I have spent countless hours trying to correct my website. If it weren’t for the cool plugins that are created, I would be using something else.

thank you, too. It’s good to know what I write makes people think.

You know, I knew one day some one would “derive” such equations between platform and talent from it.

But equations suggest a precise rule, like a physical law, which is by no means the case here. It’s more about probability and statistics, if you want.

The thought is: From all programmers on the planet, there is a small percentage of them who are the “rocket scientists” of programming. Then there are some who understand “rocket science” well enough to assist with building rockets, but not enough to build one themselves. And then there is the “rest”, who will never come even near a “rocket”. Because the “entry barrier” to get to the “rocket” is high.

There is a chance you can find a rocket scientist work as a car mechanics, and there may also be a chance a car mechanic is working in rocket science. But these will be exceptions, not the rule.

Having said that, even among rocket scientists there are variations in skill and talent, and a mediocre rocket scientist may well make a car mechanic top star.

Do you know what I mean?

Of course, entry barrier is not the only key. Another is limited time/resources. I chose WP over Drupal or Joomla, because I knew they’d take much more time to manage (in terms of both, learning curve, and administration), leving me less time for writing or developing plugins.

I’ve got my impression about pricing from some (non-scientific) Internet research I did in order to get a feeling about it. I memory serves, most Drupal site development services were priced as “starting at” 2000-6000, while the predominant WP site development services were much lower, like 700-3000. On the other hand, I’ve set up several Drupal sites, and several WP sites, and I can tell setting up a Drupal site is 2-3 times the effort it takes with WP. (I’m not talking about installation only. You install Drupal in much about the same time as WP. But when it comes to adding plugins, things are getting much tougher with Drupal. At least it used to be the case.). So it’s roughly the same hourly rate with both I guess.

It’s true that there will be new things to learn with WP, too. After all, it is evolving, and new things come to it continuously.

But I don’t think that WP is easy to learn because there are so many tutorials. I think there are so many tutorials because WP is so easy to learn. And explain. And this is so, because the concepts behind WP are no “rocket science”.

Thanks again for your thoughtful remarks.

Ease of use is relative. My clients are not likely to become my competition in my working lifetime which I hope does extend beyond 45. I have never wanted to get rich quick – I’m doing work I love.

I don’t feel like a WWW newbie. I’m not a WWW newbie compared to some. To others I am wearing WWW diapers.

My payscale covers Pro Bono & Premium price points for custom themes and graphics. If I work “for the good” for a project I believe in and receive no money chances are I will have added still more to my skillset which makes me more confident in my work.

I choose only supportable plugins to make my job easier and give my clients what they want. My clients do not assume that because I use WP for their website engine that I should get paid less.

WP is a means to an end,true. It was easy to get into because loads of good people contribute scads of tutorials and plugins. But I would not say it was easy to learn. After 4 years I am still learning and happy about it.

Your post got me thinking. Thanks.

That’s my view at WPMU. I’d be very much interested though in the concrete experiences you’ve made with WPMU in the real world. What are the feature that make it well suitable for enterprise solutions? How do they add to WP alone? Do you have some experience with alternative CMS’es, and how do they compare to WPMU in enterprise context?

I’m looking forward to hearing from you again.

Anyway, these are good questions. Yes, all these things can be done with WP. But the questions is how much effort is required to do it, not if it can be done at all.

I’ll see if I get around o writing an article with differentiated insights on how well WP lends towards each of your applications.

I know wordpress has limitation, but, for me, it does easy to use.
Appreciated if you can advise us on the approache that how much we can do with wordpress for non-critical web-based applications development? I have been thinking if it is a good idea to do programming on wordpress in stead of programming from basic. Would it be possible to use/change wordpress for application below
1. service portal web site
2. product showcase web site
3. multi-choice test engine
4. ERP, for record and tracking order status with some calculation and emailing function
5. content management system (a system with rich searching and classification)

thanks!

When you read the article, you will notice that it’s not at all pro-WP. Rather, I tried to take on a neutral point of view, instead just appraisal.

I’m afraid I can’t provide an in-depth comparison with MediaWiki, since I don’t use it. I do know wiki technology well though, from other wiki platforms, and I can say it’s much more suitable then a blog for anything of the “knowledge base” kind.