WordPress Popularity

I recently read an article over on writerspace.net, entitled WordPress.com Nearing Popularity Landmark The article speaks to a simple numbers game relative to wordpress’ popularity on the web. Fascinating enough, it is predicted that wordpress will top 10 million blogs by the end of the year.

As a developer, I would just like to add a few more reasons why wordpress is the dominating force in the blogosphere.

Pings and track backs

From wikipedia:

Track backs are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs; if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a “TrackBack ping“; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.

Compared to other blogging software out there, wordpress is the superior product to handle ping and trackbacks. Superior to expression engine, blogger and movable type. Why are ping and track backs so important? Exposure. the TrackBack protocol, as simple as it is, helps to give your article the depth and breath that it would not normally see if it were up to you or your community to forward on your blog topic.

Development Community

With wordpress leading the charge in the blogosphere as the number one platform to publish blogs, the development community has come with them. Need a plugin to manage your ads? Need a plugin to increase your SEO? Need a plugin to create sitemaps? All those are accomplished with a few clicks and a download. With such a large userbase and supporting development community, chances are that someone out there has had the same need as you and there is a solution available.

All this is not to say that the alternative platforms are not wonderful engines to create your blog, not by any means. However, if asked, I personally would reccomend using wordpress.

jQuery Plugin: Cycle

At this point, jQuery is nothing new in the web development world. AJAX has taken the community by storm, and I can’t stop shouting from the highest mountain tops, the benefits of an AJAX supported website. Asynchronous javascript is a foundation of web 2.0, and a big part of my development cycle.

The ability to create dynamic portions of a website is crucial in providing an end user experience that is second to none. jQuery, and the like (mootools, rico, scriptaculous), makes it all the more simpler.

One powerful subset of a jQuery founded website are plug-ins. Simple pieces of open source code, developed by the community, that ease development time 100 fold. Case in point: the cycle plug-in.

The cycle plug-in is used to create slideshows of all kinds. A tutorial for how to do this can be found here, so I will refrain from recreating it. Follow the easy to navigate instruction set, and within 20 minutes, you can create a basic slideshow. Within 30 minutes and a much more dynamic and custom slideshow can also be created.

I will concede however, that there is such a thing as too much asynchronous activity. I prefer to look at a project and ask myself two questions: will this enhance the end user’s experience or will it get in the way and be a distraction? and the second: Do I really need to use jQuery for this?