Apparently, EMRL got to the party really early. Now all these other people are showing up, all like “Oh wow, look, balloons!”, but we already moved on to the cocktails.

Here’s what I’m talking about (bear with me, this is a little nerdy)- there’s a really bizarre swarm of hype building up around the release of WordPress 3.0, because it has new features built in allowing developers to use it “more like a content management system”, meaning WordPress won’t be “just for blogs”.

At the same time, I’m also coming across a huge contingent of naysayers who think that WordPress somehow isn’t useful as a “professional CMS”, or it’s only good if you need a “budget” solution, or “WordPress sites are too ‘bloggy’ (whatever that means)”, and a bunch of other criticism like that.

And I’m sitting here, looking at some of our sites, almost all of them powered by WordPress, thinking to myself, “what’s all the fuss about?”.

We’ve been using WordPress to build whole websites for years. It’s why I started learning the platform in the first place- it’s free, it’s easy to use, and you can use it to empower your clients to manage their own content. Our clients are able to update text, customize things, change out pictures, and all the little things that would normally consume so much time we could be using to make them even cooler stuff.

Our clients are especially happy with it because the architecture of WordPress makes it easy for us to deliver custom features, tailored specifically for their businesses. It also helps that it’s free software– that means we avoid a lot of overhead, and ensure that our client’s websites are future-proof.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re making WordPress powered sites, but you don’t think it’s good enough to run a whole website, it’s time to step your game up.