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Warren Shea

Does using WordPress mean you’re not a great developer?

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 12:38 am

I’m looking at someone’s site and wondering how good her development skill is. I look at the source code…and there are proper DIVs, CLASSes, IDs, a Doctype….it looks good…but I see “wp” and “wordpress” littered throughout the site and I think: How much of this site is done using WordPress as the primary focus of development and how much of this site is done with straight code/the developer’s work.

My site for example, uses WordPress, but there is not a single instance of “wp” or “wordpress” in my code other than
1. Links to other sites using WordPress
2. The WordPress Stats tracker

I use it ONLY for the blogging functionality, not the pages, themes, etc.

Again, this site was built integrating WordPress into my site and code, not the other way around (using WordPress to build a site).

Anyways…looking at this potential web developer, I can’t gauge her strength (in front-end web development skills). Who’s doing the developing? WordPress or her? I know I can’t see server-side code but WordPress is done in PHP…does she know PHP?

Back in the day (yeah, I’m old, what of it?) I could tell a good web developer from their code. But it’s harder now…though not impossible. WordPress has certainly made making websites easier…for the under skilled. But what does it say when a skilled developer uses it? I guess it says “I wanted something easy to use, something that already exists and that I don’t have to build myself”. Which is logical but…if you’re a developer, shouldn’t using a web tool be beneath you? Like if I used FrontPage or Dreamweaver design view to build my site, can I really call myself a web developer? When the tool adds unnecessary, unwanted <p> tags, <span> tags, doesn’t close <ul> and <li>…and if you can’t figure out, through the code, why the page looks good in design view and not on the browser…are you a developer?

I guess what I’m saying is that WordPress makes it harder to judge a person’s skill based on their code.

No real insight there -_-;

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