Thoughts on Wordpress
Let’s be clear, Wordpress is great software. Its easy to install, its easy to use and it serves its purpose, blogging, very well.
However, the extent to which Wordpress is now being used to replace actual web development is getting ridiculous.
This really struck home to me recently when I saw an online shop based on Wordpress. It had a cart, a search function, a user database, the whole nine yards. I mean, come on, if you’re serious about selling stuff on the Internet, why on earth would you use blogging software as your shopping engine!!
A whole cottage industry also appears to have sprung up whereby so called Web Design companies and hacking free Wordpress templates and selling them on as bespoke brochure websites to unsuspecting customers.
This is pretty sharp practice. Wordpress templates are made available free by their designers to facilitate non-commercial use. Its never going to be possible to restrict their usage, but netiquette should dictate that these templates aren’t resold as bespoke designs.
Ultimately, growing user awareness will sort this out, which is always the Great Leveller on the Internet. At some stage, people are going to stop handing over good money to pay for something they can get for free on any number of community blogging sites.
And in the final analysis, bepsoke web development has never actually been easier. The availability of wonderful Javascript tools like the TinyMCE has brought CMS development well within the reach of even novice developers, so there should be no need to clutter up the web space with obsolete blogging functionality.
There it is then.
Wordpress for blogging, and that’s it.