The better question when is WP suitable for a CMS. Ford and CNN both use WP for specific purposes. The fact that they use it shows that it is at least suitable, in the right situation. Of course, the fact that neither of these companies use it for their primary website shows that it is not a full service CMS.

I think that WP can be used for a pamphlet style website that will have a handful of pages that will be mostly static. It can also be used for a church or ministry that has a little bit of basic content but mostly wants a blog to communicate with the community.

I agree with you that if the site has the potential to grow and change, then drupal and joomla are probably better options to start with.

Where I have considered using it is for the small company that I work for. We have about 8 people. Our current website is all hard coded HTML, very Web 0.9. Any changes go through the person who put it together. WP would allow the office staff to change the text of pages, or add a new page. It also would make it easy to upload new pictures. Because the total site only needs, at most 10 pages of content, WP would be a candidate. The site would have no community elements, no comments, no blog, no podcast, none of the bells and whistles that make drupal and joomla shine.

John
john-simons.com

Way back a year and a half ago (before "I" even knew what a CMS was), I was tasked with setting up a sermon podcast. After bouncing around a bit I came across recommendations to publish through a blog and some automated software. Some others in our denomination were using branded services, but I struck on the alternative of using the Podpress plug-in for Wordpress. And as of today, I still haven't found anything else that I find as easy, flexible, full-featured and reliable.

I've since added plug-ins for Organizer (gives us a fantastic set of file management functions), a Lightbox Plug-in for some photos, a OpenID extension to handle login authentication, and a fully widget enabled theme.

For our main website we have since selected a different CMS, but as of today, coming close to recreating what our Wordpress+Podpress+Organizer combo is giving us is going to take a lot of additional effort if/when we make a change.

Mark

With respect to you guys and your opinions, I really, really can't stand Drupal. I'm a huge WordPress fan. I'm been neck-deep in PHP code for the past ten years, so I'd consider myself a pretty strong developer - I then majored in graphic design in college to get the right brain working.
From two angles:

1. Design - visually, WordPress is attractive out of the box, and can easily and rapidly be tweaked to fit a designer's goals. As I think like a designer some of the time, it was pretty easy for me to take my CSS prototyped design and "drape it around" The Loop. It's pretty easy to master the WordPress Loop, and there are a dozen other functions to add to that, to make a design as simple or complicated as you want, and still make it easy to use.
The biggest thing: I can't find anything like "Simplr" for Drupal. Even the "simplest" themes for Drupal had stylesheets all over the place, and other goofy functions that I couldn't find.

2. Code - to design on WordPress, you can take the default theme (Kubrick) or a very plain one like Simplr, and just browse to where the stylesheet is, and there you go. One stylesheet.
I started messing with theming for Drupal months ago, and I still can't figure out why everything is spread all over the place in folders everywhere. WordPress is incredibly clear-cut as to where everything is, and what it does.
There are TONS of modules for WordPress which perform most of the same functions you're looking for in Drupal, but in a simpler, cleaner fashion.

Drupal is trying to do too much, and trying to help everyone, but by doing so, it helps no one. It's too geeky (which means it's not very user-friendly). Not to mention that the API essentially changes every point release, breaking older themes and add-ons. Every time I read about that, they give some sort of vague answer about moving forward, embracing new technologies, etc. They're pushing for this AMFphp and "Druplash" nonsense (which only serves 1 percent of the audience), but in the process, they changed the way the search system worked, as well as theming. Again. If Apple pulled that kind of nonsense on its developers, I'd have stopped developing on a Mac and moved to Windows a long time ago. Wordpress is simply more stable, more secure, and more mature than Drupal. They're both open-source, but I trust WordPress much, much more. Even as a CMS for my church. I have friends who are hard-core Drupal fans, but they don't actually use it for their clients' projects. And they set up WordPress-based sites for their churches. :)

Jason,

Sounds like you are comfortable with WordPress and that is cool. I usually recommend WordPress to folks who want to have a blog. That is what it does best. Of course, if I do the blog site, I use Drupal, but that is where my comfort lies.

Your points about design ease and out of the box is on mark I think. You could easily replace Joomla in this post and the arguments could be the same. A Joomla friend of mine said that Drupal is kind of like Unix and Joomla is kind of like Mac/Windows. What he meant is that Joomla is easier to quickly get going. The tools are there. He admits that Drupal is more powerful, has a more solid code base, etc - but you have to really dig in to the geek of it.

