Best-fit concepts and typical edge cases for Wordpress

Perttu TolvanenWeb & CMS Expert, Partner

North Patrol Oy, 20131

Best-fit concepts and typical edge cases for WordPressOverview to the state of WordPress in Finland / September 2013 / WordPress Café Helsinki

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Agenda

1. What are the most typical web concepts where WordPress fit in very well?2. What are the most typical edge cases where WordPress seems to be surprisingly

popular?3. What kind of future does WordPress have in Finland? Are there challengers

coming from behind?

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Best-fit concepts

1. ”Content stream sites” from medium sized sites to even large media sites

– Eg. news sites, article sites, ”web magazines”, content databases

2. Small to medium sized communicational sites with long lifecycle, eg. sites of non-profit organisations

– Eg. small parties, associations, some small private companies

– Blogs, ”watchdog” sites

3. Small project sites with limited or unknown budget– Eg. associations, research projects, research groups

– Campaign sites that potentially can have long lifecycles

Concepts to avoid: • hierarchial content sites, • complex multilingual sites, • demanding campaign sites and other short-

term projects, • concepts where article publishing is just a

small part of the concept

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Edge cases

1. Subsites for larger corporations– Eg. "web magazine“– Eg. blogs.finnair.com

2. Corporate sites which are very news-oriented– Usually quite simple group sites, eg. deltamotorgroup.com

3. News sections of big corporate sites– Eg. Nordea (newsroom.nordea.com)

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Challengers

1. Drupal– Not really a direct competitor, but some digital agencies have implemented

their own ”site project templates” which make it easier to build Drupal sites with less cost. In theory, WordPress agencies should not have trouble in selling their approach against this kind of ”Drupal done cheaply” approach... But the reality is often different from theory.

2. Concrete5– Promising newcomer that is being used by digital agencies and ad agencies.

Also there is some community around the tool in Finland (concrete5.fi). Perhaps the ”most fashionable” tool right now.

– Ecosystem can’t compete with WordPress, but flexibility of the tool seems to be somewhat better. Most suitable for demanding campaign sites and more complex and interactive sites with limited budget.

3. SilverStripe– Looked promising couple years ago, but right now not many agencies are

using SilverStripe.

4. ExpressionEngine

More information (In Finnish): Julkaisujärjestelmät Suomessa –hakemisto: http://northpatrol.fi/julkaisujarjestelmat-suomessa/

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Summary

• WordPress is an excellent choice for article-driven websites – also for any ”content stream website”. Probably many media sites would benefit by moving to WordPress.

• Bigger corporations are also seing WordPress as a ”secondary CMS choice” surprisingly often. Reasons behind this vary, but in many cases it does make sense. Especially if the core of the main website is something other than publishing articles (interactivity, eCommerce, custom functionalities).

• Most of the strenghts of WordPress are related to it being used in fairly similar use cases around the world – we should not forget this and push for other use cases too strongly!

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Questions to discuss

• Should WordPress stay in the current position as a default tool for smaller sites? Or should it start attacking Concrete5, EE, SilverStripe and Drupal? Is it already trying to attack them? What can we lose in that development?

• Do you also see large organizations using WordPress as their secondary CMS choice? Any problems in that usage scenario?

• How has the plugin market changed during the last few years? What kind of plugins are developed most actively? Where are we heading?

CMS market in Finland (overview slide)

5 000 – 40 000 euros (+tax.) 40k-80k euros 80k-200k 200k+

Note: These are total project prices (inc. design) and mainly ”starting prices” for different systems.

Note: This slide is naturally a simplification – not always does complexity correlate with cost – but quite often it does.

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Contact information

Perttu TolvanenWeb & CMS Expert, PartnerNorth Patrol Oy

+358 50 368 [email protected]

www.northpatrol.com

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