If you think WordPress is just for Blogs, you’ve got another thing coming!

A little over a year ago I was involved with a startup that needed a better website than the one they had.  The recommended solution was to use WordPress, and I thought . . . oh, nooooo.

Well, I was wrong.

I have recently gotten into using WordPress for my websites and wanted to learn more about it.  In looking for help to resolve a problem I was having I came across a WordPress event called “WordCamp” that was being held in San Francisco (I live in the East Bay), so I signed up to stay informed about plans for the event.

What a really great event!

Maybe if you are a deep and heavy knowledgeable WordPress guru, this event would be a waste of your time.  But for myself and my son, who is helping put together our websites, it was great.

The Good
Starting out as a blog website builder some 9 years ago, WordPress is making a huge push to be considered a Content Management Site (CMS) for business.  Built as an Open Source product, there are thousands (tens of thousands!) of developers working with the product who want it to do MORE for them.  They continually help extend the product, and there is a terrific superstructure that facilitates the process.

Menu development, widgets, themes that change the look and feel of your website, administrative tools, automated version updates by hosting services all contribute to a terrific platform to use.  Plugins are another amazing addon to help you add to the functionality of a website build on the WordPress engine.

I’m not the only one who has come to the conclusion that WordPress is a strong contender for a CMS based website.  CNN’s website is WordPress.  So is Best Buy, UPS Racing, Spotify, University of Arkansas, Tribune Media Group of Chicago, Network Solutions, and many, many other institutions in these and other industries.

If you are remotely thinking about updating your business website, you should be considering WordPress.

The Bad
Frankly, there is not a whole lot that I can point to as negative.  I have wrestled with themes and plugins that don’t do exactly what I want, or have some funky override to normal functionality.   I couldn’t use normal bullet’s with one theme – it had to be a check mark, or stars, or whatever.  This is not really a problem if you’ve got a developer familiar with html, php, and css structures.

The worst experience I had was with a virus on a WordPress website.  The business website was being used as a phishing site.  There had been two previous infections which I had thought I corrected, only to be re-infected.  I finally discovered how the virus was getting into the site (through an unused plugin), and I cleaned up all the infected files by comparing them to a newly installed “vanilla” WordPress website.  It took me nearly three full concentrated days to rid myself of the nasty invasion.

I have since found that there are plugin’s available (Exploit Scanner) that will scan your site, and tell you exactly what files don’t look right.

I also found that, like Microsoft Windows, browsers, etc., the way to defeat the virus attacks in a WordPress site is to keep it up-to-date with the latest release.  This puts some restrictions on the use of plugins and theme’s as they may not be compatible, but most respectable developers are in sync with WordPress, and this is not a widespread problem.

The Bottom Line
There have been over 144 million downloads of WordPress, and that number is rapidly expanding with foreign websites exceeding those being built in the United States.  Globalization has come to WordPress.

It’s time you take a look at WordPress.  No matter how big your company is, or how sophisticated you feel your site needs to be, you will probably be surprised, and if you’re not, maybe you haven’t looked hard enough.

Oh.  One more thing.  The WordCamp in San Francisco was only $20 per person for a one day event.  I got great ideas, three technical solutions from the technical help desk that was there, great ideas from the sessions, one free hosting and domain name for life, a bunch of pretty cool T-shirts, and the most delicious lunch I have EVER had at a conference.  These are held all over the country (I think there were around 50 scheduled for 2012), and it’s likely one will be coming in a major city near you.

Go!