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By Chris Blair

I’ve long been aware of WordPress, but had typically viewed it as a tool for creating and managing blogs. In the past year, I’ve found that it’s a powerful tool for building rich, dynamic websites.

If you’ve ever looked into WordPress, the whole enterprise is a little confusing. There is wordpress.com, which is basically a hosting service that provides free and paid WordPress hosting to users. You create an account, they install and set-up everything for you, then you build your blog or site using the WordPress web user interface.

Then there is wordpress.org, which is the free, open-source software group that writes and develops the WordPress software. You download the software, install it on your server, set it up yourself, and build your site or blog using the same basic web GUI.

The difference between the two is that on WordPress.com, there are quite a few restrictions on what you can and cannot use on your site. You’re limited to choosing from roughly 100 layouts…or themes as they call them, you can’t edit the PHP code behind your blog, and you can’t upload any of the great plugins written for WordPress. Of course WordPress.com has paid accounts that lift those restrictions, but they require that you promote their VIP service on your site as well.

With wordpress.org, you can choose from thousands of pre-built themes, many which are free, you can edit the PHP code and css stylesheets as much as you want, and you can use any of the plugins available on the WordPress plugin site. Plus, you don’t have to put links or tags on your site pointing back to WordPress.com!

The downside is if you’re using WordPress on a web host that doesn’t directly support it, you have to install the software on the web server and setup your own database, which can be a little daunting the first time you do it. But many hosting services offer WordPress based hosting packages where they install the software and setup the database for you. I’ve done it both ways and can say that it’s much easier to use a host that offers WordPress based hosting. Your site is ready to edit as soon as you’ve setup the hosting. Setting up a WordPress site without built-in support can take an hour or two and can get pretty technical. But there are tutorials online that walk you through the entire process.

Probably the best thing about WordPress is that it’s a CMS based system. If you haven’t guessed, CMS stands for Content Management System, and it basically offers a “back-end” or graphical administration panel where you build and edit your site. If you’ve ever worked in web authoring programs, using a built-in CMS system is a breath of fresh air. The focus is on entering content, which is controlled by a database that “talks” to other files in the system to determine layout.

Using a CMS based system also allows your client to edit and update their own site. Of course, they also have to learn a little about how WordPress works to undertake the task, but with many companies wanting more control over their site, it’s another reason to use it. If a person can use word processing software, they can edit and add content using WordPress.

The second best thing about WordPress is its layouts are entirely theme based. These are a stroke of genius. You just find a basic layout you like, upload it to a folder on your site, and it’s instantly available in the admin panel. You can even switch the look of your site from one theme to another as long as the themes use the same or similar plugins. But themes are infinitely customizable. The more you know about web coding, the more you can do with them.

That’s the beauty of WordPress. You find a theme you like, select it in the admin panel, and away you go. You can customize just about anything in a theme, from image files and the size and colors of fonts, to the line spacing and margins used throughout the layout. Of course editing all that requires knowledge of HTML, PHP and style sheets, but in my opinion it’s still far easier than building custom sites in web authoring programs, since the tedious part of the layout is already done for you!

Of course WordPress is far from perfect. Much of it’s functionality comes from freely available plugins that offer all kinds of shortcuts to adding video, audio, sliders, menus etc. Many of the plugins are poorly written and conflict with each other, causing either the plugin or some other critical part of your site to stop working. The other frustrating part of using WordPress is very confusing documentation, both about the software and various plugins. Many plugins have NO documentation, which often makes them unusable. And documentation on the WordPress.com site and Wordpress.org sites is inconsistent at best.

But…WordPress is also free, open-source software, so it’s difficult to complain about these deficiencies, and there are some incredible plugins that save hours of time and work beautifully.

Like any software, WordPress requires a commitment on the part of the designer to take the time to figure out how it works. But it’s truly an amazing system that’s well worth the effort.

Filed under: Graphic Design, Online Marketing, Web Video on August 30th, 2010