You are absolutely right. I’m referring here to people who just want to use a fairly straight forward CMS. They typically don’t want to pay someone to update HTML every time they update their site.

I’ve seen too many companies with a simple CMS driven website, that has a custom solution written by the MD’s cousin, and now they’re stuck with a proprietary piece of software where an open source CMS would have done just great.

Of course if you want to innovate, you will have to write your own software. But most people just want a website, or a shopping cart. For that, there’s great ready-made software available.

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If everyone just started using WordPress - which is a nearly infinitely extensible and flexible CMS, won’t argue that - what happens to the new ideas? The new ways of doing things?

Pick a programming/scripting language. There are a limited numbers of functions and tags. What allows for the unlimited variations we see today, are the unlimited variations of perspective with which that language is approached. If everyone just stopped creating their own software, and used established brands like Open Office, WordPress, Windows, etc - how would we ever progress beyond those as a global community?

And when you start relying on a small group of programmers to produce, upgrade and maintain your software for you, it’ll end up in a situation where, in order to meet majority demand, they have to take their CMS project in a new direction. One that may not be suitable for your site. Now, you’re stuck without security updates AND a programmer that knows the code inside and out. Wat nou?

But we’re talking business here. What makes good business sense - above and beyond choosing the right CMS - is making the right choice as to who to hire. A PHP programmer that is likely to leave in two weeks really isn’t a sharp choice by any means.

Plus, there are really only two kinds of businesses in the online world. Those that trade offline, and those that trade online. For the former, a self-hosted, self-run WordPress 5-minute install-with-prebuilt-themes-and-plugins is more than enough. If you’re hoping to compete in the latter, I’m confident that whatever webfront you produce, it’ll be way beyond any freely-available CMS on the market today. And you’ll need more than one full-time programmer.

And really. A week to find a bug, and fix it? I’m no guru, but even I can repair broken code in less than 2 hours. The better languages and interpreters are very adept at spewing comprehensive error reports - even though you’ll only really need the line numbers.

~ Wogan

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