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That’s a WordPress Site?? – A reminder

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This evening, at our Providence WordPress Meetup,  one of our attendees mentioned that he participated in a training session run by Acquia for aspiring Drupal developers. As a user of WordPress, he was dismayed but not surprised to hear Acquia dismiss another attendee’s questions about WordPress’s viability as a content management system. “If you want a blog, go with WordPress. If you want a real website, go with Drupal.”

I have nothing against Drupal. In fact, I’ve developed websites on Drupal, and have recommended Drupal for some truly atypical and complex website projects. That said, I maintain that WordPress is not just a capable CMS for 90% of websites, but today, it’s the better choice. It’s usability is second to none, and with lower setup costs, hosting requirements, and maintenance requirements, it’s a smarter choice for the average client’s wallet. With the fairly recent addition of features like custom post types, custom taxonomies, and built in menu management, WordPress is quickly closing the gap on that 10% “unsuitability” hole, too.

You can’t blame Acquia for trying to protect their business, but it is a bit sad to see serious companies perpetuating the myth. For those still in doubt, I’ve attached my presentation from my “That’s a WordPress site??” lightning talk from July of last year.

WordPress Providence Meetup Kicks Off

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Inspired by a few WordCamps that built themselves up from local WordPress meet ups, I finally got a few locals together at the beginning of April (Ken DeBlois of Brown and Suzanne McDonald, a freelance writer) to help organize a Providence Meetup. A couple of planning meetings, a new website, a Twitter account, and some local marketing later, we had our first meet up on April 26th.

I’ll be blogging over at the WordPress Providence website, so I won’t say too much about it in this forum, but the headline is that I was thrilled by the turn out and energy at our first event. We had about 30 attendees, a lot of buzz during the hour of networking, a nice and short presentation by DandyID (a local firm with a popular plug-in), and a great after-presentation brainstorming / discussion session.

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