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WordPress
Custom Theme and Plugin Development
WordPress has become much more than a blogging platform. You can use it to create websites of almost any type, from single-user blogs to sites with thousands of visitors and pages. The news and information site for Boston University uses WordPress, as do the Red Hot Chili Peppers, author Liz Castro, retail giant Best Buy and my local information and discussion site PioneerValley.info
None of these sites looks the same and each serves a different purpose, but they were all built using WordPress. WordPress provides a sophisticated back-end to handle storing and retrieving your page content from a database, and verifying user permissions, validating data, handling uploads, etc. It includes a basic WYSIWYG editor, making it easier for non-programmers to add new content, and, depending on your set-up, won't require specialized skills or a lot of time to administer.
Custom Theme Development
There are thousands of free themes available. The easiest way to make your site look a little different is to download an existing theme and modify the included stylesheets and image files. Many premium themes, such as the popular Thesis theme, as well as some free ones, such as Atahualpa provide control panel support, so you can make these changes through the browser without needing to write code or edit a CSS stylesheet file.
However, depending on the needs of your site, an 'out of the box' theme may not do everything you need. Sometimes you can add the necessary display options for various kinds of content by creating custom templates within an existing theme; sometimes it's easier to start from scratch.
WordPress Plug-ins
Your WordPress web site can be further customized with plugins. Plugins work with your existing themes and database to provide more options or new functionality. The most common examples your visitors see are calendars and contact forms. Other plugins assist with administration or make your site work better, such as SEO plugins or mailing list managers. There are plugins for everything from e-commerce and shopping carts to displaying baseball scores or posting content to Facebook. Some are well-written and some are not, so it's a good idea to look at user reviews and make sure a new plugin is working as expected in a testing version of your site before using it on the main site.
User Forums and Bulletin Boards
bbPress can be integrated into a WordPress site to provide user forums or bulletin boards. Depending on how it is integrated, the bbPress portion of a site can look just like the main site, and users can login to both sections with a single password.
