Using WordPress as a Development Platform, and why you should ditch your Custom CMS in favour of WordPress (and how to convince your boss) ~ Presented at WordCamp Melbourne 2011 ~

1. USING WORDPRESS AS A
DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM
Why you should ditch your Custom CMS in favour of WordPress
(and how to convince your boss)
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2. BRIEF INTRODUCTION
• Who is Japh? (rhymes with “strafe”)
• Web developer
• Mainly PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript
• Worked in corporate environments, start-ups, freelance, and
agencies in Australia and the UK
• Experience with various Open Source platforms
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3. BRIEF INTRODUCTION
• Why this topic?
• Working for agencies using custom CMSes
• Using the right tool for the job
• WordPress as a one-size-fits-most
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4. BRIEF INTRODUCTION
• What will I get out of this talk?
• If you and/or your employer already use WordPress for everything:
• A good argument to convince others
• If your employer doesn’t use WordPress:
• A good argument to take to your boss
• If you don’t already use WordPress... keep listening!
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5. WHERE TO START
• Assessing your needs
• Basic blog sites
• Simple and advanced CMS sites
• eCommerce sites (big / small)
• Web applications
• Open Source platforms to the rescue
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6. CHOOSING A TOOL
• Base tool to cover most projects
• Some of the most popular options:
• Drupal
• Joomla
• WordPress (obviously.)
• Custom CMS
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7. COMPARING DRUPAL
PROS CONS
• Good platform for very • High degree of proficiency
complex projects required
• General add-on and plugin • Daunting admin (also, no rich-
development more consistent text editor by default?!)
quality
• Multiple versions (5, 6, and now
• GUI for Custom Content Types 7), disparate communities
• Look good to big enterprise • Difficult upgrade path
• Custom Content Types stored in
DB
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8. COMPARING JOOMLA
PROS CONS
• Good for localisation support • Multiple versions (1.0 & 1.5),
disparate communities
• Uses MVC architecture
• Rigid structure
• Less user-friendly admin
interface
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9. COMPARING CUSTOM CMS
PROS CONS
• Ultra flexible • To be continued...
• Do things your way
• Add support for whatever
you like / need
• Customers locked in
• Intellectual property
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10. WHY NO CUSTOM CMS?
• Financial overheads
• Bugs that appear within the CMS itself
• Implementing new core features
• Documentation
• Support
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11. WHY NO CUSTOM CMS?
• Hiring new staff gets harder
• Higher level of expertise required
• Can’t hire staff with existing experience
• Senior developers’ time gets divided
• Developers often aren’t benefited by the “pros”
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12. WHY NO CUSTOM CMS?
• Full team required
• Development and design time for all previously mentioned aspects
• Ease of use for customers
• User tested
• Customer quote:
"quick, how do i use the [Custom CMS]? … I've uploaded a video to
the [web site] backend but I don't know what the **** to do with it!"
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13. SELLING WORDPRESS
• Why WordPress? “but WordPress is just for blogs”
• Easy for customers to use (user testing since the beginning!)
• Easy for both designers and developers
• Huge community, and easy to get involved
• Easy... but also powerful
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14. SOME WORDPRESS STATS
• WordPress has been downloaded more than 34.25 million times
• WordPress 3.1 had over 300,000 downloads in the first 24 hours
• WordPress Versions
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15. SOME WORDPRESS STATS
• WordPress has been downloaded more than 34.25 million times
• WordPress 3.1 had over 300,000 downloads in the first 24 hours
• PHP Versions
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16. SOME WORDPRESS STATS
• WordPress has been downloaded more than 34.25 million times
• WordPress 3.1 had over 300,000 downloads in the first 24 hours
• MySQL Versions
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17. WHAT HAVE WE COVERED?
• Decide what work you mainly do
• Decide best platform to cater to most jobs
• Can we still use other systems for jobs? Of course!
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18. THINGS WE CAN DO BETTER
• Documentation (Keeping up-to-date, backward compatibility)
• Including educating users on best-practices and avoiding pitfalls
• Think about backward (and forward) compatibility when developing
plugins and themes
• Quality control. High coding standards!
• Promote WordPress to enterprise
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19. QUESTIONS?
Find me later
http://twitter.com/Japh
http://japh.com.au/
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