eFrog Digital Design |

Hello again, tadpoles…

In the , “Can we raise the tone of the conversation a little bit?”

Why yes, we can, Mr Jobs…

The WordPress platform is generally and widely recognised as a dominant player in the blogging arena, all the way from dead-simple beginner-blog setups, through the mid-level of blogs, on every subject imaginable on the planet, all the way to the top with huge enterprise (No, Mr Arrington, TechCrunch is NOT “just a blog”…), being sucessfully (and profitably) run on the platform. The competition, popularity and large user bases of platforms such as Joomla, Blogger, Tumblr and Posterous notwithstanding, the little-WordPress-that-could, is pretty much the go-to for an insanely wide range of needs.

With it’s support for the standard chrono-journal-type posts, as well as a structured hierarchy of pages, custom navigation functionality, the happy ability to allow for beautiful custom theming, and a robust romance with the extension of functionality through the plug-in architecture, it certainly IS a fine blogging tool.

But really, that’s not the full sum of it. In fact, to call WordPress a “blog”, is to call the 8-litre, 16-cylinder, 1200HP, 431kph, €1,9-million Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, a “car”. Both are entirely correct from a taxonomy point of view, yet both grossly understate the magnitude, in the cruel paring to a 3- or 4-character noun.

WordPress is SO much more.

Aided and encouraged by some very clever and simple recent feature-additions like custom taxonomies, custom post-types and such, we’re seeing the fruits of innovative thinkers and coders, extending and evolving the WordPress platform, creating niche, or vertical solutions, to address specific customer needs.

For a quick example of this, we need look no further than our own eFrogthemes.com. The entire site, with blog, shop, themes, demo’s, tutorials, documentation, FAQ’s, and support forums, is built on WordPress. We’re pretty proud of it…

More examples? The ninjas over at WooThemes have a number of niche-functionality themes, to extend the WP platform, for example into Bug Tracking/Ticketing and Support functionality. Great work, guys.

The true beauty of this approach, is that the underpinnings of these solutions, the WordPress code-base, is thoroughly user-tested, open to public scrutiny, and as robust as a Rattel Infantry Combat Vehicle. Oh. And Free. Free as in beer, and free as in speech. That’s a feature that’s hard to bet against. Solutions like this become almost trivial to install and get into production, and require a fraction of the support that seems to be a feature of other solutions. There’s value with a capital V.

“So, if themes that leverage the power of WordPress and extend it to provide vertical functionality and solutions are such A.Big.Deal, why don’t you have any for sale in the eFrogthemes portfolio?” I hear you ask…

Keep watching, tadpoles….

*lallallallallala, he warbled, as he flopped away with a grin*