Why Do We Build Websites Predominately in WordPress?

Gatman Media Services has been developing websites since the beginning of the worldwide web. Back in the day, websites were hand coded from basic HTML. Any dynamic or interactive functionality involved PERL and CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts. PERL worked to a point, but it could be complex for all but the most hardened programmers – and time consuming – which meant more costs to achieve customer’s desired results.

It was clear that there needed to be an alternative to hand coding websites, if customers were going to elevate their web presence with interactive capabilities that addressed page formatting, design elements, and data management, including ecommerce. Solutions were needed to assist the developer in producing results faster and more economically to the customer.

Progressively over time, more capabilities associated with design, computation, and dynamic states evolved beyond PERL which made web site development faster, more flexible. Other languages were created and evolved that worked with, or on-top-of, code frameworks.

Proprietary Web Development Software

There were desktop software applications that attempted to make the site building process more friendly to the designer / developer, but these were proprietary both in functionality and in the languages used to build the sites and features. There were desktop applications such as Microsoft Front Page, Adobe / Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe / Macromedia Flash, and others. Each had its considerations – pros and cons. At around the same time, software was created for developing, creating, and managing web sites at the web server level (as opposed to involving the desktop). These software applications were labeled Content Management Solutions (CMS) and went by the names such as; Mambo, Joomla, Typo3, Plone, Drupal, and other offbeat labeling. WordPress was among the CMS platforms originating at this time, having been created originally as a blogging platform and not a true CMS. However WordPress is “open source” and developers could build and extend on the framework.

In time, proprietary platforms came about: WIX, Shopify, Squarespace and others. Each vendor platform is its own vertical stack of software – each is independent from one another. These commercial solutions sandbox the customer (and designers and developers) within their own environment.

Gatman built and managed websites in all of the web sites builders and CMS’s identified above. There were learning curves for each, but our ability to hand code – without the aid of any WYSIWYG editor, allowed us the ability to adapt and work through idiosyncrasies that existed with all of the software.

Platform of Choice – WordPress

WordPress grew to become more than just a platform focused just on blogging and became more of a CMS framework. It proved to be the most consistent platform that achieved the results we needed for our customer projects – flexibility, extendability, and strong third-party developer participation. This enabled us to build custom web sites that met the customer’s design aesthetic and with features the customer wanted or needed in the present, and may need in the near future. WordPress gave us, and the customer, the flexibility to create and expand a site’s capabilities, and equally as important, move the project(s) between servers and environments. This portability meant that we are not tied down to one proprietary provider.

Also with WordPress, the large developer base provides us flexibility in achieving results and we have the ability to build out on projects features-wise and within reasonable time frames. We find WordPress provides us, and the customer, the most effective return on investment – relative to customization, man hours, and features.

We have used WordPress on simple brochureware sites has we have used WordPress on heavily trafficked and large scale sites. (thousand of visit per minute, users in the tens of thousands, and content pages in the thousands).

WordPress is by no means perfect, but weighing all of the pros and cons between existing platforms and costs for development, WordPress currently is our platform of choice for web development.