This blog is aimed at helping publishers get the most out of WordPress. We’ll cover features that are often overlooked, we’ll highlight plugins that extend WordPress functionality, and we’ll showcase interesting sites being built with WordPress.
Sam Guzik over on CoPress.org details the successful relaunch of Student Life, the “independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis”, on the WordPress MU platform:
In their evaluation of various platform choices they concluded:
“Although Drupal is also extremely powerful, we found that WordPress’s interface was better suited to a workflow that would begin to allow [...]
I’ve been chatting with the folks at Tierra Innovation and WNET.ORG (Channel Thirteen in New York) on their impressive collaboration utilizing WordPress MU as a CMS for WNET.ORG’s network of high-traffic websites:
Using WordPress MU’s built-in features along with custom themes and plugins such as WPDB Profiling, they made it easier and much cheaper for WNET.ORG [...]
The Ford Story is a recently launched site committed to making Ford’s progress towards getting new high-quality, fuel-efficient cars, and trucks on the road today transparent and open. The site is completely powered by WordPress and uses WordPress as a CMS to deliver a wide variety of static content, videos, photos, and dynamic updates.
We talked [...]
Elance, a marketplace “where businesses connect with independent professionals to get work done”, has published their latest Elance Online Work Index. In this index they rate which skills are most in demand in their marketplace based on 100,000 new jobs posted on Elance over recent months:

The #1 in demand skill is PHP, followed in the #2 slot by MySQL. The top publishing platform, with an overall ranking of #13, is WordPress, up 2 spots from #15 since the last index. Joomla comes in at #29, previously 18th overall, and the next publishing platform listed is Drupal at #75, previously 46th in the last index.
Since WordPress is PHP/MySQL, WordPress professionals out there are in a great position with the most in demand skills.
You may recall back in January oDesk posted about similar trends in their marketplace as well.
[ Read more on the Elance blog ]
Growth in WordPress jobs on oDesk have only accelerated since we listed it as our fastest growing skill back in January 2009. Back then, 350 WordPress jobs were being posted per month. Today, the number has more than doubled.
We attribute this growth to the increase in social media marketing. As companies tighten their marketing budgets in this recession, corporate blogs are a great way to get word out. Good wordpress developers can help companies infuse their corporate blogs with their own style, branding, and look-and-feel. The ongoing maintenance of these blogs can then be taken over by well managed writers.
Amit Bakshi
Product Marketing Manager, oDesk
@Amit, judging by this graph you are certainly right — impressive: http://www.odesk.com/trends/WordPress