WordPress Blog vs. WordPress CMS

  • I’ve been playing with WordPress for a little over a month now. I’ve learned a lot and I owe most of that to this forum as well as the intuitive design of WordPress.
    That said, I think I’m going to be moving on to Mambo (or another heavier-duty CMS). Why? Because I was never going to use WordPress as a blog. I use Livejournal for my blog needs (have been since 2000) and was looking to use WordPress as a CMS for a graphic-intensive video download site.
    I found myself, more and more, disabling built-in WordPress features (RSS feeds, calender, comments) and spending a lot of time looking for hacks and plugins to do all of the things I wanted. My index.php is barely recognizable.
    Looking down the road, I believe it would be less than efficient to build everything in WordPress. Nobody wants me in these forums begging for a shopping-cart plugin! Yes the line between Blog and CMS is blurry, but there ARE some differences. I guess, in the end, I look at it like this: if your site looks more like a portal than a diary, than using blog software is probably not in your best interest.
    I’ve seen portal sites built with WordPress, but they still lack so much of the functionality I will want to have. I plan on trolling the WordPress forums still, and if I ever decide port my livejournal to an independent blog, I know exactly what I’ll be using.
    Thanks!

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 25 total)

  • Well an egg laying wooly milk pig would be kinda useful ??

    Well, the egg-laying would interfere with the milk production and vice versa, and both with the quality of the wool. And you’d never know when to slaughter it.
    IOW, it would be as if everyone had just one piece of software installed that does everything (even what you don’t need), and nothing really well. Oh, mind you, this isn’t an utopia, but exactly what a hugely “successful” software giant that shall remain unnamed tries to convince the entire world of.

    Hmm…
    Serendipity, does that make me an eierlegende Wollmilchelch by any chance? ??
    *hugs*

    I prefer you as Atomelch. You’re good at that. How good are you at laying eggs?

    I’ve used WP as a CMS-oriented site for a while now. No complaints. Much more flexible than something like Mambo. Plugins are coming bit by bit, based on need…
    -d

    just a question… if i dont use WP as a blog, am i morally misusing WP? :O)

    I’m using WP as a limited CMS on my site, and I agree to some extent with paticoflange. My index.php and CSS has been completely rewritten, and I’ve got almost a dozen plugins and hacks, some of which have been taken from other people, and some of which I’ve hacked myself.
    I looked at a few CMS systems, but none of them seemed to give me exactly what I wanted, and the big advantage of WP is that it’s reasonably simple to learn to hack.
    The reason for all the hacks and plugins is that I want to allow users who are not at all computer-savvy to post articles. I don’t want them to have to learn about the intricacies of (X)HTML, CSS, RSS, Pingbacks, Trackbacks, and the like, otherwise no-one will make any posts.
    WP is working well for me, but I dread the day that WP1.3 is released – upgrading is going to be a nightmare!

    Could anyone explain to me how much knowledge of xhtml, CSS, pingbacks trackbacks and the like are needed to post an article ?

    heh… life is a mess mate… people lose common sense in the maze of technology.

    @paticoflange:
    interesting point. I was just going to post a question about how WP could meet my CMS needs, maybe I should think again. But as you said, the line between Blog and CMS is blurry and thin, and for now I’ll stay on this side of the chalk.

    Sushubh wrote:

    just a question… if i dont use WP as a blog, am i morally misusing WP? :O)

    Only if you are touching it in places where you shouldn’t and in ways that make WP feel uncomfortable. ;P
    I disagree about the blurring of CMS and Blogs. They server two distinctly different needs. I have another site all about development (warning shamelss plug at DeveloperKB.com and I would NEVER for a moment consider something like WP to run. A CMS has to be much more powerful than this. There’s more to it than “posting articles” there’s user management, communications, and things like that. Now, WP is easy to manipulate, and easy to learn, so I see the apeal in using for something like a CMS, but one thing I’ve learned over the past years, is that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.
    TG

    For me, CMS meaning “Content Management System”, anything web-based that can manage content is a CMS. WP being able to post things, modify things, upload files, edit files, WP *is* a CMS.
    What WP isn’t good at (because not designed for it) is managing a community site : there you need multi user support, forum, and all sort of community stuff that are not that easy to integrate into WP.

    A ‘CMS’ “has to be” whatever the user needs it to be. ??
    Certainly, there are enough pieces of the puzzle available to technical WP folks to use it as a ‘full blown’ CMS. For the average user, it’s a ‘CMS-lite’ solution.
    Content Management is overused… Any system that manages simple input and display of content is a kind of CMS. I’ve heard of corporations using blogs for internal CMS systems, just because they are easier/simpler. Again, depends wholly upon the needs of the user.
    -d

    Root –
    Absolutely zero. If you don’t want to know, you certainly don’t have to.
    Having some concept of what each term means (glossary), and how they fit the overall scheme of building a web page and interacting with users and sites on the net… well, that’s useful the more you want to know, and want to do.. ??
    -d

    I think this is the part that Root was questioning:

    The reason for all the hacks and plugins is that I want to allow users who are not at all computer-savvy to post articles. I don’t want them to have to learn about the intricacies of (X)HTML, CSS, RSS, Pingbacks, Trackbacks, and the like, otherwise no-one will make any posts.

    David – I see your point about CMS’s being what ever the user needs them to be, and in that definition WP is a CMS…. but then so is Word, and Visiual Studio for that matter then.
    TG

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 25 total)
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