A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress

These days there's a "+ New" button at the top of every single page of a Wordpress site - both the admin section, and the public section if you're logged in - that lets you add a new post, piece of media, page, or user. Or more; I use the Comic Easel plugin to manage my webcomic, and it lets me add a new page that way.

That said if you want a CMS that only does the five things you need, you don't want WP.

I'm so weary of people pitching the solution to WordPress and then tossing a proprietary cloud hosted thing at me. That's a complete non-starter.

All the time I hear from fellow devs "oh don't advertise you use WordPress, it's irrelevant to clients." Tell that to my bank account and all the jobs I've stolen from agencies who wanted to use their BS proprietary CMS.

I sell WordPress like this: when you want a rebuild in 10 years and I'm in Thailand smoking drugs with your money pile you just gave me, you'll be able to find someone to work on it no problem.

There's plenty to dislike about the WP codebase, but we all have to remember that WP was made in an era when coding reasonable software in PHP was nearly impossible. Nothing backwards-compatible can happen there that isn't going to destroy all the millions of existing sites. It's still pretty freaking easy to build a site with, especially when you compare it to other CMSes of that era.

Moreover, their development roadmap is actually really solid. I like where WP is going. I unfortunately would no longer recommend it for basic blogging due to its complexity but as a CMS, there's really not a lot of free software options that can function on that level without extensive database programming and security knowledge.

this should be released by the 15th of oct

So the advantage of Wordpress isn't anything you could find by looking at Wordpress itself... it's the popularity and huge amount of support that brings? Makes sense.

So the "next Wordpress" won't be able to be the next Wordpress until it's popular. It'll have to be good for other reasons until then.

Here's a crazy idea: You're a developer. If it's too complex for your customer, then simplify it. Fight the urge to build something new just because you can. You're really the only person that cares that you built it, everyone else just wants something that works.

I understand why you're following 37signals' simplicity model, but those markets didn't have flexible CMS' to start with like we do. The beauty of WordPress is that it's easy to hide and remove extraneous features. It has everything you need and you can just remove the stuff you don't, just like the way a sculptor chisels away the unneeded parts. It's building from a different direction.

WordPress is a tool, not an end product, and it's been around for over 10 years.

Face it, websites are a commodity these days. What new features, processes, or anything else exist that WordPress can't do with a few tweaks? Front-end editing, one-click setup, drag and drop, it's all easier to add than building from scratch.

If your goal is to create value, then think hard about what problem your customer is trying to solve. If it requires something new, then by all means build it! But I don't see this as one of those cases.