Steven Thompson

At the moment, I’m spending all of my spare time creating the new website for Berlitz Edinburgh. After spending many months dabbling in HTML, CSS and PHP trying to build the thing from scratch, I decided to move the whole project to Wordpress with an existing template.

It seems from a quick browse around the internet that a lot of people are thinking along the same lines. There are many people using Wordpress to develop ‘regular’ sites rather than blogs. I even noticed some web designers that only develop using Wordpress.

The advantages of using Wordpress are clear:

• Anyone can edit the site. All they need is a username and password and they can edit content in the sleek, online Wordpress Control Panel. It’s similar to using Microsoft Word, which means people don’t need any coding knowledge to edit it and this will be very advantageous when we start commissioning translations for the site.
• The added functionality from plugins is amazing! Secure contact forms, beautiful galleries, and probably most importantly, incredible Search Engine Optimisation tools!
• It’s Open Source…and I love Open Source. I’ve been a Linux user for over a year now and have always loved and raved about OpenOffice, Firefox…etc. I know I can never create anything that could match the Open Source Community but one day I could contribute…..

So there you have it. I’ve decided to keep track of how I’ve implemented Wordpress to create a corporate site with an outstanding Content Management System. I also have to be careful as to whose work I am using for plugins…etc, so I’m keeping track of any extraordinary licensing that exists. I want to keep a record on this site so that other people can take advantage of this great technology.

By the way, my dabbling in HTML, CSS and PHP didn’t completely go to waste as the theme did need to be edited from time to time!