I’ve never made a secret of my preference for WordPress, the blogging platform which is steadily growing up into a formidable CMS. And having played around with the latest Release Candidate of version 2.5, I’m more convinced than ever of its merits. Sometimes I fear I’m coming across as a WordPress zealot. And whilst I wouldn’t be ashamed of that label, there’s a deeper motivation than just personal preference.
When it comes to publishing online, WordPress can almost certainly do almost everything you want a website to do. If it can’t be done ‘out of the box’, directly or with a bit of lateral thinking, there’s probably a plugin available, or it’s straightforward to hack together in the PHP code. If you can produce the HTML, you can turn it into a WordPress template.
It’s free; the underlying software you require is free; and you can buy a year’s hosting for as little as £30 (seriously). It downloads in seconds, and installs in a matter of minutes (tops). No procurement, no process, no lead time. It’s quicker to do it than to think about doing it.
The training requirement? As close to zero as it’s possible to imagine. If you can use Word, or even just basic email, you can use WordPress. And it automates so much of the mundane management tasks. And that’s before we consider the redesigned user interface of v2.5, which will be along shortly.
So we’re at a point where the ability to publish something is a given. A basic blog could be up and running within the hour. A more sophisticated site might take a couple of weeks, but that’s still nothing in e-gov timescales. So now, if you aren’t doing something on the web, it’s not because you can’t… it’s because you won’t. Or as Tom Watson put it in his Tower 08 speech, the question has moved from ‘how’ or ‘why’, to ‘why not’.
In theory then, it frees you up to think hard about what you’re trying to achieve, and who you’re trying to talk to. In theory, it takes you from ‘idea’ to ‘operational’ in a couple of weeks, before your enthusiasm has faded, and the idea has gone stale (or been superceded).
No excuses. If you want to do something, we almost certainly have the tools to do it. So… how much do you really want to do it?