With all that said, Drupal is way more powerful that WordPress for doing many types of not only web sites, but web applications. That is they key. Drupal's APIs allow web apps to be built. Also, core API does not change on point releases unless it fixed a major bug or security issue. That is saved for major releases ex. Drupal 6.

Saying WordPress is simply more stable, secure and mature.. can't agree with that. I am not even sure it is that easy to say which project is superior in any of those categories.

From what I have seen, there are many more professional webdev consultants who roll out Drupal sites than WordPress. I don't think that means Drupal is better. I think it is because it is more flexible for doing different things. If it wasn't stable, secure, etc, BBC, The Onion, MTV UK, Warner Bros. Music, etc would not be using it.

Nothing wrong wiht using WordPress or Drupal or Joomla if it fits your needs. I respect them all for what they offer. The friendly competition actually helps to make each project better too.

All friends here :) I am not flaming you and hope you don't take it that way. Respect all the projects for what they offer. We all use what we like and are comfortable with.

Peace,
Shrop

I actually agree with both Jason and Shrop here :)

When it comes down to core of Jason's post, he's pointing out something that many people seem to have a hard time grasping. That is:

Drupal is a framework, not an "out of the box" CMS.

Joomla and Wordpress are intended for 'end users' to get up and running quickly. The fact that Drupal is lumped in with them frustrates people because they expect the same functionality out of the box. But it's not there, and it's not intended to be there.

To me, Drupal fills a huge niche of people who want completely, from the ground up, custom sites. While Joomla and Wordpress are definitely easier to use out of the box, that's not Drupal's goal. While Drupal wants to be 'as easy as possible' to use, it won't sacrifice power and functionality for ease of use.

So, in the end, Drupal isn't for everyone. As a designer who builds Drupal themes all day long, I see many ways the theming system could improve...but to say that it's built poorly just comes from lack of experience. It's an EXTREMELY robust and powerful theme system, but it's not for people who want a site quick and easy.

When it comes down to it, Drupal is not a true CMS like Joomla and Wordpress, and I htink the fact that it gets lumped in with them makes alot of people dislike it because they don't understand it's goals and approach.

-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mustardseedmedia.com

almost as bad as the age old question of "what kind of computer should I get?" Not to mention the countless posts that are on the Wordpress forums talking about this exact thing.

It will be different for each person and situation. I personally have used Joomla, PHPNuke, DotNetNuke, Mambo, Blogger, and Wordpress (not mentioning a few others that got installed and uninstalled the same day.) Currently, my personal site is a blog with Wordpress. As is my wife's site. I have found that the blogging tools do everything that I need on a personal site.

So with that said, I think Wordpress would do fine as a basic to intermediate CMS.

The CMS features and functionality that so many of us have gotten use to are now implemented in WP. Are they pretty...in many cases no. That shows as MF pointed out that the code is not "pretty."

However it does work. It captures content from multiple users and delivers that content in different ways using thematic design and user contols.

Now, my only two caveats are that I think that the original CMS programs will do better than WP when size matters. Those programs were developed with the framework in mind to handle a load. The other caveat is that IF you are to make a CMS out of WP, then use a professional. WP is a great blogging software for the average use and through the use of advance tools can be utilized as a CMS. Just amek sure to get it done right.

my two cents....

If you guys are looking for a "framework" per se, I could really recommend CakePHP. Of course, it's also quite different, so expect something different - it's actually designed to be like Ruby on Rails, but without the need to learn Ruby.
We're talking building custom apps from the ground up with this thing - it's pretty fast and easy, once you go through the tutorial. You can build a barebones CMS in 15 minutes (my estimate).

If you're looking for a good CMS with great support, I can actually recommend ExpressionEngine. Yes, it's a commercial product, but I think it's somewhere around $150 including the forum modules, tech support, etc. for personal/non-commercial use. The people in the EE help forums tend to be more friendly than those in the Drupal forums (IMHO). I've really grown familiar with EE in my day job, and have even worked with some of the key developers and guys at a firm called SolSpace (because I manage an EE install for my day job). And designer Veerle Peters uses EE for her blog, so it must be good.
There's also a great host that specializes in ExpressionEngine: they're called EngineHosting. Very friendly, helpful people.

Of course, if you're looking to learn a new language, there's always Ruby on Rails. I've had fun with that, too. I've met the guys at 37Signals here in Chicago (they built Rails), and they're pretty smart and friendly. They tend to keep to themselves, though.

FYI:
http://www.cakephp.org
http://www.expressionengine.com or http://ellislab.com
http://www.rubyonrails.com

I have heard good things about EE for sure. Lifechurch.tv picked it in October, but they are now moving to codeignitor and have hired developers on staff. Pretty wild. http://www.terrystorch.com/technology/we-moved-fro...

