Advantages of WordPress

Interview with Carlos Man, Chief Technical Officer, OrderStorm

September, 2010

By Patti Smith

I was fortunate enough to be able to get one hour of Carlos Man’s busy schedule as the CTO at Orderstorm, Inc., to discuss WordPress from a dummy’s point of view. Here are some of the things he has to say about this very popular content management system.

Q: WordPress says it allows you to make “beautiful websites or blogs”. How easy it is for computer dummies?

I am not the best user to answer this question since I am definitely not a computer dummy. I can say, though, that I have closely watched reactions from people who have had some sort of experience using a good, modern word processor like MS Office or OpenOffice.org, and I would say they just pick it up rather quickly. WordPress is so advanced it just reflects the deep understanding its developers have of the needs of non-tech-savvy content creators. I really believe when we put our content creator hats on, it does not make any difference if we are geeks, hackers or laymen. We just want to be able to create content like any human being who has something interesting to say wants to. WordPress just happens to serve that purpose brilliantly.

Q: What do you use WordPress for?

I, in particular, don’t use WordPress too much for content creation. To put it simply, I don’t have a blog myself. My relationship with WordPress software – the package itself and its themes and plugins, is more as an installer and theme and plugin developer. Mind you, when I say theme developer I am talking about the technical aspects of it. I am no web designer by any definition. I am just quite able to express a designer’s ideas as a WordPress theme/plugin combination.

I have installed WordPress in various operating systems, including Windows Server (all editions but NT), Linux (too many different distributions to remember), BSD (OpenBSD and FreeBSD), and Mac OS X (another BSD). For the web server platform I have only used IIS in the Windows platform and Apache on the others.

Q: What is the most memorable experience you’ve had thus far with WordPress?

The best experience I have had implementing WordPress was recommending it to a former co-worker. I convinced her to give it a try, and I installed it on an OpenBSD server for her. Since she was an experienced showbiz journalist and publisher, she picked up in no time how to use this platform, and it was a pleasure watching her absorb all the concepts about the new possibilities WordPress gave her to publish her news. She had an actively followed, attractively crafted showbiz news web site in two weeks flat. After that period, she began pushing my boundaries to learn more about WordPress, by requesting theme modifications and plugin adaptations from me.

Q: Aside from webpages and blogs, what else can one do with WordPress?

Working with my company, I have learned to appreciate how flexible and adaptable WordPress is. Its natural strength as a powerful, yet easy-to-use content management system, combined with its development framework based upon themes, plugins, widgets and so on, allows seasoned WordPress developers to integrate it with many other kinds of web platforms, including (as is our case) e-commerce platforms.

When you integrate WordPress to another web product, what you end up doing is augmenting that other platform, allowing its users to add content to their web site without having to ask their web developers to do it for them.

They become the starring actors of their web efforts, being better able to reach their clients in their own terms, without an intermediary layer. They are enabled to initiate a direct conversation with their readers, without having to wait for “the computer guy” to get their content up in the web site. They just go, write their stuff, add their images and formatting and, when they are satisfied with their work, they just publish it.

In the mean time, “the computer guys” are able to keep their e-commerce platform up and running, using the rich and expressive WordPress toolkit to build on the customer interaction platform, adding to it and changing it as their very demanding and dynamic business requires it.

I think WordPress makes for a very attractive development platform for many types of web publishing tasks. I have used more than a few content management systems, and I have found no other platform providing the kind of ease-of-adoption quality I found in WordPress. Their community is huge. The support you get from that community is stellar. Their documentation is of a very high quality. Third-party publishers providing in-depth knowledge about this platform are abundant, to say the least. Anybody who thinks WordPress is “just a blogging platform” is sorely missing the point.

Q: For us computer dummies, what are PHP and MySQL and, how do they work with regard to WordPress?

Short story: they are the flesh and blood that let WordPress work its magic. They provide the building blocks allowing WordPress to act as a content management system.

