There’s a growing movement in the WordPress development community which has begun to see WordPress as a platform for not only building blogs and sites, but for using WordPress for Applications, as well.
It’s near impossible to capture all of the services that are doing this (though please contact us if you are!), we do what we can to feature them here and to highlight why this is significant especially within the context of our favorite platform.
Personally, I’m interested in this and I dig covering other people who are doing just that.
LKR Social Media
Matthias – one of the guys at Roeder Studios, the team behind LKR Social Media – contacted me to mention that their site is actually an application build on WordPress.
Specifically, he mentioned that:
[We] are progressively converting it from a simple membership site to a more interactive application.
Our core business is social media marketing training for businesses, on a monthly subscription. We have around 30 courses, each with training videos covering specific topics.
The application is setup in such a way that:
- Members can track which videos are courses they’ve completed
- There are interactive checklists (such as Twitter, Facebook, and other 10 minute daily routines)
- Recommendations for courses and videos based on what they are viewing
- Integration with cube points to track progress
When we last talked, he mentioned that they are also working on several gamification features (many of which were “secret” at the time of our conversation).
Neat, right? We’re all used to seeing some of these features especially in, ahem, games, as well as other web based properties, but to see developers beginning to incorporate them into WordPress-based projects is neat.
Of course, I’d love to see those particular features released as plugins. But that’s another post.
WP Butler
Another site of doing exactly this – that is, using WordPress as a platform – is The WP Butler which is coincidentally offering WordPress-based services, as well (and should not be confused with the WP Butler plugin).
Specifically, The WP Butler offers the following:
- Backups
- Updates
- Security
- Custom Development
- Premium Plugins
- …and more
All sounds good, right? I think it’s definitely worth checking out. I dig seeing the WordPress service space growing.
On WordPress Applications
Personally, I’m a big fan to see how developers and/or companies are looking to WordPress as a true platform for building web applications – not just blogs or publication material.
This is significant not only because Matt mentioned developers doing exactly this during his State of the Word last year, but because developers are looking for ways to incorporate features into WordPress-based products that we’re used to seeing in other web applications built on other platforms (such as gamification features).
The thing is, I still think we’ve yet to see many WordPress applications that are serving core business needs in other industries. If it’s one thing the WordPress community does well, it’s built things for others in the WordPress-based (or even in the publishing) community.
This is changing and I’m excited to be in the position that we are to see this trend continue to change.
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