Yesterday, we at b5media launched the third of our unique look at the blogs within our channels. Splendicity is a new portal which pulls content from over 70 Beauty & Style blogs within the network, and pulls it all into a customized WordPress instance. This follows on the launch of Bizzia last week to highlight our Business content, and Starked which highlights our Entertainment and Music blogs. Yes, it’s been a busy month on the team!
Adding in some custom plugins built by Mike Schinkel, and a slick theme created by Todd Henwood and Bill Erickson, we’ve created a really cool site with all of the features you would expect from a mainstream site. The best part about it, is that it’s all built on top of a WordPress base. Taking advantage of the ability to extend the WordPress code using plugins and custom themes, we’ve created the ability for the editors to pull the best content from the blogs within those channels and present it in a way that can drive traffic and create a more mainstream audience.
That is the next great frontier for WordPress. In the coming weeks, WordPress 2.7 will be released which is a huge refinement of an already robust product. With this release, WordPress graduates from the realm of the geeky blogger, into a mainstream content tool.
When sites like these portals, or mainstream news and magazine sites like my last project, Green Living Online, have the tools the WordPress provides, anything is possible! When I look back on some of the large media sites I have built in the past (like TSN and DiscoveryChannel), there aren’t many (any?) features needed that couldn’t be provided within WordPress.
I’m not suggesting that the folks at CTV should be rebuilding their tools from scratch, but for people out there looking to create competing products, you’d be hard-pressed to find a tool that provides all of the functionality, and the support community that is found here.
