WordPress, a Google parallel

WordPress came into our consciousness a few years ago. Blogging had arrived and it seemed to be something to do with that. However our parent company (we hadn’t been born back then), Creative Thing, do PR work from time to time. It occurred to us that if you ignore the word Blog, WordPress is a fully functioning online newsdesk. So we told our client ACID about it and they said they would have one.

And having climbed inside WordPress we realised that it could do lots more. It could run websites of all types and sizes, with content management systems coming free. It would be easier to create better websites. We win, our clients win and this felt like a revolution about to happen. A bit like when Google emerged.

Prior to Google there were a lot of search engines out there. They were part of a suite of things. All doing the same kind multitasking wrapped up in portals, features and functions which were designed to capture our imagination or, more significantly, our default home page and thereafter have a degree of control over our online viewing habits. Then one day Google showed up.

It was thing for searching the web and nothing more. It had a single line text box in the middle of an otherwise blank screen with the word Google above it. No style, no, add-ons, no translation devices, no email thing, no portal. And not much has changed with the core product since then. It was and is great because it does its job well and doesn’t confuse anyone over that. It instantly captured the home pages of users all over the world.

Where web sites are concerned, there are loads of content management systems out there. Loads of poor designers and developers and websites built on everything from Vignette to planks of wood. Then one day WordPress emerged. It started out as a blogging tool, but critically, it was open source, that is it had all its source code open for all to see and improve, develop, and share. 

WordPress must have had the largest development team in the world working on it for years. They freely share their work with other developers and designers, creating new interfaces, functions, security layers and add-ons. It has become much more than a blogging tool, it is an easy website generation tool. Someone with a basic understanding of the web can set up a site. Critically people with advanced understanding of the web can build on WordPress and make it jump through hoops, sing, dance and tell jokes.

WordPress is the best way to build a website. It is so good that a WordPress website would cost between five and twenty times more done in any other way.