WordPress is by far the most popular software (CMS) to use to build your website online and has a huge array of fanatics that are dedicated to using it for all their web development projects. WordPress by default is very simple. It manages all content into two different ways: posts which are chronologically sorted content, and pages which are not date specific. When you install WordPress, it puts dummy content and installs everything you need to create your ideal site in minutes, so you can be very productive initially and the development time can be quite fast.
You can find plug-ins to find stock images, videos, and forums. There is quite an amazing collection – all types of plug-ins devoted to administrations, organization of content, and even full-blown shopping carts and database sorting content. WordPress sites are easy to install and many hosting companies have one click installers. WordPress’s ease of installation and use provides for very fast turn-around time.
That said, we are not going to recommend you use WordPress for community building websites. It’s not that WordPress is a bad CMS or that it can’t be used for larger websites (in fact Rismedia.com, Real Estate Magazine’s site, is a 30,000 page WordPress Publishing website which we built to their specs, putting their employees once and for all in control of their own publishing website, and WordPress is wonderful for publishing), but it is not an efficient choice for certain types of websites, and will cause you lots of problems if you try to use it beyond its what it was initially designed for: a well designed online publishing system.
What WordPress is really good at:
It’s good for creating simple sites with posts and pages that are easy to update and add media to (images, text, video, audio) etc. It handles these features very well: blogging (journals sorted by date), editing text articles, images, commenting, social bookmarking. It also can be used very easily for the actual web pages of the website, not just the blog, putting the whole website in control of the website owner, even the novice, with no HTML ability required. Sometimes it may be best to integrate community features into Worpress on the web-page or widget level (discussed later in this book).
We highly recommend WordPress for any website under $2000, any website which must be administered by a novice, and for Publishing websites (newspapers, magazines) in general.
If you're still looking for a good team to take your project to the next level, the authors of the 2010 Rothman Guide to Building Successful Websites are available for free, no obligation, creative consultations that you will not forget! Call 1-866-945-1113 or e-mail your contact info to info@socialmediasystems.