A key focus of our website redesign / re-branding was the need to strengthen and intensify our Social outlook, especially as far as blogging was concerned. We needed to have four (4) blogs that would help us extend our blogging efforts to focus on the three (3) key areas of our expertise and, at the same time, provide information on company affairs. Also, we wanted to have a platform that would allow us manage various aspects of our website from the same 'place'. Since WordPress was originally designed as a blogging platform, and can (with a bit of tweaking) be made into a full-fledged Content Management System, it seemed the obvious choice because it allowed us properly segment our blog and also provided us with the ability to categorize content from virtually every part of our site. That type of integration was exactly what we needed. The Tech Side of things ... WordPress is written entirely in PHP and, like most content management systems, uses MySQL for database management. WordPress also relies heavily on Apache's ModReWrite module for URL redirection. Here at DT, we run multiple web servers on which we provide web hosting to our 800+ web hosting customers -- four (4) of these are solely dedicated to our website(s) and in-house applications. Since all 4 of these web servers run on Linux CentOS / Apache, WordPress (again) seemed the perfect choice. A world of Extensibility ... Our latest project revealed a range of possibilities with WordPress that we never knew existed (at least I didn't, anyway). It's safe to say that at that point WordPress seemed the obvious choice in our minds. With a plethora of plugins, widgets, and extensions; a (very) powerful and hugely extensive API, and a huge development / support community; the level of functionality that can be added to WordPress is very nearly endless. Security Another great concern to us, because CMSes are reputed for being potential targets for attackers. Again, the flexible and extensible nature of WordPress provided very good options for securing our website, one of which was this security plugin. Lastly, and probably the most influential, was the need to provide "seamless" collaboration capabilities for our team. DT consists of a diversity of talent, and it only made sense that we used a platform that would appeal to just about everyone on the team. The debate as to which CMS is 'right' has gone on for nearly a decade, and a countless number of articles have been written comparing the top two CMSes -- this one being my favourite -- so I don't intend to join the bandwagon. In the end though, it all comes down to the user and intended use, but truth be told, WordPress is (by far) the easiest-to-use Content Management System out there (sorry Drupal & Joomla fans). For us, the highly flexible and user-friendly nature of WordPress meant that even our marketing and other 'non-techie' staff on the team would be able to manage their content on the site.
