Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

Designing a WordPress site or designing a Web site?

March 26, 2010

Wordpress

I came across this video from a Twit­ter link the other day. I liked that it con­densed a panel dis­cus­sion about design­ing for con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems. The video helped me to think through the major points of the issue being raised.

I like the point that Dan Mall makes. He says we need to approach a design project with the mind­set that “I am going to design a Web site.” Not “I’m going to design a Word­Press site”. Or “I’m going to design an Expres­sion Engine site” or insert any CMS into this sen­tence. CMS sys­tems are a tool but they should not define how you do a design. It lim­its the cre­ative process.

I would much rather design a site and then fig­ure out how I am going to pull it off using the tools I choose to imple­ment the solu­tion in. This is the approach that I have taken in my own design projects. I did not change any­thing about the way that I approached a design that uti­lized Word­Press as a back end solu­tion. If any­thing, Word­Press just helped me to sim­plify the devel­op­ment process. In fact, sev­eral of the sites I have designed were moved into Word­Press after they had been sta­tic sites. So Word­Press did not even fac­tor into the design deci­sions that were made in those projects.

I would not con­sider myself a “Word­Press theme devel­oper” or designer in the sense that my main goal in a design project is to cre­ate a Word­Press theme. A Word­Press theme is only a vehi­cle for me to imple­ment a visual design solu­tion. I do offer Word­Press solu­tions but I am not sure I would feel com­fort­able call­ing myself a Word­Press designer. Of course I wouldn’t call myself a PHP designer either. To me Word­Press is just a solution.

What are your thoughts? Do you think design­ing for con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems has less­ened the cre­ativ­ity of Web design­ers? What do you think of Dan Mall’s approach on design­ing for a con­tent man­age­ment system?