Longer version: PHP is a scripting platform (a programming language, if you like) for building dynamic web sites. MySQL is a relational database management system. They cooperate to enable WordPress to store its information and generate the web pages you see when browsing a WordPress site.

Q: WHAT IS A PLUGIN?

A plugin is a script or group of scripts (programs) written in PHP, using the WordPress toolkit. They enable all sorts of new functionality not originally available in WordPress, allowing software developers and, in many cases, end users who jump in and learn the platform to extend it to fulfill their requirements. Plugins can be used not only to make small additions, like visual widgets, allowing e-mail collection or Twitter integration up to very big undertakings like integrating WordPress with an e-commerce platform, for instance.

Q: What did you find most difficult in learning/implementing WordPress?

I am a programmer with 25 years of experience. Database programming and dynamic web page scripting are something I am very familiar with.

WordPress is so well built and documented that the biggest challenge has been reserving enough continuous time to really read and learn about the platform. It is a rich platform, designed with such ingenious simplicity that it just requires you to do your job while you learn it.

Q: How does WordPress work on an e-commerce site?

WordPress functions, first and foremost, as a front end. It enables its main user group, usually marketing and/or sales departments, to collaborate within the boundaries of a modern, yet easy-to-use content management system towards developing marketing and product information materials. These materials are made available to the customer in a very accessible and familiar manner without sacrificing the usual sophistication in web design we all have come to expect from professionally-produced content.

The value WordPress brings to its users lies in freeing them to tailor their content to the needs of their market, right when they need it, without necessarily requiring the services of a third-party, but with enough administrative flexibility to allow using third parties when business so requires.

On the e-commerce-specific side, the shopping cart, product and categories listing, on-line customer service and all the other functions may be added to WordPress in the form of plugins and themes. It can also be added by integrating an in-house or third-party-developed e-commerce platform with the WordPress theme and plugins you may choose to use, thanks to WordPress’ modern, advanced and thoroughly-documented application programming interfaces (API).

Q: What is developer documentation – remember who you’re talking to here…..keep it simple.

There are two kinds of developer documentation: developer framework documentation and software product documentation for developers.

The first one provides information to developers about how to use a software development platform, like WordPress and its API. The second one provides software development team members with information about in-house-developed software libraries, utilities, data structures, techniques and business rules, which allow said developers to extend, correct and maintain various software products.

Q: Why and to whom would you recommend WordPress?

Anyone who may benefit from publishing ideas, stories, news… content in general. The world-wide web allows us to experience our being humans in diverse and innovative ways. Anybody interested in expressing themselves in the greatest, most accessible medium available should be learning WordPress. It is easy, empowering and, when used properly, simply beautiful.

There you have it kids – straight from the Big Dawg’s mouth. Now, let me go and play around with WordPress to get my own page started – finally.

OrderStorm eCommerce is ready for WordPress 3.3 and now includes search

December 15, 2011

Early this morning, we committed version 0.5 of the OrderStorm WordPress e-Commerce plugin to WordPress’ SVN repository. New features are:

• Compatibility with WordPress 3.3
• WordPress Search Page results can now include product and/or category pages along with regular WordPress posts and pages

A lot of code was audited and cleaned up, resulting in a more stable plugin. Backward compatibility with 3.2.1 was just thoroughly tested for the plugin. Perfect… In both versions, even with WordPress debugging turned on, the plugin works without any error, warning or notice messages that we can find. Not even in JavaScript, except for a known HTML5 canvas issue, which is a pending item in our development timeline. This was a really good update!

For a more detailed and technical list of changes included in this new version, please check our plugin’s changelog here.

OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce plugin on track for June 1st release

The new OrderStorm e-commerce plugin for WordPress will be available for download from the http://www.orderstorm.com website starting June 1st.  Several versions of the WordPress shopping cart will be available including a free version.  Annual subscriptions to the shopping cart software will also be available for versions with extended functionality including automated drop shipping and CRM.

