The Team

WordPress is popular content management systems (CMS). It is used by about 39% of all websites, and in the CMS (Content Management System) market, it occupies 63.7% of the market share (W3Techs, 2020).

However, WordPress tends to be used for small or medium projects. When it comes to bespoke and large online applications, developers may switch to MVC (Model View Controller) frameworks such as Laravel and CodeIgniter. Some attempts have been made to integrate existing MVC frameworks into WordPress, for example, WordPressIgniter, and WP Code Igniter. Unfortunately, these have not been well adopted, as the number of downloads shows, and they are no longer maintained. One possible reason could be that to use these systems people have to be knowledgeable in both WordPress and the integrated MVC framework, or simply those integrations don’t consider how WordPress work (Carl Alexander ).

So why not build a bespoke MVC framework for WordPress? After months of testing and planning, Dr Dongjie Xu (Jamin) started his first step of the journey in 2014: Simpods was born.

Later, Dr Dongjie Xu developed an E-learning platform on Simpods. Rugby First Aid’s online CPD (Continuing Professional Development) system was powered by it. By September 2018, over 4,300 people had registered and used this online CPD system.

In late 2016, new talents joined the Simpods development project and the Simpods team was formed.  The team constantly brings new ideas and help to optimise the code.

Many thanks to the team and other participants. We will carry on improving Simpods.

The members who are currently part of the core team.

Thanks for your contribution to this project. (ordered by surname)

Luke Nelson | Andrew Palfrey | Mehzabeen Patel | Mark Wane

Thanks for your help and advice on this project. (ordered by surname)

Mike Cottom | Dr Philip Holifield | Madeleine Melling | Jonathan Wood