It’s a sign of how far WordPress has come, that I find myself noting the Telegraph’s transfer of its blogging platform to WordPress purely because I feel I should… and not because it’s especially exciting. I mean, if you were going to set up a large-scale public blogging community, why on earth wouldn’t you use the world-leading, zero-price tag product?
The newspaper media group’s new blogs editor, Damian Thompson is buzzing with excitement at the potential which this move opens up. Among the ‘immediate benefits’ he highlights: faster operation, easier commenting, better integration with the wider site, even a Twitter element. (I’d add a few others myself, all available instantly with a bit of URL hacking.) But he’s right to recognise that the switch won’t be immediately popular – and guess what, the majority of the 200+ comments on his introduction post aren’t positive. Yeah, we’ve all been there.
Most of the work, I understand, was done by the Telegraph’s in-house team, with some assistance from my fellow WordCampers (and technically, I suppose, competitors) InterconnectIT. The firm’s director, Dave Coveney says they’re already working with another newspaper group and a magazine publisher. He’s clearly seeing the same momentum I am; there’s certainly no shortage of interest in WordPress just now.
Responses
Thanks for the mention Simon! Competitors we are, I suppose, but we’re in this together and I don’t think we’ve ever been bidding for the same project?
It’s good to see the interest in WordPress – it seems to have all started in a big way late last year. In fact, just look at the Alexa traffic for the big themes clubs and they all had big growth spurts last autumn. Something happened, though I’m not sure what.
Incidentally, I reckon that implementing with WP over a proprietary system saves around £20k-£30k for most magazines and newspapers, whether for blogging or something else. And because it’s open source, you don’t get the risk of the suppliers going bust, as happened for the Telegraph’s previous blogging system….
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