Review of Wordpress A Year Later

I wanted to write a blog relating to my experience with Wordpress a year after I began learning it. When I first started blogging, I just wanted something quick to set up. I overlooked Wordpress at the time because at first I thought it was one of these "free to try, then pay to use" kind of sites.  During that time I was heavily involved in Google products such as the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) so making a decision to use Google's Blogger seemed like a no brainer.
I revisited Wordpress after searching freelance jobs. I saw that there were an abundance of postings for help on fixing or creating Wordpress sites.  At first I was a bit reluctant to delve to learn yet another technology stack, but after a year of developing Wordpress sites I'm glad I changed my mind.
Here is a summary of my observations:

1. Wordpress is Popular

Whether you're a developer or blogger it pays to be with the most popular blogging platform. Why? Support. Apart from the excellent documentation found on www.wordpress.org, there are countless forums and sites that you can visit if you need help with a theme or you need a particular widget.

2. Wordpress is not just about blogging

Thanks to the countless number of plugins available to Wordpress, Wordpress sites can be made to become eCommerce sites, scheduling sites and sales campaign sites amongst other things. There are literally thousands of plugins available for Wordpress to give added functionality.  For example for a recent client, I was asked to set up registration forms for courses that were available on their site. A quick search in the www.wordpress.org plugin directory led me to "Contact Form DB" and within minutes I was able to add this functionality to the site. (You can see that example here:http://thepeartree.com.sg/register-for-a-workshop/)

3. Wordpress is customisable

As long as you have a programming background, you can customise Wordpress to your heart's content. This can be done through child-themes and plugins.  I set up a WooCommerce site for one client and they wanted a particular 'list' view for their composite products. To do this I had to modify the child theme and plugin (CSS3 and PHP) to achieve the desired result.
If you're not able to modify the theme or plugin yourself, you can post a request on a site like www.freelancer.com and there will be lots of Wordpress developers able to help.
Overall in terms of spiking new ideas or creating minimum viable products, I still prefer Google App Engine over Wordpress. Google just has more of that 'hacker/developer' feel, where as Wordpress is more commercial and formal. That commercial and formal feeling however has lead me to the majority of my paid work so in terms of financial success, I definitely think that all web developers should learn Wordpress.