The plugin allows users to design their WordPress e-commerce theme any way they want.  Look and feel will be totally customizable.  Data management and credit card processing will be done on the OrderStorm cloud servers to maintain a PCI compliant shopping cart.

Mark your calendars for June 1st!

Denver WordPress – Sitemap and SEO

As a Denver SEO company, we continue to be impressed with the way WordPress websites perform in the natural search compared to older site designs. OrderStorm has come to believe that much of the power of WordPress is in the sitemap. When a search engine spider arrives at the Denver WordPress site, it knows just where to go by following the sitemap to index the site with maximum efficiency.

Once the sitemap plugin is installed, any changes made to the site are sent out to the search engines by the software. The search engines know that they do not have to re-index the entire site but can follow the sitemap to index only what has changed. This makes re-indexing sites much, much faster which makes all the search engines happy with Denver WordPress sites that use the sitemap plugin.

Contact OrderStorm for Denver WordPress to convert your old site over into the WordPress software, add a fully integrated WordPress blog to your existing website or set up your e-commerce site using WordPress with an integrated shopping cart.

Rigid Building Systems Chooses OrderStorm for Website Re-design in WordPress

Rigid Building Systems – the premier manufacturer of steel buildings in the US – has selected OrderStorm Inc. for their Denver WordPress expertise to re-design their website. Rigid was already a Denver SEO customer and decided to convert their website to WordPress on OrderStorm’s advice to gain better on-page SEO capabilites, improve their rank in the natural search and improve direct sales.

The Rigid website will feature OrderStorm’s soon to be released Denver WordPress template.  The template features big bold graphics in a fixed size for portable devices plus a background image for wider screens.  The OrderStorm philosophy of website design says that the home page must pull the visitor in with large compelling images of exactly what they want to buy.  The completed Rigid website will feature many, many building photos.

Contact OrderStorm to discuss converting your website into WordPress. OrderStorm offers Denver SEO services, Denver WordPress hosting, and a fully integrated WordPress shopping cart plugin. Visit their website at http://www.OrderStorm.com or call 720-939-8467.

Maria Sallis joins OrderStorm, a Denver WordPress and Denver SEO Company, as Graphic Design Coordinator

OrderStorm welcomes Maria Sallis as their new graphic design coordinator. Sales of Denver WordPress re-designs and WordPress e-commerce sites are up. With the increased number of Denver WordPress customers, OrderStorm decided to add a project manager to ensure that all design projects are kept moving forward according to schedule. Maria will fill this role.

Maria has a keen artistic eye and graphic design training from Arapahoe Community College.  In addition to Denver WordPress website design projects, Maria will also be desiging logos, t-shirt designs, business cards, letterhead and brochures.

Please contact OrderStorm to discuss converting your website into WordPress. OrderStorm offers Denver SEO services, Denver WordPress hosting, and a fully integrated WordPress shopping cart plugin. Visit their website at http://www.OrderStorm.com or call 720-939-8467.

Add a WordPress Blog to your Website for SEO Power

We are just delighted with how well and how fast WordPress blogs get picked up by the search engines. OrderStorm is a Denver WordPress company that will seamlessly integrate WordPress into your existing website. Your website design is incorporated into the blog so that readers have no idea the website software has switched to WordPress. The blog has the exact same look and feel as the rest of your site.

A Denver SEO WordPress blog is very easy to use with its WYSIWYG editor. Just write it and post it. Your Denver WordPress company can also set up all the right plug-ins for you to make the most out of the blog including tags and site maps. Blogs are easily spidered by the search engines due to the category structure and tags with all articles are deep-linked to pages in your website.

Call us at 720-280-3149 to find out about getting a Denver WordPress blog added to your website. Visit our website at http://www.OrderStorm.com. OrderStorm can also integrate WordPress with our Denver shopping cart software as well as produce dazzling website designs.