Is WordPress Killing Web Design?
Out of context: Reply #29
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- ukit0
Technology has always been a push and pull between creativity and standardization. We all understand instantly how creativity is good but standardization is actually just as important in terms of pushing things forward. When the printing press was invented I'm sure the people who made books whined and said it would kill book design, that idea would now seem stupid. Society doesn't value the process of making books, it values reading them.
Obviously Wordpress isn't an exact analogue of the printing press, and its not as big of a leap forward, but it's the latest tool that puts web publishing in the hands of the masses (and makes life easier for some designers who know how to use it without churning out lookalike sites). The big numbers of crappy theme websites are kind of beside the point. The important trend is web publishing being democratized and if there's one thing you can bet on it's that Wordpress 5 years from now, or the thing that kills Wordpress, will offer more flexibility and customization and be even more of a threat to our traditional way of doing things.
What that says to me is that if you think you can sit around churning out the same static HTML websites the rest of your career and think you'll get paid the same amount, you are being pretty foolish. Yes, the popularity of Wordpress and similar tools will devalue that but its just an inevitable part of progress.