Matt Mullenweg, founder and leader of the renowned blogging tool WordPress, kicked off the first annual WordCamp celebration this year, featuring a day of events catered to the new WordPress developer.
Much of the event was assembled in haste – reminding me of a fear and urgency I came to understand as a young writer, stage manager, and lead designer for a traveling stage production in my college years. I can sincerely empathize with the hurried, last minute eruptions that befall anything that requires corralling 300+ people into a single room. Considering this event was proposed only a short few weeks ago, and a finalized schedule was only announced at midnight the evening prior, I am impressed by Matt’s ambition. For most, this will be remembered as a resounding initial success for what’s become the new found niche of the internet community.
Starting out…
Nevertheless, we didn’t make it through much. Already running late, Doug and I grabbed coffee, grabbed a cab, and scurried into the Swedish American Hall at 9:30am, saddened by missing Matt’s speech regarding the future of WordPress… only to find out that the schedule had listed his speech at 11:00am. Neither of us had checked our emails for the last minute schedule in the morning, and we’d assumed that the “State of the Word” would be the first talk on the billing. We sat down to the opening events and quickly realized that many of the speakers had not really prepared their discussions (although many were there to lead rather than to teach). This was coupled with loose-knit marketing by some of the companies welcomed to the conference. We found ourselves conversing during the early speeches with other members while the overhead discussion turned into a round table debate rather than a training session. Realizing our rudeness, we decided to jump ship and return when Matt took center stage.
The future of wordpress
Matt opened by inviting a gentleman to sing a guitar rendition of some ‘blogging’ song, as well as various other medleys that peaked his interest. While on a personal note I felt his skillset was high, the artistic air was lost through fifteen minutes of music without the intended discussion. When the discussion did begin, Matt handled himself wonderfully on stage with intrigued developers – but I felt the conversation, again, became more a round table discussion and historical notation of WordPress, lacking any real substance to the future or direction of the application. I found this eerily familiar of daily mailing lists and IRC chats about what to do and what to talk of…and it didn’t interest me one bit.
At this point, I began to question my motives for attending the event, and what the event actually entailed: I came for a developer’s conference and to show improved, outside ideas of WordPress to dotfive employees. I found a fledgling group beginning to decide whether it was a blogging community application for fresh users, or a high level development tool for content management systems and expert level publication. For the most part, this is reminiscent of WordPress’s simple marketing: they’re shooting for the easy development – a step up from blogger, a step down from your own high-end custom system. What I wanted was specific demonstrations of the advanced applications I can create with my staff, and I found none of them.
WordPress & CMS
One of the sad comments I heard come from some users I spoke with after this event was that ‘WordPress can’t do CMS.’ I didn’t stay here for too long, so I’m not sure whether they demonstrated creating a site using WordPress as a CMS or spent most of the time just talking about the idea of it – or if their development was largely unsuccessful. A pity, as WordPress has been fantastic on many sites we’ve developed. I invite anyone with the desire to see a CMS system built using WordPress to feel free to ask us for further information, or a demonstration. WordPress has been instrumental in managing company sites for many of our portfolio examples, including this site.
The question is: how much customization do you need? When I first started using WordPress in this manner, I loved it… then hated it… then balanced myself squarely in the middle. It has its home as a publication system, but can be structured to handle many other aspects of a website. However, this is ‘hacking’ the original intent, and on many occasions, we’ve found ourselves creating a CMS from scratch, or using tools such as Ruby on Rails – we find that as we develop, each project has it’s own application and needs, and that they vary greatly from client to client.
Nevertheless, WordPress can easily become a strong CMS for many a site – if you think otherwise, I’m guessing you haven’t dove that deeply into the code, or just haven’t had the right person to show you how. If it’s the latter, this post is an open invitation for us to demonstrate – even for Matt and the WordPress crew if desired.
WordPress & growing pains
One topic that bobbed in the back of my head was brought up when a blogger noted some of his upgrade ‘fear’ is ‘what information will be lost in the update of files,’ if any. The topic grew into reassurances of the safety of the upgrade, and into a discussion of the interoperability of old and new data between some users around me. With goose bumps, I thought of the early internet, and the fears of breaking dated websites or dated applications – and while that mindset is deeply important as developers age, I wonder where the line will be drawn between leading WordPress forward, and halting it for the old experience base. I trust that developers won’t be afraid to break a few eggs, so long as what they create is a better application… though I think this is a question we all ask ourselves.
And so it goes
…and that’s about when we decided to leave, sad to say, near the end of Matt’s speech. I took with me the reminder that WordPress is an excellent tool – one that we’ve used to develop over 30 CMS systems for clients- ranging from online stores to customized log books for engineering and security companies. It’s a fantastic balance of refined control and advanced level development for dynamic sites… but in the end, maybe WordPress is what I was seeing, when systems like Ruby on Rails or Django are really what I’m wanting. Maybe WordPress needs to sever its development and, should it prove to do true marketing, target itself to the average blogger, and an advanced level version for the power user like dotfive. I don’t think we’re the only people creating sites for high-end clients with this software – but I didn’t find too much of that discussion (or see any other companies at this convention). Again, it’s possible that my needs are not in the realm of WordPress, and instead of using WordPress for certain sites and other technology for certain sites, we’ve simply outgrown it and should look for our own customized builds.
What I’d like to see next year
Specific examples, walk-throughs, demonstrations by those of us who get their hands dirty using this in the real world, with a budget and deadlines, every day. True blue methods to creating advanced WordPress sites: there’s enough documentation on the basics. A convention like this is a time to get some of us (self-proclaimed experts) together to pass our knowledge on to others, share in our challenges and successes, and drive new innovation into our technique. To push the application, together, and subsequently push each other into new design and development experiences. If there’s going to be companies marketing and plugging their products, leave it to a specific session or have them setup booths in the hall… we’d be happy to as well. As The Streets note, let’s push things forward. But if that’s not the intended direction of WordPress, if it’s really an application-lite, then all is well and my fears are my own.