A few other cool PHP frameworks, in addition to CakePHP, are:

http://codeigniter.com/ - really cool stuff. Have a buddy who just wrote an app with it.
http://www.symfony-project.org/ - MVC very similar to RoR.

Yep. I like CakePHP too. There was a module to actually integrate Cake projects with Drupal.

I have messed around with all of these and RoR. It is fun to see what others are doing.

Drupal is a web framework, but not an MVC. It is a PAC. I think this wikipedia article rocks. It contains a comparison grid of many web app framework.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_app...

This stuff gets me excited.. thanks!
Shrop

Expression Engine was one of three finalists when our church was searching for and selecting a full CMS (along with Drupal and Joomla). The cost was low enough for non profits that for many that would not be much of a factor. (They discount for non-profits, letting them purchase at personal license price, which is less than half the commercial price).

From a CSS template designer standpoint it seemed quite attractive (very flexible, and styling work seemed closer to what one does and can easily do with a static page design). The base architecture used modern page structure and layout practices.

It didn't appear to be the most flexible or widely used CMS, and it seemed somewhat less a "full" CMS than Drupal, Joomla and some others, but it reached further outside the blog structure than did Wordpress or Textpad (which is was similar to). I found getting a "basic" multifunction site up and running required more custom and web design experience than the others. Install was also much more finicky. But creating a theme from scratch seemed much easier. It seemed well supported and maintained. Quite a few churches seemed to be using it. I recall quickly finding about a half dozen examples.

Anyway, we thought it could have been an OK choice for us, and I suspect it might be the best choice for some site projects. If primary criteria is on efficient, flexible page styling, and you're not going be too aggressive in terms of CMS ambition, it might be worth looking at.

When looking at any framework on any platform, I recommend going with something that follows an MVC design pattern.
That is "Model-View-Controller" for the uninitiated. Once you grok your brain around the theory behind it, you'll be able to move comfortably between similar systems and compare/contrast them more easily. The fact that Drupal doesn't really follow this is another reason it's tough to make a comparison between it and these other systems.

@mwpeters: I can't remember exactly where off the top of my head, but I know that somewhere in the "Modules" panel on the EE backend, you can find a ton of other Modules (or extensions) to download and install. I only did it once, but I remember it was so easy, I went crazy with it and downloaded all kinds of useful add-ons... spam blockers, special templating tools, etc. There was even an EE "port" of the Akismet anti-spam tool (originally from WordPress).

The thing I see being nice about EE is something that Rob and MF mentioned on the podcast: if you, the guy who set up this site, were to disappear suddenly, what could the church do to keep going? At least they can call the support folks and get some help on the phone in the interim. The OSS projects don't have that, from what I can see.

Good points... and its got me re-thinking

With OSS you we need to arrange for some additional back up support. OTOH: Commercial web app projects can also leave us stuck based on a lack of commercial success. Apache, Linux, MySQL, and Postgres may not have phone support lines, but they all seem less likely to soon cease development than many commercial projects. I think massive OSS projects backed by some contract support provides some of the benefits of each environment. Wordpress seems to be achieving something like that now. Joomla and Drupal are approaching also, but each does seem much more vulnerable (for differing reasons). Until our CMS portal becomes as day-to-day critical as our network or membership database, we can probably deal with the risk of a some slightly longer support gaps.

Expression Engine seems a good system and Ellis Labs looked solid. But I suspect the biggest need our church is going to have should volunteer tech help suddenly be unavailable, is finding someone or some firm that can act as a go between and interpret their needs. I'm not sure Ellis Labs would really fit that bill. Maybe if we hosted with them also??

Expression Engine still seems to occupy a space somewhere between a hyper-power weblog and CMS portals like Typo3, Plone, Mambo, Drupal, etc. Though impressed by the set of modules available for EE, and the install process, but the collection didn't match up well to the volume and variety available for Joomla, Drupal, or Wordpress.

Interesting about MVC. I'm still inclined to start out by asking what capabilities we get in the product toolbox, how easy they are to use, etc. Right now we aren't even real clear on the extent of what we'll be attempting over the life of a platform. I'm not saying the design architecture stuff is unimportant. For long term maintenance it could be very important. And if I was shopping for a weblog it might be the determining factor (as so many products could meet all operating needs). Not so with the low cost CMS portals. None of the candidates... that were within our reach, did a good job of addressing all our ambitions.

