Lee Jordan – Midlands Web Developer Web Development, Photography, Media Production, Social Media Collaboration and Marketing
It was November 2004 I guess, a time when the web was really trying hard to break free from years of stagnation and neglect after the dot.com crash 3 years before. Web standards, Mozilla Firebird 0.7, suddenly there was an air of excitment blowing through the cobwebs. I was laid up recovering from major surgery and to fill the time I was looking for a CMS for my website and in the end I chose Mambo. It really helped introduce me to the world of personal publishing solutions but it seemed too, complex too clunky and a bit limited. No, you see I needed something lighter, faster, better supported and easier to set up.
Then suddenly I found Wordpress and haven’t looked back since, it saved me from a future of needless Mambo Jumbo! I’ve not yet found a CMS as capable and easy to get on with as Wordpress. At the time WP was still building in a lot of the functionality that is there today, still trying to find what it was supposed to be doing, from category slugs to the publishing workflow, but even back then it had the speed, flexibility and ease of use that I was looking for. After other commitments became too pressing I left my wordpress installation to decay and in that time, well WP has gone from a blogging platform to a fully fledged Content Management System. Once again I find myself with some time on my hands and so what better than to get back into the swing of Wordpress, picking up where I left off just before version 2 was released. Yeah it had been THAT long!
Wow! What an amazing transformation, 2.8. The thing I treasure most about wordpress is like the app store there’s a plugin for it, be it changing the order of your categories or embedding media content in customisable players, it’s a solid framework with major support. What’s more if anything should go belly up with the project, like that time when Netscape folded and up came Mozilla Firebird, it’ll rise up from the ash due to it’s open nature. Speaking of which because it’s an open platform you can tinker and customise and expand to your hearts content. So I’m fully back into the swing of Wordpress, having already taken a theme as you see today and customised it to what I need it to do, I’m starting once more to feel the love for WP!
All these things are great, however the one thing that seals it for me, that appeals to my quirky nature? The naming convention, you see each release of Wordpress is named after a Jazz singer and that alone earns it more kudos with me than any other CMS out there. It’s just so much fun!
Posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009
Lee has been involved with the web for over 10 years, working on a wide range of web projects and coming from a media background, a digital native with huge ideas of how each project can benefit from an online presence. Learn more about him and his work on the about page.
Lees, forgive my ignorance, but what’s a CMS ?
KP
Hiya Keith,
No ignorance there chap, a Content Management System or web CMS is a way of putting content on the web without having to have detailed understandings of the languages and technical details involved, like a blog, they often use page templates. They offer much more speed to publish (in theroy) and freedom to display content in multiple sections or formats and also other website too without having to copy and paste the content all over again. Some work on the fly so the page is constructed when requested by the site vistor and some put the pages together and are published to a server before they are viewed.
Finding a good CMS is the tricky bit because mostly the systems are coded by technical folks without real thought as to how complex they can seem to everyone else, the eventual end user. I’ve seen really expensive systems with too many complications and layers and they can actually get in the way of the objective “publish content quickly and easily without much training” and I’ve seen expensive systems that are actually really good.
Wordpress doesn’t get in the way in that respect, it lets you publish and it’s free. Win, Win! There are others like Moveable Type, Mambo, Drupal and so forth but Wordpress is by far the most popular.
I’m with typepad, is that a similar setup as Wordpress ?
Pretty similar in blog terms, I’m not sure if you can download it and put it on your own domain name, like you can with wordpress.
Hmm, you set me thinking as I’ve got keith-povall.co.uk which is not doing anything. Does wordpress cost per month ?
Nope, it’s a free download. Particulary if you’ve got your own site address it’s worth doing, but you’ll need PHP and MySQL as that’s the technical services it relies on, my PHP/MySQL cost is £15 a year, so roughly the same as a flickr pro account.
What were you thinking of doing on your site?
Sort of the same thing as you, amalgamating maybe the sturdy soapbox which is here http://sandalsandsocks.typepad.com and my Flickr activity and maybe even http://www.sandalandsoxer.co.uk/home.htm when I finally tidy the site up.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any knowledge of the PHP and SQL of which you speak. Have you voted for soxer of the year yet ?
I looked at Drupal back when I first started wanting to expand on the dodgy handcoded html, and then discovered Wordpress, (about 6 years ago now…..), and loved it ver since, just because it’s so easy to install. Ran it on a “server” at home for some time until a friend got some LAMP-enabled spce for me.