Eons ago, when WordPress was starting to become a thing in the world wide web, the information superhighway, I got pulled into a meeting for building a “big project” that had to be completed in a short amount of time, as per usual. My immediate mental reaction was that of “oh no… it’s a glue sticks and duct tape type of a project.”

Without a proper timeframe, project road map and budget, well, the likelihood of this “big project” actually yielding any positive results is to that of hoping to see falling snowflakes during the peak of the summer. Regardless, here was the goal: get a whole bunch of prospects, errr, people, to this site, so we can spam and convert them. Awesomesauce!

The criteria went as follows: We need to combine the functionality of MySpace, YouTube and Twitter, so they can “interact” on this big, humongous site to drive up leads. We can do this in WordPress, right?

There were so many things wrong with this idea that I didn’t know where to start other than to think, “if I knew how to build three of those massive sites, I probably wouldn’t be working here.” But I digress. In all honesty, WordPress perpetuates this terrible notion that anything can be done by just installing a few plugins. That’s horrible, because as soon as that happens, you start to drift from the objective reality of things.

What’s right for one business isn’t always right for you. And what’s right for three businesses isn’t always right for you either. Adding shiny new features to a new site that nobody uses is a great way to waste money. I didn’t have the cojones to say that, starting out as a new frontend developer, but I have no problem saying that now.