Wordpress
Monday, January 26th, 2009“How did you build your (great?!) site?“. That’s a typical question by my friends and colleagues. The answer? Wordpress.
After years of writing my own code (made of a mess of html, css, php, javascritpt, etc.) I decided to switch to a content management system. I came into Wordpress and I can now say it was a good choice: it works.
Its requirements are rather standard: a server with a MySql database and php capabilities. And, if everything runs fine, the installation takes about 5 minutes.
The site management is very flexible: from a very simple and intuitive (including a wysiwyg/html editor) dashboard to the possibility to write you own code, either personalising your own wordpress version (Wordpress is an open-source project) or in the more elegant form of plugins. All you need is some basic knowledge of php, html and css.
One of the main advantages is that I can now update my site from any computer with internet access. This means for me to not depend on the local version residing on my laptop. In addition, Wordpress offers export and import features. This way one can easily create site backups or move the site to another server (or have local version for testing purposes, as I do).
Wordpress naturally supports a pages+blog structure. After all, it was originally conceived as a blog-supporting system. Indeed, at the time of writing, wordpress is the most used system among the top 100 blogs. A pages+blog structure is important for me: I can put fundamental well-established information in the pages and all-the-rest (news, posts, miscellaneous) in form of blog posts.
Another advantage is that I have no more to care about producing standard-compliant code. Wordpress will care for that. Well, that’ts not exactly the truth, as I have written my own stylesheet (css and php, again!) but the amount of effort in that regards has diminished substantially.
A nice thing is that Wordpress is extensible. There are lots of plugins. For example, I use some plugins to enhance my site’s management, namely sitemaps (for seo-optimization) and google analytics (for statistics). There also many themes (official and non-offiicial) to layout your site or blog at will.
Wordpress offers me also a standard site management: my own site, the blog I co-author, my wife’s site and blog, the website of a friend… they are all wordpress-supported.
Best of all, Wordpress is open-source and free, and it comes in two forms: you can host a blog in the wordpress platform, or install your own version in your server.
A last note: Wordpress (and blogging in general) was introduced to me by my wife, an excellent translator and stupendous blogosphere star. A computer expert learning technology from a profane?! The magic of love.
