I finally went ahead and did it, I shoehorned my site into the WordPress framework. I’d been going ’round for a while now with whether or not to do it. I’d spent so much time learning, catching up and experimenting on (and thoroughly enjoying) the front end that my mind was giving out. I needed a break but couldn’t stop. It kinda felt like a finish line that I had cross.
Now that things are up and running I can fiddle with it. There’s tons to explore and learn. WordPress is a big environment and has been for a while. Lots of users, developers and diehards. Though people think blog when they hear the name it makes a lot of sense to use it as a framework for just about any kind of website. It’s such a great way to manage pages, content, assets, etc. that once you use it, especially for sites larger than mine, it would be hard to go back.
I guess the biggest step for me is learning PHP. It’s another language that’s processed by the browser to display a page. This is where the meat of a WordPress site is (and of course the mySQL database). For me it really kicks things up a few levels but my friends Copy and Paste are there to help. Though once you start reading it you recognize patterns and that’s when things start to stick.
Of course there’s other CMSs out there that work and that people stand by. ExpressionEngine is one that people I know stand by. There’s also Drupal, Joomla to name a few. I went with WordPress for no other reason then “just because”. Like throwing darts at a dartboard. For now I’m satisfied and will keep digging in and, as always, as my knowledge grows so will the site. For now I think I’ll give my mind a short rest and focus on some creative content. But, I guess that would be the focus of this site: art, design, photography and an some good Mac geekiness for good measure. I’m always thinking about these subjects and have my thoughts and ideas...time to share.
Side note: WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two sides of the same coin, sort of. WordPress.com is the place to go if you’d like to get a blog up and running but don’t want to have anything to do with hosting, coding, maintenance and so on. Everything is handled by WordPress, you worry about the content. It’s also a great place to start if you want to get to know the product.
WordPress.org is the same system but for the designers, developers and geeks. You download the files to your server and do all the behind the scenes work. This is a good thing though, you have 100% complete control and the sky’s the limit as to what you can do...or do wrong = )