Our little baby is turning 7 – WordPress, my how you’ve grown! But the truth is, I remember when I first started using WordPress back in 2007, and it was pretty good then too. I think that shows how WordPress has strong foundations, even at the beginning.

When I first started looking for an Open Source CMS solution, I looked at Joomla, WordPress and some other systems. I quickly settled on WordPress for the following reasons:

  • The content management scheme made sense to me. Pages, posts, categories. Posts could go in more than one category. It was clean and elegant.
  • Community. Almost any questions I had, there was an answer somewhere out there. If I had a need, I could almost always find a plugin to fill it.
  • The Codex. I think I can say that The Codex was my WordPress teacher. It’s such an awesome, community-driven resource.
  • Comment moderation. Simple and useful.
  • Easily upload media, even then.
  • RSS feeds galore. For almost anything you can think of: site wide, categories, tags, all comments, per-post comments, authors, search results,
  • Template tags. Genius. Even non-developers can wrap their heads around these commands.
  • SEO. Out of the box WordPress is pretty good. With classic plugins like Google Sitemap XML and All in One SEO, you can do a pretty good job of optimizing a site for the search engines.
  • The future. Every new version of WordPress added useful features. Some of the best were the addition of tags, one-click upgrade of plugins and core, installation of plugins and themes from the admin (bye-bye FTP!), better comment management in the admin with Reply to, Widgets (at first I didn’t like them!).

It seems timely that yesterday I was part of a panel comparing the three leading Open Source content management systems: Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. In my presentation, I emphasized the elegance of WordPress, and explained how the content management works. The tweets during my presentation indicated that people were pretty excited about what WordPress has to offer. Here are some examples:


thinking of building a design/art portfolio in WP. (rather than my preferred drupal) eager to see if it makes sense #jwpThu May 27 08:46:01 via TweetDeckshaidavis
shaidavis


#jwp the goal of the wordpress core is to never have to hack it!! good bye legacy programmingThu May 27 08:58:33 via TweetDeckappSTUDIO
appstudi


Listening to WordPress Diva @miriamschwab at #JWP – Always a pleasure to hear her present!Thu May 27 09:05:35 via TweetDeckCharlie Kalech
CharlieKalech


#jwp. I agree with Miriam. You can’t deny the elegance of WP.Thu May 27 09:07:51 via Twitter for iPhoneJeff Mendelson
lasolastech


cant wait for #wordpress 3.0 we hate hacking the menu bar #jwpThu May 27 09:12:33 via TweetDeckappSTUDIO
appstudi


#jwp. Am really pumped about Word Press! ?Thu May 27 09:29:19 via Twitter for iPhoneJeff Mendelson
lasolastech


@miriamschwab gave an awesome WordPress presentation today at the #JWP event. Made me love WP all over again!Thu May 27 13:22:49 via EchofonRebecca Markowitz
thebigfelafel

Here’s the presentation. Click on Menu > View Fullscreen on the player to view in full screen. All images and underlined text are live links. I’d love to hear your feedback!

Meet WordPress