It’s really amazing to see how far WordPress has gone in terms of its usability and outreach. A couple of years back, it was only meant for the “selected few”… those were more technically inclined and it’s popularity was “not there yet” as compared to it’s more prominent rivals, namely Movable Typepad and Blogger.com
I don’t think I have much to say about it’s popularity today. The number of people switching over to wordpress is mind-numbing! In June alone, close to 125,000 users started a new blog at WP.com and the total number of folks using the self-hosted version of wordpress totals up to about 2 million!
And now guess who is using WordPress as a platform for their main website? A midsize catholic church in Ashland, Kentucky! The Holy Family Catholic Church is one of the many many churches now that are using WordPress to establish their online presence. Take a look at the exhaustive list of churches that are WordPress-ed powered here.
In fact, what is really encouraging here is that we have people like LivingOS who are helping churches build-wordpress-powered-websites and the guidance and help Living OS provides for these churches are quite thorough and practical. They vary from managing posts to creating calender events to even digitizing sermons into podcasts!! How cool can it get?! 🙂
I guess for me I’m just excited whenever I come across these things. I mean to see technology being used for worthy causes like this, and the fact it’s being used for His purpose is something that really puts an affectionate smile on my face!
I guess it’s also because I know how confusing and FRUSTRATING it can be just setting up a website, and lets be honest here, the web is indeed becoming a key defacto component in our lives in today’s era, and having a virtual presence these days is similar to having an email address 9-10 years ago. It’s becoming a common trend, and rightly so, when you consider that our dependence on the web has increased tremendously.
But having web applications like wordpress make it so much more easier for just about anyone to start and maintain a website. It simplifies things… which in turn allows the simple laity to maintain the website, and concurrently establish an online presence.
Who says wordpress was just meant for avid bloggers? It’s driving churches too! Lovely, absolutely lovely!
P/s – In case you’re wondering, no, I was NOT PAID to write this piece of work! 😛
