The magic of WordPress

My first inspiration? WordPress. It’s easy to forget that here is a system that lets you get a blog up and running within minutes, with an outstandingly usable, beautifully-designed management interface, completely themeable, with no end of plugins to very quickly develop something that’s unique and personalised. With a bit of work a WordPress blog can be extended into a feature-rich website without the need for a whole lot of development nous. Regardless of your views on the value of everybody and their dog having a blog or website these days, it’s tools like this that are at the heart of the democratic value of the internet. It used to be a challenge to get something online – now the challenge lies in making content worth reading. What’s more, it’s free.

Yep, there are other systems that do very similar things, I realise that. And I’m not blindly trumpeting WordPress as the answer to everything. But it, and its ilk, will come to be recognised as one of the most important developmental steps when the history of the internet comes to be written.