08 Nov Create Client Area for WordPress

This past year WordPress completed a worldwide survey, asking fundamental questions regarding what individuals do with WordPress. Over 18,000 people responded from around the globe, which makes it a great indicator of methods individuals are faring within the WordPress economy. We are able to have a look in the results later, however it makes sense in the feedback, that a number of these websites are used for business, and lots of of individuals business possess a special, unique need – and that is getting together with their customers or clients.

To create a client area for WordPress, one would either need to hire a custom programming team to modify and build on WordPress to create the end product, or they may hope that there is a plugin out there already that aims to fulfill their needs.

To fit the needs of most businesses that want to create a client area for wordpress, the plugin would have to:

• Create private & unique logins and client portals where the site admins could upload files and present images, docs, etc…. for the client.
• Permit the admin to customize all features to fit the appearance, look & feel of the existing site.
• Make everything automated so that repetitive tasks don’t have to be done over and over
• Allow Clients to register themselves, and then wait for approval.
• Be able to group clients into ‘Circles’ and assign permissions based on group affiliation
• Incorporate a Private Messaging feature

Luckily, the Dev Team at WP-Client ( http://WP-Client.com ) has already developed and refined this plugin, and offers the plugin, and the associated support at their website.

Now the results of the WordPress survey

• 53% of respondents described themselves as WordPress developers.
• 36% described themselves as self-employed WordPress developers.
• 170,000 websites had been built by survey respondents.
• 61% of respondents use WordPress just as a CMS, 31% as a CMS and a blog, and only 8% as just a blog.
• Respondents reported being paid between $5 – $2000 per hour (sadly, the $2,000 per hour report is not from me).
• The average hourly rate is $58 and the median is $50.
• 2,800 people use WordPress as their primary source of income.

Now those are some interesting stats. And with 14.7% of the internet running WordPress, and 22% of new domains running on WordPress (as of August 2011) we can expect exponential growth.