WordPress has become a very popular Content Management System (CMS) the last few years. Although it was original built as a blog publishing platform it has evolved, with some help from third party plugins, to be a relatively full featured Content Management System.
CMS Wire recently issued a report that shows WordPress having the highest brand recognition and in a close tie with Drupal for second most used CMS. The ever awful Joomla remains in the top spot but probably not for long.
So WordPress, which is somewhat ironically what we are using to power this blog, is quickly becoming the CMS of choice for web developers. And why not? It’s free, easy to customize and there’s lots of great plug-ins. What’s wrong with that?
I have two problems with WordPress.
1. Hacker’s Delight- It is becoming the Microsoft Windows of the Web. As we all know too well the dominance of Windows has made it a huge target for hackers. One of Mac’s big selling points is that it doesn’t need virus software, yet. There is truth to the saying “security through obscurity”. As WordPress becomes a more prevalent CMS on the Web it is becoming a constant target of hackers. This blog was hacked just a couple months ago. I have a good friend who has had his WordPress blog hacked 3 times this year. It causes downtime and stress for the company affected. We lost a lot of time dealing with it and we are a Web company! We have run into two clients who came to us for help with their search engine results to have us discover that someone had hacked their WordPress site and posted hidden links to “female viagra”. A mysterious, non-existent product.
2. Kitchen Sink Syndrome- WordPress is meant for techies. Just like the awful Joomla CMS you can easily end up with kitchen sink syndrome. All kinds of stuff you don’t need or know how to use. WordPress sites are often not owner friendly. If the goal is to teach a client to fish then I would argue you are going to spend a lot of time and support doing it with WordPress. If used just for blogging then it’s fairly straightforward, but once you start powering more complex sites you end up with a mess that only a true tech geek can navigate.
So if you are going to use WordPress as a CMS know that you need to fight clutter and regularly update. Even falling behind a week can mean death by hack for a popular site. There are many great features and benefits to WordPress, just don’t go in blindly.
Great post. What CMS do you recommend?
Thanks! We have our own CMS which of course we use with our clients and prefer over WordPress. But there are some nice solutions out there. I ran across some very design friendly CMS solutions at SXSWi. I like Expression Engine from what I have seen.
I think WordPress 3.0 holds real promise. It’s all about the application really. Make sure you get a CMS that can grow with the site and not create too much lock in.
I’m facing the kitchen sink syndrome right now
Like eident said.. any recommendations?
Thanks Jeb for the post. I’m going to chime in on the side of Drupal as the best CMS tool.
Our company, WebEasyMedia, uses Drupal for everything we do.
WordPress 3.0 is actually taking a ton of development ques from Drupal. It’s improved it’s category term flexibility along with it’s capacity to handle multi-user sites.
Drupal still smokes WP though as a development platform.
Druapl on the other hand is very close to it’s 7.0 release. Ironically, Drupal has been taking a lot of ques from WP on simplicity and usability. There is an entirely new admin interface and architecture that should help new adopters get up to speed quickly.
Our company is a development shop though, and we freely admit that Drupal can be daunting to the newbie user out of the box. We love Drupal because of it’s flexibility, not it’s simplicity.
Drupal also doesn’t suffer the security concerns that you highlighted in your post. In fact, just the opposite. Drupal is considered secure enough to run WhiteHouse.gov.
Anyway, I hope everyone will check out Drupal and not just end their CMS search with WP. It really is worth the extra learning effort. You can build truly amazing sites very quickly.
What do you think about Weebly? It uses Ajax and allows for a drag-and-drop feature.
1. Drop CMS all together.
2. Hire some real developers/or learn to become one yourself.
3. Engineer any solution you need, w/no kitchen sink attached.
4. (Optional)Become a faster typer.
Just kidding, but not really. I don’t get the whole point of CMS. I might be biased since I roll-out proof-of-concept sites for our clients in a matter of days, if not hours. I’m talking sites with memberships and some sound business-logic (if only at some aggregate level). For me, learning a piece of software to do what I already do would just slow me down. I really don’t want to sound like some know-it-all *****, but I really just don’t get it…