One of the goals of this blog is to include useful tools or bits of technology that I run across – as much for my records as anything, but hopefully also may help someone else. Shortly after I was introduced to the idea of starting a blog, I discovered that a WordCamp was taking place close to where I live. Not knowing squat about WordPress, I took the opportunity to check out the user community and see what sorts of things you could do with this tool.
The community:
Wow. I was impressed by the diverse and enthusiastic group of folks. There seemed to be about 120 (my guess) people floating around and this represented folks from every age group and every background. Like you would expect, I got to meet some “coming back” to IT, some poking around to see “what’s up”, and some folks right out of school. The thing that surprised me was the number of people that were not originally from a techie background but instead came from marketing or business backgrounds simply looking for easier ways to get their material online without having to get a programming degree. Some of these non-tech background folks are now even designing WP sites for others professionally. That alone speaks volumes for WP’s ease of use. I think a big component of the excitement behind the WordCamp and WordPress community in general is that it elegantly solves a person’s biggest issues with getting a website going. It makes our life a little easier. Also, being open source, there is a mechanism for anyone to influence the direction the software heads, so you don’t have to worry as much that you’ll come to depend on WP and then the next release will head off in an odd direction leaving you looking for another solution.
The things you can do:
I expected a blogging tool. What I saw was a content management system that makes creating a dynamic, living website a snap. Obviously the more complicated the site you’re trying to produce, the more you have to get into the details, but you’re able to ease into it – like slowly getting into the pool instead of jumping into the deep end. I especially appreciated the fact that a web designer could easily redo an entire web site using WP easier than updating it (with a non-trivial update). For a client, you can assign roles so they can have control over the content of the site without accesses areas that would kill the site.
I plan on posting a listing of some of these tools in a future post.
Overall:
Obviously, I was very impressed. I know there are a bunch of other CMS tools out there and other blogging tools, but for me WP seems to have a better complete package when you add the community, features, and ease of use together. Throw in an active open source crew and I’m hooked.
