Is wordpress a CMS/ECM killer ?

We all have heard of WordPress as an open-source publishing and blogging application. Last month I mentioned to my colleague that my clients were complaining about arcane CMS interfaces and the perception that the feature set was not keeping up with similar open-source platforms. He mentioned that I should check his site where he used WordPress as a CMS. He continued his pitch on how he had setup form entry templates and users loved it.

It is true that Wordpress is not a CMS in the traditional sense, but I decided to research further. As soon as I reached my desk, I Googled couple of terms, ‘WordPress +CMS’ it returned 315 K documents, ‘documentum –consulting’ gave 800k docs, both TeamSite and Vignette returned 190 k documents each. Without going into the actual relevance of search results, it was clear that a majority of content publishers and developers think of WordPress as a CMS system.

All Content Management Systems support three fundamental features – content creation, content management and content delivery. Content management is a broad term that encompasses versioning, workflow, labeling and collaborative development. WordPress’s view of CMS is surprisingly different; it states “In plain English, CMS is basically a blog on steroids. It's also more formal and usually used on bigger websites…For example, in a CMS posts are not called posts but articles”. In other words, according to WordPress CMS is a just a system to create, store and publish content; while features such content versioning, workflow, locking and labeling are neither supported nor considered important.

It is obvious that WordPress is popular and continues to increase its dominance. On the WordPress forums there are very few requests for features that we normally expect from a CMS. lack of CMS features may have to do with the fact that the WordPress based sites are managed by small teams, content security or content rights are less important. However, the reasons for its popularity go beyond free licensing, easy installation, small footprint and a large and active support group. On researching further I was amazed by the level of sophistication that makes content creation and publishing intuitive. This is an area where CMS and WCM vendors are weakest, they require training to use, and in spite of customization they are not easy to use by content publishers.
WordPress plugins range from areas of SEO optimization, RSS feeds, content entry process and providing web 2.0 widgets on the web sites. Two of these plugins Zementa and Tagaroo , introduce ideas that are good candidates for study by the WCM and ECM teamsvendors. Both of these plugins build on Reuter’s Calais framework, they aim to reduce the drudgery during content entry process of putting metadata tags, hyperlinks for important terms to corresponding Wikipedia or IMDB entries, links to images from flickr, links to related articles. Each of these tasks can take hours and are prone to errors when done manually. Typically, putting hyperlinks and proper metadata-tags is an editor’s least favorite task. Unfortunately for the website administrators increasing the page ranks within search results is the main priority, correct proper metadata tags increases the page rank and can result in a page being seen or buried under thousands of search results. Clicking on web page directly contributes to the bottom line via advertising. Though there are many useful WordPress plugins, I picked on these two to show the functionality that is missing in current CMS offerings and accentuate WordPress usability and the simplicity of its content entry process.

In mid 80’s IBM misread the market and underestimated the power of PCs. I wonder if we are seeing history repeat itself with a new set of players. Today, CMS vendors continue to resist market pleas for new features and better interfaces. As of today, WordPress has more than 2500 plugins and 10 million downloads.

The issue is not that there is another cool CMS application out there, but the perception that it is a CMS. Wordpress's strong set of features and usability have increased the expectation of users; which if not resolved, represent a grave risk to ECM and WCM vendors . It is conceivable that the missing CMS features start showing up in WordPress, in near future. My hope is that CMS vendors are seeing the writing on the wall, there is enough time to bring the same feature set to their offerings.

Google Trends comparison of Wordpress/Interwoven/Vignette/Documentum:

Useful links
Wordpress - http://wordpress.org/
http://www.cmsreview.com/Features/Lists.html
Zementa - http://www.zemanta.com/
OpenCalais - http://tagaroo.opencalais.com/

Tags: cms, documentum, ecm, interwoven, opencalais, vignette, wcm, wordpress

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Comment by Bernard D. Tremblay (ben) on October 2, 2008 at 12:42am: Ning required me to log in, again, to comment. After I had logged in to reply to my messages here in IZen. After having logged into another Ning.

