Is WordPress a CMS?

Tony Byrne has a short post on the CMS Watch Blog today about a Twitter debate over whether WordPress is a "true" CMS or not. Byrne says since companies are using it as such, that makes it a CMS.

As a WordPress user, I have to agree. It may not be a sophisticated web content management system, but it does everything you need a CMS to do. It provides a structure for entering and managing your content and administering the back end of your website. You can add analytics tools to monitor your website traffic and you can design and build in search engine optimization. You can customize it to create a design that reflects your organization's look, feel and brand.

What's more you can manage your media and even do some light editing. It's not exactly digital asset management at its most advanced, but it does the job. If you are using it as a blog, you can control the comments stream and WordPress has an excellent comment spam filter. 

So it might not be the most innovative CMS around, but CMSs as whole sit along a spectrum of functionality. If it offers what you need, it's good enough. If it doesn't, you need to look at something that meets your needs. For a small business or an individual, a tool like WordPress is highly valuable. Just because it isn't necessarily suited to the needs of a larger organization is no reason to write it off.

For more information:
- see Tony Byrne's blog post [1]

Related Articles:
WordPress 2.9 loaded with enhancements [2]
WordPress worm dangerous, but easily fixed [3]
Top three Web CMS for small publishers [4]
Five open source content management systems you should know about [5]