WordPress as a framework

Found on builtwith.com

I use wordpress for this blog. I also use it at work. WordPress is a wonderful solution when you need a website or a blog and you need it *right now*. That is reflected in the fact that as of now (Oct 22, 2011), it runs 1/2 of the top 10,000 sites on the internet. That blew me away the first time I heard it.

In the last year or so, especially with the addition of custom post types, it has become quite flexible as well. It is fairly easy to pull together a quick plugin to add a new type of content to wordpress. At work, we’ve used custom post types to create things like candidate profiles and video galleries. However, wordpress starts to falter a bit when what you are trying to add doesn’t bear at least a small resemblance to a post.

I’ve heard it said that WordPress is a CMS that is trying to be a framework, so I’m always interested when I hear of projects that attempt to make it even more framework-like. MTV is one of those projects. Some developers at the News Apps Blog Chicago Tribune have recently released a plugin that makes WordPress act more like a true framework.

My main question at this point is the same one they themselves ask in their documentation. “Why?” I can understand it if you are limited to PHP hosting. I can also see it as a way to introduce framework-based programming to developers who are not familiar with frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Django. MVC frameworks can be intimidating, and this could be a way to introduce those concepts in a more familiar environment.

At any rate, it’s intriguing and is worth a longer look, which I will try to do in the coming weeks.