Randy Thornton over at MetaMedia is of the opinion that WordPress is not ready to lay claim to being a full fledged CMS just yet. He gives some well-thought out and valid reasons why this is so.

In a nutshell: Plugins. The things that make WordPress able to function as a CMS do not lie within its core, but rather are the result of a very active development community rallying to give WP users and developers what they need to force WP to act as a CMS. And he’s right. Take away a handful of beloved plugins (e.g., cForms, WP Contact Form, various SEO plugins, several Event Calendars, and other plugins that seek to expand WP beyond blogging) and what you have is simply a good blogging application. And face it, with the frenetic upgrade pace lately, a lot of plugin developers lag behind in plugin development and compatibility. Who can blame them?

Randy said it best:

One day, WP will catch up: it always does. But it does so because its community has been there ahead of it.

To be continued…

As 2007 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect on the past year’s accomplishments — and mistakes — and resolve not to make the same ones twice. Here’s my list of Top Ten Web Design Mistakes — mistakes I hope I’m never caught making.

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An old issue was raised on a forum recently and it caused me to go digging for more information. The question of who owns copyright for a web design. As a legal secretary AND a web designer, this is an issue near and dear to my cold little heart.

Work for Hire

Most employers, folks who retain our services to create web designs for them, prefer to view our products as works made for hire. And generally they are, if several criteria can be met. First, and most important, there MUST BE a work for hire agreement or an assignment of our copyrights to our creative works to that employer. Both bona fide employees and independent contractors (such as web design firms and free lance web designers) can usually be considered to be employees for the purposes of “works made for hire.”

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If you bill your time, you’ll appreciate this video. It’s not just for lawyers anymore! The video was created by the fine folks running Negotiation Law Blog. The song, based on Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time, written and performed by the Bar & Grill Singers.