At least, that’s what I believed about WordPress as an enterprise level developer for years. It seemed like a silly little blogging tool for people who couldn’t write their own software. I’ve used it to slap-up quick and dirty websites in the past. It works, there was never any argument from me about that.
My opinion of WordPress changed, dramatically, last year when I needed a database driven plug-in that didn’t exist in their vast assortment of plug-ins. Stating that a plug-in doesn’t exist for WordPress is an impressive statement if you’re the least bit familiar with the thousands of free and inexpensive plug-ins available for that platform. It may even be hundreds of thousands.
As I do, I started writing my plug-in with the assumption that this “toy” platform would be simple to manipulate. I was right, not about it being a toy, but about how crazy easy it is to write robust plug-ins. There’s tons of documentation and coding examples available to delight any investigative programmer. I had a lot to learn.
After a month of learning and testing I had an epiphany. WordPress handles all the annoying backend functionality that dogs corporate developers. This system takes care of user profiles, security, versioning (sort of), menu building, design… everything. How many times have you told your dev team not to reinvent the wheel only to have them—reinvent the wheel. WordPress is the entire truck. All you have to do is build the fun little things that go inside it.
Business plug:
If you have a customer facing website, having a developer build it from scratch is a terrible idea. With the evolving security challenges presented in our hostile world, home-grown security is a huge mistake that will cost you in the long term. It may even cost you your entire business.
I can write database driven WordPress plug-ins for practically anything you can imagine. The more complicated, the better, but you should search for a free one first.