I agree on MVC for a framework to develop from scratch totally. It is a real nice system. I actually use activecollab for project management and it is built on a custom MVC. It is pretty easy to hack because of this model.

The reason I like Drupal as a framewok is that.. well.. sorry to change what I said before, but maybe Drupal is really bigger than framework, it is a platform. I discussed this a little on twiiter with Jeff Eaton (a Drupal rock star) who brought up the question. http://twitter.com/eaton/statuses/562948252

With Drupal, I have a CMS with all the modules ready to go with no code. Then I can code in the framework to fill in blanks when there are pieces missing or modifications that need to be made. I know MVC is good for rapid development, but Drupal can provide some pretty rapid dev too. Let's say I need a web app to do something like organize my stamp collection. (I don't have one, but what the heck). I don't have to code a taxonomy system, a login auth system, etc. What I do have to code is anything that Drupal doesn't provide with core or contribe..pretty sweet!

Shrop

Sorry it's taken me some time to comment on this conversation. I've been on vacation and not following anything on the Internet.

I've recently gotten into the study of software architectures. MVC is a hot buzz word these days. If someone says 'lets build a web app' you usually hear a web developer say 'that means we need MVC'. But, this isn't necessarily the case.

I was recently looking at the requirements for a web application and trying to fit it into an MVC mold. The problem was the MVC didn't really fit what this was going to do. I really needed a PAC (Presentation-Abstraction-Control) architecture. That fit the complexity of what this was trying to do.

I think there are good cases to use MVC and some places to use PAC. Something to note is that in a number of cases where developers call out their setup as MVC they are actually developing with a PAC architecture. MVC is just the hot buzz word. I'm all for the right tool for the right job.

This is one of those cases where we need the right software architecture (tool) for the right job. We need to be careful not to try and fit the square peg in the round hole.

I am a fan of MVC. I've used it before and am going to use it again for an upcoming project. It's just not the end all of software architectures. Even GUI software architectures.

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com

We have really been talking about full stack frameworks in this conversation. What about glue frameworks? For example check out the Zend Framework.

One of the sad things about the PHP frameworks is that so many are trying to be clones of RoR. RoR is great, don't get me wrong. But, their framework design isn't the only way to go. Frameworks that operate very differently from that can be a beautiful thing, too. Take Prado, for example. That framework is different and it's good.

I think as developers it's good to see outside our normal development box. Other people do things other ways and it's good. It's good to see how they do it, it's good to see why they did it, and it's good to learn from others.

The truth is there is no right answer here. There are many ways to solve the same problem and that's a good thing. It allows us to be creative with our solutions. It makes more than one path a possible one.

If someone wants a good MVC framework there are a number of great PHP ones they could run with. There is no shortage of great tools out there. The thing I would love to see more of is PAC frameworks. There seems to be an element of software architecture missing these days in the framework world.

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com

In the past year I really saw drupal grow into a platform. Oh, I agree with Eaton here. It's quite an impressive thing to see. You have the drake module to integrate cakephp (the framework). You have the zend module to integrate the zend framework. So, you can use other frameworks along with it.

Yet, drupal is a framework in and of itself. Not a typical MVC framework and that's ok.

I'd argue that ground up development doesn't mean an MVC framework. That's just what the common buzz words say. For a case I'm dealing with MVC is not the answer. The software architecture just doesn't fit.

I wonder why we seem to have such a hard time with different when it comes to software architecture and frameworks? If it's not an RoR clone and isn't MVC so many people look down on it. That's sad. I think all these frameworks could learn a certain amount from each other and that would make all of them better so the consumer would end up better off.

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com

I love wordpress!! It gets the job done. I use wordpress for my churches site. I have to admit its not the best site every, but we are a small church and it does what we want it to do. I think you can use WP for more than blogs. It just depends on your template. iThemes.com has some very nice WP themes, but they do cost. With their iCompany theme I was able to customize it and do what we want. I love how easy it is for the not so techsavy(pastor, sec., and other people) can just login and add something. I looked into the other drupal, joomla, and many others. However it's just that WP is so easy to tweek and edit. That's just what I think. Our church site is centerhillbaptist.net please excuse somethings we just redesigned it about 2 weeks ago. I'm still in the process of customizing it. Thanks

Good job on using WP for your church site. Looks really nice.

This article is about the self-hosted blog software. For the free blogging service, see WordPress.com.
WordPress

WordPress's default configuration
Developed by Matt Mullenweg
Ryan Boren
Donncha O Caoimh
Latest release 2.6.1 / August 15, 2008 (2008-08-15); 20 days ago
OS Cross-platform
Platform PHP
Type Blog publishing system
License GNU General Public License version 2
Website http://wordpress.org/
WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP. All data is stored in a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg.

