• Left Dilbertland in 2005
• Papasoft: Father of Bloggers
• $_CMS[] == see($a[mess]);
• I ♥ WP

• Site/Business Owner? - This is for you
  
• Developer, Designer, Project Manager?
• Educate your customers

• In running your business
• In building a website
• Know your strengths
• Know others strengths
• "No" is often the best answer

• Stop focusing on "how-to" for a moment
• Start thinking about "why?" and "when?"
• And HOW MUCH? 

• Free (ish)
• Super awesome community
• Easy to use admin
• Extensible with plugins/themes

• Easy to get a site up and running
• Mucho themes
• Mucho mas plugins
• Google a tutorial
• Find a solution on Stack overflow
• Attend a WordCamp or meetup

• Build a static site from scratch:  $$$$
• Build a custom CMS from scratch: $$$$$$$
• Use WordPress: $$
• Either way you will end up customizing

• Build a custom home: $$$$$
  
• Buy the land, cut the trees, 
  build it by hand:  $$$$$$$$$
• Buy a manufactured home: $$

• Sophisticated system 
• Built and maintained by smart people
• Everybody starts with the same model
• Select your options
• Install it wherever you want
• Hook it up and turn it on

• Before: "My house is butt ugly!"
• Design team comes in and remodels
• And they are ALL gorgeous!
• Work completed for under $1500!
• After: There is much rejoicing!

• Yes, the materials came in under budget
• Skilled labor was either free or subsidized
• Architect, designer, contractor, carpenter,
  electrician, seamstress, artist...

• A home owner needs to know enough
  about how the home is built to either fix
  it or get the right person for the job.
• As a WordPress site owner (or admin) you
  need to know how WordPress and the web
  work regarding the basic technologies

• Browser (HTML, CSS, Javascript)
• Server Scripting (PHP)
• Database (mySQL)

Disclaimer:
The following is over-simplified and
not comprehensive. Please don't send
me any RFCs to correct me.

• Makes a request from a web server (url)
• What does it get? HTML (text in view source)
• "Knows" HTML, CSS and Javascript
• HTML - structure
• CSS - design
• Javascript - interaction
• Images and media resources
• The browser "knows" nothing of PHP or SQL,
  only HTML and its friends

• Responds to requests made by a browser
• "You want that? OK, here it is."
• Response can be HTML, files, images, media
• HTML can be in a single file (.html) or 
  built/generated by scripts (PHP)
• Regardless, the results is just HTML (text)

• WordPress
• PHP scripts "build" the HTML
• PHP scripts also piece together the
  CSS and Javascript referenced by HTML
• PHP reads and stores data in the
  WordPress database (mySQL)

• Use any of these technologies
• Each has its own PHP scripts that
  "build" HTML, CSS, Javascript
• All of this gets combined into the
  final response that is returned 
  to the browser

• Focus on what is important:
  YOUR BUSINESS and YOUR CONTENT
• Don't sacrifice the 90% for the 10%;
  it's probably not worth it anyway