WP rocks.

Now, when we look under the hood we see that Matt's initial creation is painfully in evidence. "Simplest thing that works" leaves a terribly wide wake. But WP works. Anyone who's read the traffic on [wp-hackers] would understand why: knowledgable users kicking the tires then slamming the doors and punching the seat rests.

Now FWIW I think LiveJournal is the poor cousin of threaded discourse systems ... proof positive that WebX.x is not a true meritocracy ... but WP's success is purely darwinian. It works. It delivers. It isn't de facto, or at least wasn't in its early days.

As for being a CMS, hard-core WP purists would argue (from inside the WP tent) that it isn't. That WP for groups is painful. But the core churns out the goods, day after day. So I'd suggest (with some variation on post hoc ergo propter hoc) that it's "best of breed" in that it stands as benchmark of "breed". (IMNSHO Blogspot was my first platform, after having "blogged" for 4 years using hand-coded pages. It was mediocre then; it's mediocre now.)

I think part of "Information Zen" is to recognize structuration; our taxonomy is empty unless it rests on an actual ontology. WP is what it is.

Comment by Simon Smith on October 1, 2008 at 8:21am: Hi - An interesting blog and point of view however, (and some might say "well, he would say that wouldnt he") as a CMS vendor in the UK much of the functionality you cite is provided as standard as part of the particular solution I punt to the wider community. Moreover we are look to our solution to automatically "suggest" not only relevant metadata but also related content and media.
That said I do agree that CMS vendors need to up their game in terms of providing engaging capabilities and functionality to stay ahead of the curve.
So to close I would have to say that Wordpress still has a way to go before it can take on an up to date CMS

Comment by Gregory Buchenberger on September 30, 2008 at 6:23pm: Gosh Dan, you are the "IZ" king. I think you are actually incorporating a whole team of writers to comment here. How else could you keep up with all of this stuff? Kudos. And I completely agree with your comment. ECM is certainly more than just WCM. This excellent post does however point to the power of open source as an alternative to proprietary solutions. Quite simply, two heads are better than one. Or rather a thousand heads are better than twelve. By the way, check out Drupal as well.

Comment by Jed Cawthorne on September 27, 2008 at 9:25am: WordPress is a capable WCMS. You can spin thier arguements or rhetoric the other way round and say that a blog is merely a simple way of web publishing, using a 'journal style' of presentation, which is why it was easy for 'main stream' WCM's vendors to build in 'blog modules'. I have seen WordPress used in anger as a WCM for publishing a project / business unit site on a large intranet and it worked fine. However as with all software, its not a silver bullet and it must be looked at in the context of a solid requirements analysis. So, is it an ECM killer - No way. Is it a WCMS killer - erm' well no, not if it is a WCMS.......-)

Comment by Chris Ryan on September 24, 2008 at 7:21pm: Good points Krish and Dan. Being a SaaS-based ECM vendor I am not afraid, and certainly not "very afraid." Per Dan's point above, businesses that require content mangement rarely need only one technology. The secret sauce is in how to use multiple pre-integrated technologies such as capture, document management, RM, workflow and Web CMS to solve tough business challenges.

Comment by Krish Kuruppath on September 24, 2008 at 1:31pm: Great post! I agree with Dan on the point that Wordpress will take away only the WCM slice of the ECM pie. However, the whole model of opensource/plugin development and usability testing by a wide audience could be applied to some of the other components of ECM and sooner or later new ECM products/services will be offered based on a similar model. My message to CMS vendors- "Be afraid, be very afraid"

Comment by DanL on September 24, 2008 at 12:51pm: Hi I think you're onto something and agree there are many worthy new challengers and options to manage content. But the term 'ECM' includes much more than WCM and Web 2.0. It's a big tent and also covers Capture, Imaging, Transactional Content, BPM, Records Management, Document Management, DAM, Archiving etc. So I wouldn't see WordPress as a threat to kill 'ECM' - only a slice of it. Make sense?