The latest release of WordPress is version 2.6.1, released on 15 August 2008. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2.[1]

Contents [hide]
1 Features
2 History
3 Releases
4 Vulnerabilities
5 Multi-blogging
6 Developers
7 Sponsored themes
8 Wordpress native iPhone & iPod Touch app
9 Criticisms
10 See also
11 References
12 Further reading
13 External links

[edit] Features
Templating system
Integrated link management
Search engine-friendly permalink structure
Support for plugins
Support for widgets
Nested categories and multiple categories for articles
Trackback and Pingback
Typographic filters for proper formatting and styling of text
Static pages
Multiple authors
Can store a list of users who visit your blog
Can block site visitors by IP address
Tag support

[edit] History
b2\cafelog, more commonly known as simply b2 or cafelog, was the precursor to WordPress. b2\cafelog was estimated to have been employed on approximately 2,000 blogs as of May 2003. It was written in PHP for use with MySQL by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Though WordPress is the official successor, another project, b2evolution, is also in active development.

WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a fork of b2.[1]

In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type package were changed by Six Apart, and many of its users migrated to WordPress – causing a marked and continuing growth in WordPress's popularity.[2]

In 2007 WordPress won a Packt Open Source CMS Award.[3]

one word to rule them all. One word that separates the powers at play. that word is "views"

Hello,

I think WordPress is a great tool for church websites.. when my church changed names from Community Pentecostal Church to The Embassy of The Kingdom of God we had to have a great looking website fast, our last website under the old name had not been updated in over 2 yrs because our designer changed churches and wrote the site so only he could understand it.

Our new designer took the information off the old site changed the name of the church to the new name.. created a custom template and bam we had our first site under our new name. Then he added users that would add the podcast (me) the news and events and the stories. This made the website easy to update for more then just the deisgner of the site.

CMS sites weather, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc.. totally rock in a church setting they allow for more people to be able to help in the production of the website.

I will add that we then about 6 months l8tr went to the Inspire CMS system this was great for users because unlike wordpress we could define what the user has access to and what he/she could change. Now our young adults website www.embassyonline.ca is a totally custom CMS site. This site was written with CMS in mind but totally written just for us. There is no major CMS name attached to it. Please take a look at the site and tell me what you think.

But back to WordPress most of the sub sites that our designer created was done with wordpress with the example of Find Your Place (in a sub folder) and www.embassyworship.com take a look at both sites and tell me what you think.

But alast I am rambing so I'll stop now. Take a look at the site and Be Blessed!

Visit These Great Websites
http://www.embassyonline.ca
http://www.theembassyofgod.com
http://www.embassyworship.com
http://www.durhamhop.com
http://geeks4god.web44.net

I use Wordpress as a CMS for most of my clients sites. It's easy to use for the client, I know WP in and out, I can write plugins if needed, and I don't know Joomla or Drouple.

For anyone interested... Fell upon this listing of websites developed using Wordpress. It's a pretty comprehensive list with 269 churches listed.

Wordpress-driven church

Nice list of WP powered church sites

Very nice list.

Hi gang,
In our small-ish church we had one web developer for the church, daycare and rental property - me. I do the work as a ministry but it is not my full time job (shucks) so I could not devote the proper attention to it all. All three sites were developed in hand-coded HTML/CSS.

Our Pastor had the idea to see if anyone in the church wanted training. He is, thankfully, big on activating people. Anyway, he wanted a facelift for the church and daycare and he wanted it to be something that these computer-mostly-illiterate folks could work on... and of course it needed to be done quickly so we don't lose the few that wanted to learn.

With non-techy people updating it, a fast turnaround and no experience in anything for websites that was non-html on my part we went with Wordpress. It allowed us to go seek themes and come together to narrow the field of what to present to Pastor. Once it was installed and themed (I tweaked it a bit) we were able to have the non-techs copy the text from the old site into posts in WP, load pictures into Flickr and set links to other sites we link to. They also have learned how to go look for plugins to do things we want it to do.

End result: It was done quickly and I now have a team of 3-4 people who can handle anything but coding/theming and another 2 that kinda get it. It looks like we want it to and does everything we need it to.

