Wordpress is an excellent system to use when creating a website that lets you quickly get your thoughts out on the web, but while it is often used as a blog, it can be configured to work in many other interesting ways as well. One particular client of mine recently needed a website that would allow him and his employees to have an internal website for sharing notes, documenting tasks and writing about what was going on. Since Wordpress is easy to use and some of them were already familiar with it, it was an obvious solution. Install Wordpress on a server that they could access quickly and easily from anywhere with an internet connection, and let them get to business rather than have to learn about a whole different system.

It is key to know that Wordpress is extremely easy to use and setup. I have used it several times with clients that are brand new to the internet and having a website, yet they can pick this system up and use it quicker than the other two. Since WP is already developed to work as a blog, though, it can be setup to do so without any hesitation. Comments are already built into the system, as well as pinging services, multiple blogger profiles, trackbacks and more. Most of the time nothing needs to be done to those systems either, because they already work the way that the user would want them to.

Wordpress, however, is not to be used for everything. I have had little success (its there, just not much) using Wordpress as a shopping cart for certain clients. The very reason that Wordpress was created was to keep people from wanting to customize it to do things that are much more advanced. It is supposed to be used a certain way without modification – because any modification that you give to it may very well cause it to break. You will find many users of WP complaining that it is not developer friendly – and rightfully so, because there will be countless times in your journey to that great website that an upgrade released by the WP developers causes your entire site to simply disappear, or for those modifications that you made previously to no longer even exist.

Wordpress Pros

• Simple to use –  No need for modifications
• Excellent for blogging or sharing thoughts in a sequential manner
• Even the most elderly of users can get the hang of it quickly

Wordpress Cons

• Not developer friendly
• The community seems to like to complain
• Upgrades bring more bugs than fixes sometimes