Wordpress the next big thing in CMS
Written on March 4, 2008 – 5:31 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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Remember the post I wrote about Wordpress NOT being the next social network, just because it’s too complicated for the larger public? I still think about it the same way, yet I see more and more initiatives that show that Wordpress is becoming an even larger player in the field of web publishing.
The most inspiring post on this subject is written by Raj Dash on the blog Performancing. He describes 48 unique ways to use Wordpress:
As someone who has both written small, custom CMSes from scratch as well as evaluated million-dollar professional CMSes for large corporations, WordPress’ robustness never ceases to amaze me.
According to Dash, the key to the many ways Wordpress can be used lies in five components: custom theme, custom code tweaks, custom or widely-available plugins, custom fields per post and custom code to use the custom fields. After making this clear he sums up some interesting Wordpress-powered sites, like city guides, webcasting stations and web portfolios.
Yet the simplest idea strikes me the most. Developers like Charlene from Essential Keystrokes use Wordpress as an easy content management system. Have a look at Furniture Warehouse, this simple website is build with Wordpress, not that you can tell though. It’s perfect for small companies that want a good-looking site that is easy to customize. They used to hire a web master or pay a huge license fee for a complicated CMS, now they can just ask an experienced blogger to install Wordpress with a good looking theme.
It might not be a bad idea if Wordpress would start to exploit this new usage of their publishing platform. With some minor adjustments - like a function that disables the comments functions - Wordpress could easily evolve to a popular content management system as well.
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6 Responses to “Wordpress the next big thing in CMS”
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
Since I found our how easy Wordpress is to use and expand I have never used anything else. Now, if I need a site for a project I start with browsing a few themes, then adapt one to my needs and launch a site within hours. The Dashboard and editing functions are great to work with. All our conferences, corporate websites and new project websites are based on Wordpress installs…
By Darren Stuart on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
While I agree that it is a decent CMS I don’t think we will have a next big cms.
There are far to many on the market for anyone to really dominate.
disclosure I write CMS’s for a living.
I think you should look more at wp as a platform. I recently built http://diystartupnews.com on top of wordpress. Its a site where anyone can post their own startup related news but they only have 240 characters to do it in.
As a platform its pretty easy to mod and a good starting points for some apps.
By Remco on Mar 5, 2008 | Reply
I’ve been using Wordpress as CMS for the past year and it never let’s me down. My clients love how easy it is to update and I like the fact it’s so open. If a client has a weird suggestion most of the time I can hack either the theme or the core code to make it happen - but most often there is already a plugin that does just that!
One of the reasons I love Wordpress is that it really know’s SEO. I’ve seen Wordpress sites rocket to the top of the charts at Google. Maybe because the code is clean, maybe because it’s just a great product. But I truly love Wordpress.
One minus…the support forum has been shite in the last couple of months. The community has become too big and there are too many n00bs asking stupid questions. But there is always other websites to find help at!
By Char on Mar 5, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the kind words! I have found that WordPress is so powerful to use from the developers stand point yet, clients can make their own text edits and updates with ease.
By Mathijs on Mar 5, 2008 | Reply
Nice article. People evoluate hand-in-hand with technology. When Wordpress started up, it was to difficult for the mass. Now in 2008 more and more people are able to manage a Wordpress based weblog. With the ‘widget revolution’ almost all services are easy to add to your blog now.
Reason for us, at http://www.Start4all.com, to combine a Wordpress based blogsystem with the in the Netherlands very popular link pages (in Ajax-based wordpress template).
By adriaan verstijnen on Mar 7, 2008 | Reply
Recently I deployed a :social: wordpress mu based website. A hotel for the divorced people. It has about 60 rooms and a reception and the IRL version of the hotel has 60 rooms as well. People that stay in the hotel receive the key to their room and the key to their internet room. Hacked it a little and it works like hell. I have to keep the name a little secret, but after the launch i’ll post the url.
It has a great future, Wordpress and keep an eye on Buddypress.
“BuddyPress will transform a vanilla installation of WordPress MU into a social network platform.”
Ciao,
Aatski!