In 2008 while working at an interactive firm that built custom applications for clients, we had a new project for a cruise line come in just before Christmas. We had less than 4 weeks to spin up a temporary website highlighting the cruise line, its itineraries, port excursions and many other features. At the time, a typical process was followed: discovery > design > development > deploy, but with such a tight timeline and the holidays approaching, we needed to do something different.

Enter WordPress. I pitched the idea that we could use WordPress to start entering content, while I developed the template code with tag matching allowing for related content linking, all while our designer worked on his designs. We got design sign-off on December 24, yep Christmas Eve, and the site had to launch January 6th. Since we had worked in parallel getting content and functional development done, the only thing left to was the theme styling based on approved designs and a few micro-interactions based on the approved design. After Christmas, we buckled down for a few days to complete the outstanding tasks and by New Years Eve we were done. A couple days of QA and we had the site ready to launch on January 3, 3 days ahead of the already tight deadline!

At the time, WordPress was “just a blogging tool” but I saw something different, I saw potential in an open-source project that gave us a huge leap forward on the way we approached this project, and in turn changed the way we worked and viewed other open source projects. When working on large corporate projects, or just spinning up a simple custom application, I always consider WordPress as a potential starting point, and most often will choose it for the project. WordPress is not a one-size fits all solution, but it sure does cover a wide array and has been my go-to for over 14 years.