Drupal, on the other hand, is mucho overkill for our needs. I would love to be fluent with it for myself and my day job but for the church it's not worth the effort since I'd be the only one who can do a moderate-to-major change. Besides, I've been programming since Trash-80 Basic in 1978 and have a BA in comp sci with a math minor and Drupal makes my head hurt. I'm sure it's just because I've not had the time/motivation to sit with it and wrap my brain around it but it's certainly not for the beginners many of us have in our churches.

Blessings,
Jim

I just wanted to follow up on my last comment.

I have been messing with Drupal off and on for several days now in a serious attempt to get far enough into it to intelligently decide if it's for us or not.

So far, I'm having fun with it. Maybe it just clicked this time around but my head doesn't hurt so much any more. I also think it may be overkill for our church and daycare, but I think that if I can get it set up then day-to-day operations may be no harder than the WordPress we have now AND I'll have the ability to do more cool things to help the church like replace the dry-erase calendar with an online one.

Hey Jim,

Wow! I could really relate to your post!

Drupal has given me a major headache too!! But I also enjoy learning more about it. "No pain, No gain"! Ha ha

I also thought that Drupal might be overkill for our church too, and another ministry I'm working with. But I've also realized that most of my friends would have a problem with day to day operations of either Drupal, Joomla, or Wordpress. They are just not "techy". Our church uses some "build your own church site", and they still have problems figuring it out.

So I guess that is the key. Setting up a CMS to where just ANYONE can add content without a problem.

I plan on "sticking with Drupal", but I'm looking forward to helping my friend with his Wordpress site. I like to learn new things.

Jim and Bean,

Yeah, I had the same problems with Drupal the first time I used it. First time: downloaded it, started banging my head against it, messed it all up, hacked core, and then gave up. A couple weeks later, read a little bit of documentation, started browsing drupal.org, started to see the power and then just dove in.

"Pro Drupal Development" was a book worth every penny. To make Drupal more user friendly, you could always set up a special menu system / landing page for contributors that would make adding / changing things easy for them.

But for ease of use out of the box, WP has it.

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Hello, I am new here, and I have been reading the posts here, and I found this topic to be interesting. I have an associate in computer programming and working on a bachelor in computer science but thinking about changing to System Information, and once I get that degree, go for Business Administration. I know, it is an odd turn around, but I think that is what the lord wants me to do. I believe the lord wants to use my skills for churches, non profit organizations and other things.

I have been playing with Joomla, and I have built a few personal models and components for it and I have a good understanding of it, but I am still learning Joomla’s framework. I have just started getting into Wordpress, and I have to say I am learning Wordpress at a much faster rate than Joomla, but Joomla is a robust CMS so that is expected. I would like to start learning some about Drupal, but after reading the posts here, I am not sure if I can find the time. The posts here got me wondering about drupal… Is Drupal really worth learning and putting that much time into it?

<!-- Rant Ends -->

<!-- Topic Begin -- >

Anyways, right now with my understanding of Wordpress, I feel that Wordpress does a good job as a CMS when a person needs to create a small website such as:

(1) A Small E-Commerce maybe (Have one or two products to sell)
(2) An Informational Website (Restaurants, Law firm, Dentist, Portfolio, Photo Gallery)
(3) A Small community website

So... should Wordpress be used as a CMS??? I say yes, but it all depends on what you are building.
<!-- Topic End -->

Is almost limitless customizability without delving into php code too much.

Tony

If you want a wordpress community site check out buddypress. It's new and shiny.

Drupal is different than the other kids on the block. As Anthony said, it's the ability to customize things without writing code. Someone who isn't a coder can create content types (objects) with different fields (properties) including validation on those and present them in loads of different ways without writing a line of code.

You can think of it as a next order framework. Where you can build complex things through a gui rather than code. This is why it's so popular.

Wordpress is used as a CMS. And, for some simple things it works. They've added some nice features which makes it easier to do this stuff over the years.

But, requirements are where you need to begin. First you need a functional spec. Even if it's just simple. For example, is high performance an issue. Even if it's simple it could still be high traffic. In a high traffic situation you might choose a different system because of how it handles the traffic.

So, I'm always a fan of a spec. Simple doesn't mean wordpress either.

Right now Buddypress is for Wordpress MU. In the future it will be for a regular Wordpress install and Wordpress MU install. I have been following Buddypress for a long time. We have a Buddypress now. It works great!!!!! What I am really looking forward to is when Buddypress is for a regular Wordpress install. Then I think you could build a great community around one blog.

Tim

Our church website was badly in need of a major overnhall. Was way outdated. I needed to get something up and running. I didn't know drupal, joomla, or wordpress. This site was very helpful in getting things rolling.

