What in the world does that have to do with reinventing myself you ask? Everything. Back in the day (forgive me, please) Visual Basic, (VB from now on), was the tool that helped Microsoft to capture the corporate desktop and then, by extension, the home desktop as well. VB was magical. It opened the Windows API door to people who would have never walked there before. It welcomed new and fresh ideas that led software prototypes or actual commercial software. MicroHelp’s Uninstaller was an unqualified VB success story. (Disclosure here if you don’t know me. I worked for them.) You could do as little or as much as you liked. Black belt VB? No problem. Just ask Dan Appleman at Apress. VB fostered a very strong sense of community among it’s proponents and developed a very strong ecosystem. People shared code and supported one another at conferences, via CompuServe or via email. VB really did empower the desktop at that time.
So what does that have to do with Wordpress ? (And don’t forget that bit about reinventing myself, I hear you saying.) In the same way that VB launched the Windows desktop I think that Wordpress is launching the web. To people who never would have thought that they could actively participate before. A very vibrant community and ecosystem is growing up around Wordpress just as it did with VB. There are plugins and themes that extend Wordpress in unimaginable ways. Very sophisticated web sites that utilize the latest in web technologies can be built in a very short period of time. And if you don’t want to do all or parts of it yourself, there are very qualified people for hire. And those people share tips and tricks on their Wordpress powered sites.
And this is where we get to the reinventing yourself part. (About time.) With the help of Wordpress you can find and express your niche (my what?!!) on the web. Or do whatever you would like to do. If you’re willing to do it yourself, it will only cost you the price of a domain name and a hosting charge. I use Bluehost and got two years of hosting very inexpensively. It comes out of the gate ready to run Wordpress. Sign in, push two buttons, you’re ready for your first blog post or page. (Wait a minute now. You never said I had to blog to reinvent myself. I ain’t doing no blogging now!) Well, actually you will you just might not call it that. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. With a web site that an be constantly updated by an individual or a business you can now get to work on reinventing yourself, deciding which niche you want to pursue and then sharing that with the rest of the web. And if you are unemployed or fearful that you soon might be, I think that you’ll find Wordpress the best way to help you express and converse with people about reinventing yourself for this new economy. Combine that with Twitter (what the heck is that?) and you’ve got a lot going for yourself. We’ll get to Twitter in another post. Until then, Wordpress as the new VB? I’m still chewing on it but the more I do the more I think so.
