I'm inundated. Its insane! Here in snowy London (its just snowed a foot here in Mile End) you would not believe there is a recession on. I'm currently working five separate web projects which I'll blog more about when I have the time but for now the most interesting one happens to be for a new elite travel site which shall remained unnamed for now. I'm currently helping to set up a complimentary blog based on the same system that runs my site - Wordpress. Now I know from setting up several small sites, using this wonderful piece of open source loveliness, that almost anything becomes possible. Its amazing how easy it is to create any site you desire not just a standard blog. Thanks to some amazing theme and plugin developers you merely have to think of a feature for your site and chances are that some genius has developed a plugin that allows Wordpress to performed said function.
What's very interesting is that the development team that created the main member based site took over one year to add the kind of functionality that can be added to Wordpress in a few clicks of a mouse. Okay, maybe I should mention that there are caveats and that Wordpress has its limits, though I reckon 90% of what most SMEs do on the web can be down with it alone. Now I'll get the chance to test this theory.
Part of the issue with the main travel site has been the inability to add some really basic features - user feedback, share this links, an event calendar to name but a few. You're probably thinking at this point, "who on earth did they hire to build this site (at considerable cost) if it can't do those things?". Well its not all the development company's fault:
Fisrtly there have been issues with management changing goal posts half way through the build process and internal issues with what sort of "web 2.0" features should be part of the site. One camp wants full user interaction and the other camp preferred at least at first to go with limited interactive features. Now one year on the site has launched and there are issues, major issues. Part of the reason for this is the use of a custom content management system developed and maintained by the web development firm and no one else. That and the fact that the company self-admittedly weren't used to people scrutinising their design and development work in such agonising detail.
When are high-end firms going to realise that people don't need to be locked in any more. Why should someone pay £50,000 and upwards for a site that actually could cost £0 (in software costs) could be built cheaply by a team of two programmers and a designer? All of the feature requests made by the travel company have been met by searching the Wordpress plugin library and they are slowly realising where their money will be heading in the future.
I've been reticent about using Wordpress for large scale applications because of the fact that I'm am not a programmer by training and I have only a few reliable programmers working freelance for me at any one time. My strength lies in being able to see how a project can be achieved fast and at a minimal cost to the client. I have finally come to the realisation that these large companies are going to find it increasingly hard to compete for the SME market in the future because pretty soon a new generation of web savvy business men are going to do some of the dirty work themselves and forego the cost of a developer in favour of open source and, more importantly, user friendly systems that don't require anything more than experience using of using a Gmail account.
So what is the new web model:
Open source CMS + Programmer (Hired for customisation and ongoing support) + Designer (Initial theming and ongoing design) + Good Hosting.... Oh yeah original idea and content not included!
By the way the only thing that beats Wordpress in the features and power department of the Open Source software world is Blender (3D modelling on a par with Maya)... Its a good thing they don't compete for the same market!