogger (and then some), it is optionally extensible into a fully fledged system of document creation and organization.
Wordpress, as either a blogging platform or Frankenstein-ed into whichever type of management solution the user would like, focuses on usability and capable simplicity. The administration interface follows the general design of the rest of the application in terms of presenting a basic interface but expanding to meet user needs when it is necessary. There are few configuration options not addressed in the panel and once accustomed to the tabbed interface — it doesn’t actually use tabs but the flow of it is identical — it is a quick way to get to the particular area of the application that you need.
Another aspect to keep in mind when considering Wordpress is that is it licensed under GPL and cannot be boxed away into a commercial product that requires its users to pay for each new version. If you’re considering the creation of a derivative product that uses Wordpress as a part of it you will want to read up on the GPL and how it might effect your distribution of WP code. For most users, the GPL serves as protection against the closure of access down the road. One of the reasons that so many people initially adopted Wordpress was at least in part due to a licensing change in the then dominant blogging software Movable Type that stunned many people who assumed that the free use they were accustomed to had suddenly disappeared. Wordpress is licensed as an open source application so that sort of sudden shift in a developer’s goals will not not constrain its use.
A side effect of the open source nature of Wordpress is the huge number of people actively at work improving the software and adding additional features. This essentially means that no single developer has complete and utter control over the project; if one person becomes burned out or lacks the necessary time to contribute fully to the project then another will take up responsibility or help distribute the work between other active developers. What this means for users is that someone will always be working on getting new versions of Wordpress out the the door and working on fixing the problems users report.
The Wordpress website also contains an enormous amount of documentation that is available to anyone in the form of the Wordpress Codex. By searching around in the Codex you will find information on how to customize any part of the application or how to solve potential problems. The Wordpress Forum is another valuable tool for troubleshooting and general questions. The continually increasing user base makes both areas of their website very active and friendly. You can also find out about new plugins available for WP through the Extend section of the site and, if you’re using the 2.3 release, get updates directly through the administration interface when there are new versions of the plugins that you already use.
So, this has been a general overview of the reasons that you will want to consider Wordpress as the tool for your next website whether a personal blog or as a public relations outlet for a multinational corporation. No software is a panacea and WP won’t answer every question straight out of the box. There is the overhead of adjusting things, adding plugins, and so on but it is more helpful to think of these minor bumps in the road as an investment in a tool that is adaptable to almost any use and is continually evolving to meet the needs and wants of its users.
