Day 8: #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks

Prompt 8/20 Blog: Tell us about the strangest, most interesting, or otherwise notable place you’ve done WordPress-related things.

https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/15/day-8-wp20-from-blogs-to-blocks/

I’m trying to think of something strange to present that I’ve done with WordPress. I’ve used it in a few sites where maybe I shouldn’t have, but nothing too out there.

I have a few sites in mind that are notable to me for different reasons:

  • I saw a demo of a museum website built by WebDevStudios nearly a decade ago that wrapped up a WordPress site as a mobile app. It allowed members to track their memberships, check in, and get details about artworks and exhibits, among other things. That was cool for the time and still is now!
  • Shortly after that I built an overly complicated social community website with WordPress and BuddyPress. At the time I had to write some custom plugins to make things work. I haven’t checked to see if they have moderation tools built in now, but if not they should. After getting most of the way through the project the scope expanded to a ridiculous amount. At that point I recommended that the client not spend on a custom website and instead funnel that money into social media marketing and start a Facebook Group. Sometimes centralization makes sense.
  • Earlier on in my WordPress community involvement I got connected to a governmental agency as an outside contractor to build out a WordPress website. I don’t know if I’m still under NDA but just in case I’ll just say that it involved space in a cool way.
  • I built a WordPress website out for a client that was more for his sake than for forward facing clients. Using a combination of Gravity Forms and a custom plugin, I built him a tool that he estimated would save 20-30 hours per week of phone calls and spreadsheet management. That’s huge! Nowadays I’d probably set him up with a no-code solution like AirTable, but being able to help in such a concrete way with WordPress was a big eye-opener for me.

As implied a few times above, I don’t think that WordPress is the solution to every website problem. But the flexibility, versatility, and huge ecosystem make it worth looking into for most every project.


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