I got a site going with wordpress in about a week - www.lolchurch.net. Still working on it, but the basics are there. I would like to further expand it with some more community type stuff maybe using drupal. But I am going to need to do some learning there.

In the meantime the wordpress site is a does the job.

Oh my goodness, Phil, when I saw the link to lolchurch.net I thought of a site like lolcats (icanhascheezburger.com) and pictures of different church people like the stereotypical "old church lady" half asleep in the pew with captions like "I kin haz lunch now?"

That may tick off a few folks but I think the church needs to lighten up and not take itself too seriously so long as it's done tastefully. We need to be serious about Christ, but not so much ourselves.

lol - too funny. I love the intials LOL for our church - "Lord of Life." We all need a little humor in our lives! God definitely has a sense of humor.

I personally used WordPress for two or three years. But a number of months ago I shut down my WP blog and since then I have been seeking another blogging engine, because the logistics of WP maintenance simply are too burdensome for me.

WP boasts of its "five minute install", but it isn't the initial installation which matters in the long run. Of much greater import is the need to enter by hand all the customization you have made to the WP installation -- something which must be done each time a new release of WP appears.

Now that I understand the concept of a content management sytem (CMS), I see that my complaint regarding WP is due in large measure to the fact that WP is not a content management system. With a CMS, all the customization should be of the category "content", and should be able to be transferred automatically from one installation to the next, just as is the case with blog entries.

To add insult to injury, WP some time ago embarked upon a program of adding new features on a frequent basis, and that has meant that every few months a new release has been issued. My hosting service provides the WP installation (through Fantastico), and complains if I fail to migrate whenever a new release of WP is issued. But I do not have a half a day or longer every few months to mess around with the WP installation, bringing it to the state of customization it had before the update.

So I now am looking for either a mature and reliable CMS or else a stable blogging engine. The local Perl user group recommends MovableType as mature and stable engine which should meet my needs.

RLH

@beaniecopter - this is one reason why I prefer Drupal; all the upgrades (referred to as Drupal "core") are totally independent of all your customizations. When a new version of Drupal is released, you just drop the new "core" into your hosting system, and that's it. The whole process typically takes less than 30 mins.

There is also a good reason to update your CMS code reasonably often - security updates. Most of the Drupal core updates are delivered because of security issues that come to light through exposure to the field. This is a good thing - it means that there is an active community behind the system and this is great from a security standpoint.

I'm not trying to talk anyone into WP because every need has a unique set of circumstances and a different solution as dictated by those needs.

I did want to mention to anyone reading that's not familiar with WP that the upgrades are not as bad as they were when Beaniecopter did them. As of 3-4 versions ago the only thing I have to do to upgrade my WordPress to the latest version is to do a backup and then hit a button and it does an automated upgrade. The same goes for my plugins/addons... one click and they all get updated. There is occasionally a problem with a stubborn addon but it's rare.

In fact, I have never had to re-enter my main information since I started using WordPress about a year and a half ago so don't be frightened by that.

Of course, find the system that fits your needs. Small sites and blogs may be better suited for WP but a site which focuses on community may be better served as a Drupal site. And everything in between.

Peace

@pete, @jimsewell -

The customization to which I refer involves the hundred-and-one details which have to do with the appearance, the layout (header and footer), and a few features to ensure that the blog is user-friendly; things such as a calendar, the display font, a title list with links to past articles, etc. And of great importance to me is a printer-friendly CSS, which took me no little time to create.

But the last time I installed a new release of WP, the blog reverted to a rather-ugly appearance, and the release notes warned that some features previously used were incompatible with the new release. Having gone through this process twice, I am unwilling to invest more time and energy in WP.

Much like Window$, WP appears to lack a comprehensive and sound fundamental design: after the first release, new features are nothing but afterthoughts, and code revisions are little more than patches.

And I am wary of jumping into Drupal -- primarily because of its complexity, but also because of several problems which I as a user have experienced over the past two or three weeks with this G & G site/blog. I need a simple and reliable, low-maintenance blogging engine -- not another religion.

A small, independent ministry such as mine -- with no IT technician other than myself and with limited funds for IT contracting -- needs a blogging engine of the category "install it and forget it; it just keeps running". WP has not proven to be of that category.

First, the issues you've had with this site are most likely our fault and not drupals. We either installed modules that had issues, wrote code that caused issues, or something like that. It happens. Though, I'd like to know what's broken for you. I know of a few things but a short list would be helpful.

