Wow it has been 2 years to the day and I can’t believe what WordPress has been capable of in that time. There has of course been the introduction of the long awaited WordPress 3.0 which really brought things into this century. The developers have been on top of things and continue adding new features almost daily.
As learning goes, I have been really impressed with all of the improvements made in the last two years that I have been using WordPress. I set out two years ago with 2 goals:
Goal 1) To see if, pushed to its limits, WordPress could function as an independent website management tool or CMS and shed its skin of that “blog-like” feel that most WordPress sites had 2 years ago.
GOAL MET! I have had both the pleasure and the learning experience to develop some pretty complex sites built on the WordPress framework. Mind you, not without many a sleepless night. But what I have learned through those experiences only fuels the quest for greater knowledge of programming.
I started my web career about 10-ish years ago with the sole aim of being the best web designer out there. (Notice I said “aim” not goal). Its what I wanted. Its what anyone in the web world wanted ten years ago – to be able to say “I designed that” and have everyone look on with delight and cheer you on endless day.
SCRATCH – back to reality. My every attempt to design led me to a corner stall learning css and programming skills. You know, the back-end stuff. The stuff no one sees but you can’t live without. (What we might call grunt-work).
It took many years to hone that skill and well, much prayer. Most of my prayers were something like “God why can’t they see what a great designer I am?” But after much prayer and accepting where I was at the time – I grew to love what I did. I loved being in the corner stall. I love working with css. And out of that grew my love for coding.
Which now, brings us back some 10-ish years later to WordPress and why I think so highly of it. Mainly – it gets rid of a lot of the tedium of coding those things every site needs; those base, core functions that most people could do in their sleep. And instead frees up valuable time to code the more complex php applications which fit so nicely into the framework.
And speaking of framework: themes! Oh thats right Goal #2! Create a pirate theme.
GOAL NOT MET. Why? Well, plain and simple I’ve been too busy. Too busy working on other projects and too busy working enjoying time with my family. Thats right I said family. I know so many web developers find family as an afterthought. But in reality, why have a family if you don’t enjoy them? Important point coming up:
DON’T SET GOALS UNLESS YOU CAN ALSO SET LIMITS
You have to set limits of how long you are willing to dedicate to a project. Sometimes you have to extend those limits but if you set limits at the same time as setting goals, you’ll be much happier knowing that there IS an end to the tunnel.
That will be my next post: How to set limits in a goal driven world. (if you don’t see that article sometime around October 24 and you’re interested… feel free to post a comment below as reminder.
