3
Jun 2019
Tim Boylen
website design & development in Adelaide
Why WordPress?
3
Jun 2019
Tim Boylen
graphic design adelaide

Why WordPress?

We build websites using a range of content management systems, depending on what’s best for each client. For our Open Source solution, we chose WordPress and here is why ...

In late 2004, people were starting to enquire more about using open source systems, as opposed to the conventional proprietary systems that dominated the market. (See definitions at end of blog.)

We decided on WordPress and have spent the last 15 years honing our skills with this content management system (CMS).

Why WordPress?

For those wanting open source, we chose WordPress for a variety of reasons.

  • It was – and still is - the world’s most popular CMS.
  • It is used by international companies such as the Ford motor company and Time media group.
  • We liked its “bones” – the system is built on PHP and MySQL.

CMS Features

If you are considering open source, here is a list of WordPress features you may be interested in for your next website.

  • Multiple authors — WordPress’ highly advanced user system allows up to 10 levels of users, with different levels having different (and configurable) privileges with regard to publishing, editing, options, and other users.
  • Full standards compliance — Wordpress has gone to great lengths to make sure every bit of WordPress generated code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. This is important not only for interoperability with today’s browser but also for forward compatibility with the tools of the next generation.
  • No rebuilding — Changes made to the templates or entries are reflected immediately on the site, with no need for regenerating static pages.
  • WordPress Pages — Pages allow users to manage non-blog content easily.
  • WordPress Themes — WordPress comes with a full theme system which makes designing everything from the simplest blog to the most complicated webzine easily, and multiple themes can also be created with totally different looks.
  • Cross-blog communication tools— WordPress fully supports both the Trackback and Pingback standards, and WordPress is committed to supporting future standards as they develop.
  • Comments — Site visitors can leave comments on individual entries, and through Trackback or Pingback can comment on their own site. Comments can be enabled or disabled on a per-post basis.
  • Spam protection — Out of the box WordPress comes with very robust tools such as an integrated blacklist and open proxy checker to manage and eliminate comment spam on the blog, and there is also a rich array of plugins that can take this functionality a step further.
  • Full user registration — WordPress has a built-in user registration system that (if selected) can allow people to register and maintain profiles and leave authenticated comments on the blog. Users may optionally close comments for non-registered users. There are also plugins that hide posts from lower level users.
  • Password Protected Posts — Passwords can be given to individual posts to hide them from the public. Private posts can also be viewable only by their author.
  • Easy installation and upgrades — Installing WordPress and upgrading from previous versions and other software is quick and easy.
  • Easy Importing — WordPress currently have importers for a wide range of third-party software, including Blogger.
  • XML-RPC interface — WordPress currently supports an extended version of the Blogger API, MetaWeblog API, and finally the MovableType API. Users can even use clients designed for other platforms like Zempt.
  • Workflow — There’s also a way to make other types of users to post only drafts and not publish to the front page.
  • Typographical niceties — WordPress uses the Texturize engine to intelligently convert plain ASCII into typographically correct XHTML entities. This includes quotes, apostrophes, ellipses, em and en dashes, multiplication symbols, and ampersands.
  • Intelligent text formatting — WordPress function for this intelligently where you already have breaks and block-level HTML tags without worrying about it breaking the code.
  • Bookmarklets — Cross-browser bookmarklets make it easy to publish to your blog or add links to the user’s blogroll with a minimum of effort.
  • Ping away — WordPress supports pinging Ping-O-Matic, which means maximum exposure for the blog to search engines.
  • REST API - WordPress comes with a powerful REST API, which can turn it into a headless CMS, which can turn any WordPress website into an application. This allows websites to “talk” to each other and share information automatically. This allows the front-end to be anything from a JavaScript-based application or a phone app or even a kiosk running on an event.

Featured Plugins

BuddyPress

Social networking in a box. Build a social network for a company, school, sports team or niche community all based on the power and flexibility of WordPress.

WordPress.com Stats

Users can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on the server by plugging into WordPress.com's stat system.

Wickett Twitter Widget
Display tweets from one or more Twitter accounts a WordPress widget.

WP Super Cache
A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files.

Get Recent Comments
Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with own formatting in the sidebar.

Related Ways to Take Action
The “Related Ways to Take Action” WordPress Plugin makes it super easy to connect readers to ways to take action based on the content of the posts.

 

DEFINITIONS

Proprietary software does not share its source code, as it is a highly valuable company asset and unique. You pay to use this software.

Open source software makes its open source freely available online. Programmers around the globe are free to modify it or create entirely new software using this code. This core source code is free.

 

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