
WordPress is 10 years old today: Here’s how it’s changed the Web - mike_mcgrail
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/27/wordpress-is-10-years-old-today-heres-how-its-changed-the-web
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__chrismc
You've come a long way, baby.

I remember when WordPress first appeared. I'd deployed the b2 blogging engine
a couple of times before, and anything which made b2 easier to
install/use/adapt was welcome. Amongst the (many) blog systems I'd tried up to
then, b2 had the lowest technical barriers but was still an exercise in
frustration to get installed and configured. In those early days of blog
systems each product had its own quirks, and their own belief about what a
blog was and how it should work. WordPress always tried to come across as "the
Writer's" blogging system; once you had it setup to your preferences, it would
stay out of the way. For the most part, anyway.

WordPress was never perfect, and it's still far from it, but you have to
admire any system (particularly on the web) which is still going strong after
10 years, while remaining fairly close to it's original vision and principles.
It made writing on the web more accessible to a generation of users, and for
all its faults that should be celebrated.

~~~
kijin
> _while remaining fairly close to it's original vision and principles_

Yes. The temptation to expand it into a full-blown CMS must have been very
great. Thankfully, they've managed to keep image galleries, for example, out
of the core, while keeping the core flexible enough to allow plugins that
implement such things. I still shudder at the general quality of WordPress
themes and plugins (basically no security whatsoever), but the core is compact
and relatively easy to keep secure thanks to the exclusive focus on blogging.

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mgcross
"As we alluded to before, WordPress has become much more than just a blogging
service, but rather a platform on which entire businesses are built on,
including The Next Web, CNN, TechCrunch, GigaOm, Dow Jones, UPS, NBC Sports,
TED, and many others."

Well... half of the linked sites ARE blogs. The others have blogs as a part of
the website. But isn't it a bit much to suggest that WP is the platform on
which those businesses are built?

~~~
koralatov
Absolutely not. UPS, CNN, and the Dow Jones are clearly all businesses built
upon Wordpress.

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greggman
Not to take anything away from WordPress which like many others I use on my
blog but...

Moveabletype was the popular blogging software back in the day. It was also
easy to install. About the same as wordpress. Copy the files, create a db, add
the db/pass. Done.

Moveabletype _appeared_ to be open source. It was perl so you could read the
source. It was free. It was hosted on moveabletype.org, the ".org" making it
appear to not be commercial. But, then once they got super popular they
announced to everyone they were not open source. They wanted something like
$30 for a license.

There was a huge backlash and it was during that time that wordpress was
created and tons of people switched.

At least that's my understanding of the history. The point being it wasn't
wordpress that made blogging easy or popular. There were several products
before them including moveabletype and blogger. Had moveabletype not made
their fateful decisions wordpress might never have gotten popular.

~~~
_greim_
There is also the fact that Wordpress is written in PHP. Arguably, the number
of Perl dabblers looking to make a buck freelance web-designing isn't anywhere
near the number of PHP ones.

~~~
greggman
I don't think that was as cut and dry when wordpress came out as it is today

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imjk
While admittedly not a fair assessment, when you compare the value that
Wordpress has added to the internet ecosystem versus Tumblr, I would argue
that Wordpress has had an astoundingly greater impact. There's really no fair
comparison to be made between these two platforms but it's still interesting
for me to think about.

