It’s no doubt that the popularity of WordPress has soared as of late, even surpassing giants such as Joomla and Drupal in general usage. A recent article from Smashing Magazine highlights some interesting points along WordPress’s climb to greatness, with some rather spot-on speculation for how WordPress has managed to surpass its assumed competition.
Of course, there’s the obvious factor of WordPress’s ease of use and development that have propelled it forward significantly, but its focus on blogging is what has really set it apart. WordPress has certainly grown into a rather capable CMS, but it’s a blogging platform first and foremost, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single feature in WordPress that can’t be used by a general blogger. When you focus on a specific direction, you can use all of your creative talent and energy to build a solid product that does exactly what it’s supposed to do, empower a blogger to do something great, like cover some of the biggest news stories of 2011 with more details and more facts than most major news companies.
Without a doubt, every platform has its purpose and there are certainly folks out there who will find one platform to be of more use to them than the other (as the founders of Drupal and WordPress have already discussed), but it’s WordPress’s focus on blogging and slow growth into the CMS-sphere that is really propelling it as the platform of choice.
>>it’s WordPress’s focus on blogging and slow growth into the CMS-sphere that is really propelling it as the platform of choice.
Umm … sort of
What makes WordPress THE Place to be for most adoptees is that it’s incredibly easy to get started with (obviously .COM easier than self-install, but that “famous five-minute install” isn’t so far off).
And while there are often some minor glitches, the ease with which you can change your theme when you’re in that mode is incredible.
THAT’S what makes WordPress WordPress.
WordPress is absolutely amazing at Blogging. It’s a true blogging platform that nearly anyone can go from scratch to full-featured blog in a few steps and a little over 5 minutes, and it’s because people start blogging before they think of creating CMS’s that wordpress dominated. Which better, for me to learn Drupal/Joomla, or take my wordpress knowledge and transfer that to a CMS via a good theme/plugin.
WordPress is simple even to the most newbie beginner. I have tried to help people who were previously terrified to get into web design, but found wordpress so easy to use.
I don’t know where I would be without WordPress! I remember when I first started using it… It seemed almost impossible to understand! Then, after playing around with it for a little bit without getting discouraged and quitting, I quickly became comfortable with WordPress.
Since then, playing around with WordPress has given me the ability to learn a little bit of PHP and master CSS. Without WordPress, I highly doubt I would’ve ever put in the effort to learn PHP or CSS.
I use it for all of my websites. I use it for all of my client’s websites. When it comes to a CMS, I don’t think we will find one that matches the ease of use of WordPress!
It’s interesting that WordPress didn’t really start to separate itself from Joomla until 2009-2010 . I tried Joomla long before 2009, and was quick to back to WordPress after I saw how complicated it was compared to WP!
Same here, I learn html, CSS and some PHP because of WP
WordPress is what I use for all of my sites now, not just blogs. I’ve found it to be very versatile, has a great community and has pretty much a plugin for every feature I need to have on a website. And think that’s why it’s becoming so popular.
I don’t like to say it but, I worked with joomla for 2 years (it was hard customizing all these templates). Then I had a client that requested a WP based site, mainly because of the blog support.
Since then I haven’t touched any other CMS that WP.
Regards
Robin
WordPress is definitely my first choice for doing any kinds of website for my clients. Most of the things can be done in WP so no need to look at another CMS. 🙂
WP is just more cooler and awesome :-). But really it helps to have an easy to use platform and many faithful and talented contributors who not only love the product but believe in it and the community surrounding it.