FatherStorm.com

I’ve been writing web pages since the very beginning, starting in the form of Hypercards. In that time I have written numerous CMS’s of my own, from simple flat-file based, to DB driven, back to file-based, but with the addition of full AJAX integration, as well as PHP-driven image creation and even skinning based on swatch files to supplement CSS. I’ve tried the various different commonly available CMS packages form PHP-Nuke, Post-Nuke, Mambo, Joomla, Blog:CMS, Drupal, Xaraya, WordPress and probably more that weren’t significant enough to remember. All that is just to give you an idea that I might possibly actually have some insight as to why I have switched virtually all of my own domains, and most of my client’s domains to Wordpress.

To start with, the package that I preferred early on, PHP-Nuke is a reasonably decent package, were it not for that fact that you have to be a paying registered member to get the latest updates and patches. An update or a patch is a means of fixing something in the codebase that is either broken or not as functional as it could/should be. Charging for that, means creating a class of users who, if the don’t pay up, are left out in the open, naked to whatever the latest exploit is for that system. That’s a Business Model, and not in the spirit of the GNU GPL
Additionally, the vast majority of available themes for PHP-Nuke aren’t what you would consider Business-friendly. Unless, of course you’re willing to buy one.

I later moved to Mambo, and thought that it held some amazing potential, with my by-far favorite feature being component/module/mambot direct uploading and installing from zip files. I like a CMS that manages it’s own files. Of course then there was the schismatic split, and while Mambo (the company) went one way, Joomla (the developers) went another way. While I don’t want to step into the quagmire of the entire discussion, each side had some valid points, and each side was wrong for the eventual outcome as it was the end-users who lost out.

That brought about my shift to Wordpress, which I had previously seen as simply a good Blogging tool, and that is still where it hold the greatest strength. But with a touch of modification, it’s easy to use wordpress as a VERY functional, fast, reliable and extensible CMS, blogging roots aside. It has some pretty widespread support, and plugins, along with their integration into the WordPress administration structure are easy to write.

I have even been successful in writing a Mambo/Joomla importer so was able to convert numerous sites without the usually inevitable data-loss. The only problem with the package as it stands right now, is MUCH better support for embedding media/javascript in posts/pages is needed. Once that problem is resolved, Wordpress will likely be within reach of being te de-facto leader of the PHP-based CMS’s

This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.