WordPress is an Open Source solution we would recommend for individuals, practioners, and small businesseses with requirement to keep their web information current, fresh and excitingly up to date. This article looks at the strengths of WordPress and how to get started with it.
Many historic web sites can only be described as “tomb stone” sites containing static information painstakingly carved into stone and erected as a grave-yard monument never again to be visited. With the popularity of social networking sites such as: Facebook®, linkedIn®, Twitter®, YouTube® a new generation of web technologies are out there and a new set of expectations raised. WordPress attempts to respond to these expectations.
So what solutions are available to replace these out moded web sites? The site could be re-designed with a more recent web builder? But this felt could just be doing the bad job all over again. A professional web designer could be engaged to make a good site hoping that the return on investment will pay for this? But for many Small Businesses keeping their content up to date and dynamic and keeping track of what the clients want is impeded by a static web site. Or a more sophisticated (and more expensive) web site could be designed professionally with a Content Management System, this allows me the text within the overall structure to be changed. However this could be an expensive solution and could still prove inflexible, the overall structure remains unchangeable.
In recent years technologists have been talking about Web 2.0 (or even Web 3.0), although the definitions are somewhat hazy, like many “technical paradigm shifts”, it is something about a whole new approach to dynamic web sites that are rich in multimedia content, and applications. These sites allow non-technical people to produce very sophisticated multi-media web experiences very quickly and easily. The great thing about these sites is that they build on very high level objects (widgets) – not low level web mark-up languages so very sophisticated sites are built very quickly.
Social grouping capabilities allow groups of people, communities to have access to particular information and discuss it and update it. Blogs within these structures allow people to casually add new information in a timely way. There is no looking back. One sure sign of the paradigm shift was when one large fortune 500 company started using Facebook as the prime means of communication for their most important project. Decades of closed bespoke intranet communications were thrown out, in favor of something that just worked much better and something that made much more sense. Similarly many companies were using MySpace and WordPress.
So what is WordPress? Well WordPress is an Open Source solution to building web sites with the dynamic and flexible features, a Web 2.0 enabled technology. At the entry level a non-expert can build an impressive site using design templates and widgets from scratch very quickly indeed. The site can then be updated very easily and maintained with very low effort. Because WordPress uses the latest Web technology such as PHP, CSS and templates everything is reconfigurable. You might decide you don’t like the design template – well you just change it and the content remains the same. You might decide that you don’t like the photo gallery –well just plug a new one in. You might decide you want video then just add a video capability.
There are probably three levels of user coming to WordPress, let us call them Novice, Intermediate and Jedi levels. The Novice has a minimal level of web literacy – they would perhaps be able to build a web site using a Web Builder site. The Intermediate person is willing to learn and invest time reading the documentation and keep upto date with the latest capabilities. They might already have come to terms with publishing their own photos on Flickr®, or their own videos on YouTube® or have their own Blog on Google®.
The best place to start is to browse through the WordPress showcase (http://wordpress.org/showcase/) and see the sites look to be the sort of thing you are after. Remember that everything can be tweaked and changed, so it is the general capabilities you should be focusing on.
The next problem is how to get WordPress uploaded on your web site. If you are with a good Service Provider they should be able to help you do this. Business With Heart can provide a WordPress site for you, or there are no shortage of service providers out there.
See: WordPress Sites for Business With Heart Clients page
Once you have your site installed then the fun bit configuring and designing your site!
Some initial instructions are given at:
http://codex.wordpress.org/First_Steps_With_WordPress
Stephen Hinde MA, BSc.
http://www.businesswithheart.co.uk
© Copyright January 2009, Stephen Hinde, Business With Heart
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This was helpful thanks
Bob
I think Nova Spivack provides a rather clean distinction between the web 2.0, web 3.0, and even web 4.0 paradigms in this presentation.
http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2008/10/watch-my-best-t.html
But thank you for this article, I can feel my mouse drifting wordpresswards…
Esko
Hi Esko
Yes this is a nice ‘technologists’ visionary video painting with a broad brush.
A good keynote aimed at Grid and Cloud Computing Researchers. .Always nice and inspiring to hear
But good not to confuse the story with the reality on the ground..
Much of this talk is futurology and the dreams of the research community and he even managed to include the dreams of
science fiction writers. The only certainty in technology in these hard
commercial times is the NOW and the short term horizon.
The labels for Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 are a moveable feasts and change often. For example rhe Semantic Web research agenda remains a very difficult one – people are just semantically very smart and computers remain dumb!
Cloud computing is the new Grid research agenda but remains quite simliar.
Augmented reality and gaming
are progressing slowly. Waiting for some new big economic driver.
The main problem as always for taking technologies from research into the world is economics and the market.
I think the good news that everyone has agreed on is that the social networking
web happened for real in 2008 and the implications and exploitation of that
space is still happening. So helping people update from Web 1.0 to
Web 2.0 is still the challenge.
Steve
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