Modern Street

WordPress is probably the most popular blogging software for bloggers worldwide, but sometimes, we may have bigger ideas requiring bigger features than WordPress can possibly handle. That includes all the other blog scripts as well. Sometimes, we may not want to “blog.” In fact, some of us may not be interested in that whole blogging thing at all. That is when you may need a dedicated CMS (Content Management System) script.

For instance, WordPress is not good at publishing different forms of content and displaying it in predefined sections, easily and quickly. More importantly, WordPress is not adept at managing a community. This lack of depth extends beyond just the templating aspect. Although there is more awareness of WordPress’ potential beyond just blogging, it makes a poor version if compared side by side with a pure CMS.

Sure, you can hire out a good and expensive programmer to create a custom theme that won’t look anything remotely resembling a blog, modify the code a great deal, and end up with something decent, but couldn’t you accomplish the same with a free Open Source CMS system?

This dilemma of choice is being played out every single day, thousands of times. Web developers who want to switch systems, old timers who want to switch from HTML to PHP, publishers who want to upgrade/downgrade their sites…..and so forth.

I used to be one of these, but guess what - I’m still asking the same questions…

WordPress powers small to large blogs very well indeed. It was meant to do that. This site showcases many well designed WordPress sites, but…. I couldn’t help noticing that none were really complex sites.

Now, here’s a Textpattern showcase site, to compare. In fairness, Textpattern was never a pure blog system, but a true type CMS with blogging functions.

Can WordPress run a newspaper site? Here’s an example of WordPress running as a newspaper site.

Hmmm, good effort with WordPress, but this is something Drupal was expressly designed for (LIME is a Drupal powered site).

WordPress still has potential in becoming a more powerful CMS over time, but there are also valid arguments why some webmasters would choose one of the CMS scripts over WordPress. The way I see it, there is a limit to WordPress and what it can do, even though it’s currently well able to go beyond normal blogging functions. Maybe in future developments?

There are so many good Open Source CMS systems, (and commercial ones too), that it is almost impossible to find the “best one.” Amongst the free Open Source CMS’s, Joomla and Drupal are by far the most familiar faces. In fact, Drupal was the overall winner of the recent Open Source CMS Award, while Joomla picked up the best Open Source PHP CMS award. As for the best commercial CMS, I’m guessing it might be Expression Engine.