yellowup.com

never saw the point in using content management systems. Afterall, I could build one from scratch that would do exactly what I wanted. And it would be way cooler! And I did, until I realised that working a full-time programming job and more of the same in all of my spare time is perhaps a bit overkill. Honing my skills is no longer the primary objective: I want to bring the fruits of my creativity out there, not spend all my time building the perfect back office for it.

So I started testing many of the open source content management systems out there. Just to name a few: Drupal, eZ Publish, Joomla, Mambo, PostNuke, TikiWiki, Typo3 and many, many more. Each one has its merits but none left me impressed. Until I tried WordPress.

Pro: installs in under 5 minutes

Once you have that awesome idea for a new website, it is imperative to start writing right away. With WordPress, a fresh new install can be done in less than 5 minutes. Write away and worry about adding features and designing the website afterwards.

Pro: light weight, infinite new features

WordPress features top-notch publishing tools for a blog-like website. Everything you need is right there: posts & pages, categories & tags, RSS, comments, a media library, a well designed content management system and of course a fully customizable website. More importantly, it is relatively light weight: it does not drag around lots of unneeded features ‘conveniently’ build in already and impossible to remove.

Pro: excellent plugin system

Writing plugins for WordPress is easy and fun, at some point you will definitely want to give it a try. With most other systems I usually got impatient doing it ‘the proper way’ or what I wanted simply couldn’t be done. Or I needed to follow some bizarre framework that didn’t make any sense at all. I would start hacking away in the core files, upgrading would from then on become a major hassle. Apart from a rare exception or two, I have never had to resort to hacking WordPress’s core files. Writing a plugin would do the trick instead, without breaking anything.

Because there is such an active community of plugin developers, there is usually a number of plugins to chose from that can do exactly what you had in mind. It is really quite amazing and a major time saver. It usually takes one click to install them. And if the author catches a bug or adds new features you will get a new version notification, again requiring just one click to upgrade. Simply amazing.

Pro: well organised back office, clean & efficient

One of the things that turned me off from using other CMS are poorly designed back offices littered with options, frequently needed ones completely burried under layers of exotic ones. It does not inspire to get the job done. WordPress’s back office works really well. The options you need are there, less frequently used options are hidden by default but still available if you need them. Everything is divided up in a way that makes sense to me. The back office itself is easy on the eyes, particularly well designed.

Cons: your way vs. the WordPress way

There are of course certain advantages to going about it yourself. Every developer has its own personal logic, a certain way of doing things. It might not make any sense to others, but it works for you. Using a system not build by yourself does mean that you will have to get used to another way of getting things done. If WordPress can do 95% of what you had in mind, fixing that final 5% will take you a lot longer than it would have if you had build it from scratch. It is still a lot easier to adopt to though.

Cons: WordPress needs regular upgrades

Using a system that powers many websites attracts attention. Hackers out there are actively searching for bugs to exploit so it is in your best interest to follow upgrade notifications by the WordPress team to the letter. Development is also going at an impressive rate and you will need to keep up: there is pretty good backwards compatibility, but if you delay upgrading long enough you will find that newer plugins no longer work with your version of WordPress. Of course there’s also the issue of older, complicated plugins that are no longer maintained and don’t seem to work with the newest version of WordPress…

Conclusion

WordPress isn’t perfect. While I have seen plugins pulling off major stunts, if your purpose is anything other than a blog/informative website, you really should look for one of the more specific open-source projects out there. Or pick up your programming tool belt afterall. But think twice before you go at it by yourself if WordPress can do the trick for you. Don’t make it about pride: focus on the end result. You’ll thank me later.