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WordPress: More Than A Blog Platform
Posted in: Blog, Web Design by Christian on August 27, 2009
When I started using Joomla a long time ago as a community based membership site I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. This also happened to be the same time when WordPress was known as just a blogging site. Joomla had good developer support with great plugins to increase functionality of a CMS system that provided easy content and got away from the standard Web 2.0 system (phpNuke, e107, etc.) of a 3 column community site with a forum and a couple other bells and whistles.
While Joomla had great backend 3rd party plugins like CRM, forums (VBulletin) and ecommerce bridge solutions like OS Commerce it was bloated and took a lot of time for a non-developer. Fast forward to today and WordPress has changed from a purely blogging focused platform to a more robust multi-dimensional website management tool without having an over abundance of programming knowledge.The great thing I love about WordPress now vs. then is that it has been easily adapted by programmers and plugin developers to be much more interactive and integrated with Social Media Networks for further exposure of marketing/advertising campaigns of a product or service.
WordPress works on both Windows and Linux based systems and is built off of php programming language, but has recently made strides in the jQuery (javascript), Java, Flash and Ajax programming languages. As an Account Manager for a web hosting company I would say we deal with more problems troubleshooting Windows based systems than our Linux based systems running the same set up using WordPress.
As far as e-commerce solutions there are a couple of pretty good choices without having to bridge an account like a forum. There is Shopp http://shopplugin.net/ and then there is one that our company is looking to offer with hosting packages called wp-ecommerce http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/. So in my opinion WordPress, in recent years, has gone from being just a blogging site and evolving into a fully interactive CMS website solution for businesses and Universities.Harvard is using a multi user version of WordPress called WordPress MU which is what wordpress.com runs on as well. http://mu.wordpress.org/
This summer I attended WordCampColumbus and some representatives from WordPress/Automattic http://automattic.com gave us glimpse into what they had in mind for the future including full HD video integration sans Youtube. http://videopress.com/ The great thing is because of the community support and the commitment of core developers from the company I only see WordPress gaining more market share. It use to be a lot harder to develop a website pre web 2.0. WordPress has narrowed that gap between traditional web developers and the average hobbyist. The best thing I like about WordPress is that it was named in the top three of CMS scripts that maximize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) out of the box. Drupal and Joomla were the other 2 in the top 3. I’m not going to provide a link on this because wherever you search you will get a biased review (including myself) so take it with a grain of salt. Just so you know, while I have talked WordPress up in my answer, I am in no way affiliated with WordPress, Automattic, or any of the other links mentioned in this answer. I just think it is a great php script that has really come a long way since its inception and will only continue to get better.