If you didn’t know it already, next week, I’ll be speaking at the Hot Seminar Series about the many things you can do with WordPress. Oh yes, it is not just to build blogs. Meanwhile, Kelly has invited me to a cross blog conversation. What does that mean? Kelly started the conversation with a post on her blog and now I answer her question here and we’ll keep it up as long as possible or until the conversation fizzles out.

Here’s what Kelly asked me.

Lynette, you know I think you’re amazing, right?

What impresses me most is that you’re not intimidated by the unknown.  (And to me it seems like technology is filled with the unknown!)  I look at strange code and want to run away, you look at it and get drawn in.  I don’t always get it – but with you around I don’t have to.

I’ve learned so much about working with WordPress from you and I don’t tell you often enough that I appreciate having you as a resource when I’m knee deep in something I can’t figure out.  Do you ever feel ‘too relied on’ by others?

Can you tell me what you love most about working with WordPress?  Maybe, if there is one, throw in one thing about WordPress that you wish were different.

Can’t wait to read your reply!

Aww… thank you Kelly. I don’t think I’ve ever felt too relied on at work because I do enjoy a challenge. When people have problems that aren’t common, I am even more motivated to fix it. Perhaps that’s what fuels me. It is like a puzzle sometimes and I LOVE puzzles. Also, I want people to rely on me because of something my boss said to me once. No one is indispensable. Even when you own your own business, you could be dispensable to your clients. That’s the reason I like challenging myself with new tech, learning the ins and outs because if you can stay ahead, people need you and you can become close to indispensable 🙂

There are so, so many reasons why I love working with WordPress, I’m not entirely sure it can be covered in one post 🙂 but much of it has to do with my experience with other system in the past. When I first started working with content management systems, I tried quite a few of them but they all had one big problem. They weren’t as easy to customize as I had hoped or the process of adding content was – well, convoluted. While I could do it for my clients, I really wanted something that I could sign over to clients and not have to be called on for every little bit of work done. I started with b2 which is where WordPress was forked from and jumped over to WordPress sometime after the first release and I was hooked.

It was so different than the rest and not only was it easy for clients to understand, it was also amazingly easy to customize for me. Keep in mind this is WordPress in its infancy it was nowhere near what it is today but at that time already a winner.

I love that it is fairly light. Some may not agree at almost 8MB and it seems getting a little larger with every new release. But, I’ve worked with systems that are many, many times larger, so clunky and major resource hogs. Web space and server resource is very important to me. The system used has to be lean so we can leave enough room for great content. Also, a leaner system won’t get clients (and myself) into trouble with their web hosts.

Oh and how can I forget all the wonderful plugins. They can totally make any website unique and allows you to build the site the way you want and still enjoy all the benefits of ease of use. WordPress on its own is quite flexible and customizable but the plugins and themes help put it further ahead.

There are more things, but these are the key factors for me because these spill over to other good stuff. As for what I wish were different. I can’t think of anything.

My turn to ask you Kelly. You’ve had plenty of experience working with WordPress and we are going to talk about using WordPress in unconventional ways. Tell us what kind of sites you have built for yourself or your clients with it?