Though, for a low maintenance blogging engine I don't know that I would tell you to use drupal. You could. I don't know of anyone else that has a solid platform with a slower release cycle. Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 is looking to be 1.5 to 2 years. But, there are bug and security fixes in between. They just don't change the fundamental feature set or API.

Also, the WP upgrade path introduces at least one thing I don't like. For it to upgrade itself it needs access to overwrite itself. There are a few issues with this but, the biggest is that it stores you ftp password. I just don't like that one bit. Granted I have not tested this myself so if I'm wrong please let me know.

For blogging I wonder what the alternatives to wordpress are?

Thanks for the reply, Matt.

Aside from being unable to unsubscribe to comment notification (which may by now be fixed), the problem I've experienced is that the click-and-listen-to-the-podcast feature appears to time out after 15 to 20 minutes. This happened several times with at least a half-dozen podcasts in the archives, and with the current podcast. So I simply downloaded the mp3 files, and they played properly. I am running Linux (Debian) with the Firefox browser.

[ You guys have great audio. You need to do an update podcast to discuss the gear and settings which you currently are using, together with mp3 encoding details. ]

As alternatives to WP for blogging, the most popular likely is MovableType. But there are some interesting primitive systems, including blosxom and pyblosxom.

With the kind assistance of one of the G & G forum members, I now have my very own Drupal installation with which to play around.

RLH

You definitely should keep looking to see if anything suits your particular needs. Hearing your situation, I'd say that WP is probably not what you need. Have you checked the others like Joomla? There are dozens out there but not all are trustworthy enough to use for something serious. Don't forget other things that may work for you as well such as Wiki's. It's all up to your needs, of course.

I don't have a lot of "social" things on my webs so I've not experienced the problems you have with upgrades, but can feel what you are saying. The only one I had a problem with was a multi-language plug-in that was vital to one site which broke when I upgraded. Thank goodness the author was on the ball and got it updated quickly and we were only down a day... which is catastrophic to some but not so much to this particular fledgling site.

To others reading, in my opinion:
If your site is a revenue generator such as an e-commerce site or something of even higher importance such as a ministry site that needs to always be up then WP is possibly not for you. In any case, if you don't want to be down for hours or days then you should definitely set up a sandbox with a duplicate of your site to test upgrades on before wrecking your main site. But then again, that's true of any system isn't it? :)

MF, you are right as far as I know about WP storing passwords for the auto-update. Set up properly (yeah, let's base our server security on that!) it's probably not much of a hack-weakness but it's still bad policy. As far as I know there is no setting to "always ask me for the password" which is an oversight I hope they address soon.

@beaniecopter - You've touched on 2 issues we need to deal with.

The issues of not being able to unsubscribe is something we still have to work out. It's a problem with the contrib module we are using.

The issue with the flash player is more difficult. We serve the files off our web server and are using the 1pixelout flash player. Somewhere there is a timeout and we have to solve that without killing the server. It's server all the mp3 files and more page views a month than i ever imagined.

Thanks for the excellent discussion guys. Hopefully you can jump in and help me decide on which direction to head.

I consider myself a developer - although it's not my current profession. I've recently installed WPMU and so far it's a piece of cake although I haven't done much with it yet. I'm having a difficult time deciding which tool, Drupal, WPMU, maybe a RoR CMS (or another MVC framework) is right for the job below.

I'd like to build a high-traffic multi-site blogging platform with the following features/functionality.

* ad-network integration
* ad revenue-sharing
* pay-for premium services
* paypal integration
* social ntwrking features to enable greater user/subscriber interaction
* facebook, twitter activity feed integration
* iphone and facebook app integration

It seems like, in theory, I should be able to do all of the above w/ WPMU and tons of plugins / core modifications / etc. Is Drupal a better tool for the job? Should I use RoR CMS / MVC framework instead? What should I consider with these different options when making a decision?

Thanks in advance for the help :)

Well having looked into this myself, it really depends what you want your site to do and how scaleable it needs to be.
Do you need multiple users with different privilages? Then wordpress probably wont be up to the job.
Joomla is much more versitile and comes into its own when using customised databases.
You can of course have the best of both worlds by integrating wordpress into a Joomla site.
Have written a full article about Joomla V Wordpress here http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/joomla-...

Hi
I have had wordpress sites. Now all our sites are Joomla. I like what our sites can do, but just getting a nice looking site with function takes time. When we set up Wordpress sites in the past they were ready in around two days. It take us months to get a Joomla site working well.

Tim

I've been using it a lot as a CMS unless i run joomla for something with more options but wordpress is great. I have it on some server i put together from used computer hardware running LAMP