Pulping the Wordpress

Now that we've had a chance to look over the heavyweights of CMS, we're going to refine the scope of our inquiry. Hopefully by now you see how CMS is beneficial to your site, and what your best options are for choosing a CMS. Make no mistake, you could spend the rest of your days testing Content Management Systems, your body becoming bent, your withered hands clutching the mouse, until finally you shuffle off this mortal coil. Thankfully, we would rather not see you do that.

The first of the CMS systems we are going to look at in a more refined light is Wordpress. It is easily the smallest and simplest of the Content Management Systems, so it seems as good a place to start as any.

Backstory:

Don't worry, we won't spend a lot of time with all the gory details of Wordpress. It began – like almost any good software – as an open source project (in case you don't know, “open source” means free to use by anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any purpose). It was devised in 2003 by a fine fellow with the name of Matt Mullenweg. Since that time it has grown into the most popular CMS on the planet, with an excess of 32 million downloads.

Uses:

As stated previously, Wordpress is best for your average blogger or personal site. It is good for news sites and those that don't require anything by the most basic input. It can setup your site, give you a place to post pictures of your cats, allow your friends and neighbors to comment, and it doesn't require you to know very much code to use it.

Pros:

The power of Wordpress is in its simplicity. The majority of the websites out there aren't eCommerce or business sites. They are not social media sites. They are not video sites, government sites, medical sites, search engines, or even dating sites. The majority of sites on the internet are blog or blog-style sites. That is why Wordpress was such a windfall when it burst on the scene. It allowed anyone - no matter how technically unskilled – to publish their thoughts, their hopes, and their awkward Lady Gaga fantasies on the great wall of the world: The Internet.

Wordpress is good in that it has been around long enough to develop a very strong base with some excellent code supporting it. This makes it not only easy to use, but also highly secure. As far as a CMS for the everyman goes, there is nothing better than Wordpress. So long as you don't need it to carry a very heavy load, it can give you all the power you will need to showcase your words, your pictures, you company, your logo. It allows users to login, post profiles, and make snide remarks about the failure of comic book movies.

Cons:

The cons are pretty obvious when it comes to Wordpress. Its simplicity is great if you need a decent site done quickly. As soon as you talk about expansion, you start to hit the Wordpress glass ceiling.

Think of it like this: If you are trying to mow a lawn, you can probably still find a manual lawnmower to do the job. All you have to do is shove it around over your patch of grass and you'll produce some clippings. That's great if you have a little landing strip of sod in front of your condo.
On the other hand, if you have a whole football field that requires trimming, you need something that is able to handle it. You could use the manual grass clipper to do the field, but the time and energy you will spend on it could be saved by using a superpowered riding mower with a 6-foot cutting radius.

The same is true with Wordpress. Anything more than the most basic formats will need higher-end equipment. That equipment requires more expertise and more knowledge, but will ultimately save you time and heartache.

You'll hear us at Sandstone Media talk a lot of trash about Wordpress, but that is good-natured ribbing. It is very good at what it does, but beyond that it becomes a cumbersome and limiting program.