April 8, 2011 
Earlier today I wrote a post about the lovely new theme from WP Zoom – SportPress. It’s a great theme, but it got me to thinking that maybe we all need to get a little bit of imagination when it comes to naming things that are related to WordPress.
I don’t know about you – but when I watch the news and hear something referred to as “XXXXGate” I find it very annoying. Recent example – the recent dump of Wikileaks information into the media was referred to as CableGate. Guh! Get an imagination! In fact, I don’t need to tell you about all of the -gates – Wikipedia (obviously) has a list of all of the notable -gates in history.
In fact, the Wikipedia page says that the adoption of the -gate suffix was promoted by a guy called William Safire an ex-employee of Nixon, who pushed it so hard because “psychologically, he may have been seeking to minimize the relative importance of the crimes committed by his former boss with this silliness.” Although I never would really stake my reputation on Wikipedia, it’s not surprising that the word “silliness” has been used in connection with the -gate suffix.
Erm… Isn’t This Supposed to Be a Blog About WordPress?
Yes! Getting to my point! Here it is:
WordPress
BuddyPress
bbPress
GlotPress
VaultPress
VideoPress
StudioPress
MarketPress
CustomPress
MassivePress
GlotPress
BoardPress
MarketPress
GDPress
CampaignPress
CMSPress
IndexPress
CustomPress
StylePress
StudioPress
PastePress
FlickrPress
QuickPress
PropertyPress
FoxyPress
GalleryPress
CleanPress
PrimePress
StayPressed (bit out there, that one)
GmailPress
MacPress
FabricPress
LuxuryPress
SlideShowPress
UshahidiPress
RecipePress
CalendarPress
SportPress
QuickPress
WhitePress
Q-Press
SimplePress
ReciPress
ComicPress
PortfolioPress
NewsPress
And that’s just the ones I could pull easily from the directory and that popped into my head. I’m sure there are loads more. If you know any more, please leave them in the comments. I would love to find the silliest.
I was lurking in the background of Lisa Sabin-Wilson‘s Allure Webinar last night and was pretty impressed with the names that she has come up with for her new themes for women – particularly “Dabble” which is cute and captures the theme very accurately.
I know how difficult it is to come up with names – the title for a post is often the most difficult. And it must be more difficult who don’t use words in their profession. But just sticking Press on the end of the word – especially now it is so very ubiquitous – is verging on lazy.
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imPRESSive post!
ok, ok, i just couldn’t resist :)
but I fully agree with you Siobhan – it is getting a bit much now. I know it does take a little more effort but heres to more original names! Please.
The overuse of ‘Press’ obviously steams from the restriction on the word ‘WordPress’ in domain names etc.
WPStudio doesn’t sound as cool as StudioPress (well maybe it does).
Anyway, you get the idea :)
I like to think I’m pretty good at coming up with names. If anybody wants to email me next time a brief description I’ll be happy to shoot you a few options ;-)
It’s not that there’s no creativity but I think it has more to do with people wanting to have people associate their plugin or theme with WordPress officially. When someone is looking for the best plugin for something, having the word Press at the end of it makes it seem almost official and is more of a marketing annoyance than anything else. You don’t see WordContacts or WordBuddy but maybe that’s next in the naming space. Personally my business is heavily invested in WordPress but we also use and sell services using other OSS tools so I’d much rather us my business initials (BC) when creating plugins and themes to distinguish myself in my market much like Woo does. I agree be more creative…
I’m offended that WinkPress didn’t make it to the list of unimaginative names!
Anyway. What about all the WPName.com domains? WPCandy, WPLover, WPVibe, WPLift, WPBeginner — just off the top of my head. Oh yeah, and what about that little site called WPMU — how imaginative is that name? :P
Then you have plugins and themes of WPMU DEV. Those don’t even have names! Membership, Affiliate, Directory, Wiki, SEO, and A/B Theme Testing?!
/rant
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@Michael – that’s a good point. Using the “Press” suffix does associate the product with the WordPress brand. I hadn’t really thought about it from that perspective.
@MK – Yeah, for some reason the whole WP prefix doesn’t bother me quite so much. I don’t know why. Perhaps because it doesn’t make just one word – like WinkPress ;) – but you still have to say W-P-Candy, W-P-Lift etc.
And I am not claiming that we at wpmu are any different. I mean, our name hasn’t got anything original in it! It’s the name of what Multisite used to be! Although now it is a name all of our own :)
Here, here.
Don’t even get me started on how “press” isn’t really that apt a descriptor to begin with….
GlückPress, if you please. :) (With “Glück” meaning both happiness and good luck. The “ü” can be replaced by “ue” in places where umlauts might not work, i.e. a domain name.)
The thing behind it, like all the other “-Press” names mentioned in the post above, is a derivative of WordPress, and personally I don’t see any particular problem in giving readers/users a hint where a product comes from by using a certain name-space.
It’s like McDonald’s, isn’t it? The prefix “Mc” or “Mac” has become a synonym for all kind of things (not only food!) being distributed or accomplished in a fast and processed way. For example, some people have “McJobs”. Hence “SomethingPress” would only let us know the thing behind the name claims to be something as cool as WordPress. ;)