It’s no secret that we are very fond of the WordPress platform here at Nicasio. We use WordPress on most of our web projects (unless of course another platform is a better fit for that particular project). Between the open source software from WordPress.org which allows anyone with minimal web knowledge to setup their own highly customizable blog/CMS and WordPress.com which allows anyone that signs up to create a new blog in minutes I have to ask – Is WordPress killing Web Design?
The answer is an emphatic No from me.
Yes, WordPress does allow people to easily create ‘cookie cutter’ websites, but so did basic CSS templates before that and Geocities/Tripod before that. There is always going to be a web based solution for quickly throwing a site up on the net.
Not only is WordPress not killing web design I think it’s actually helping it.
But how you say?
It’s allowing developers such as myself to focus on designing highly custom designs from scratch and adding custom functionality to websites which, up until a couple of years ago, was only found on the most complex, expensive sites on the net.
I can focus on building out the code for a client’s custom business logic rather than worrying about how the CMS component of the site is going to work.
The WordPress community is also driving innovation among plugin and theme developers. I’m always surprised at how far along plugin and theme functionality comes every 6 months. When I started working with WordPress over 2 years ago I would have never thought that the functionality I’m seeing today would have been possible in such a short amount of time.
So if you’re a designer or developer, relax. WordPress (or Joomla, Drupal, Movable Type, etc) is not killing custom design and development. It’s furthering it. This does mean that we as a community have to keep up with the demand for functionality and innovative designs to remain competitive though. No longer is a simple CMS with a contact form considered a ‘business’ site.
People are demanding more of custom projects. And that’s a good thing.