Hmm. Boy... I dunno. Calling WordPress -- even in its new incarnation -- a true "content management system" (CMS) of the type that is Drupal... hmmm... boy... I dunno.
Don't get me wrong, I like WordPress... and, truth be told, I actually don't much like Drupal, except that I recognize its sheer, unmitigated power and potential in the hands of a gifted coder. It's hard to beat that, even with Plone 4... the love for which by Dietrich T. Schmitz, here, I can certainly appreciate. Plone 4 is, indeed, something.
And admiring the power of Drupal brings me to my next "I dunno," and that's Dana's take on the whole Dean campaign and both Drupal's role, and WordPress's lack thereof, in it. It's easy to look back, six years later, with 20/20 hindsight and an obviously poor memory of what was both going on then, and then available, and take pot shots. The technology moves so fast, I guess, and we've all so learned to adjust accordingly, that I sometimes fear that we look back on the past and its technologies and collective wisdom from the perspective of our knowledge of (and concomitant wisdom about) current technology, and we inadvertently revise history.
What the Dean web team did with Drupal, and from it what would subsequently become CivicSpace, changed the very landscape of American presidential (and congressional, and even local) politics; and paved the way for the Obama campaign's even MORE successful and effective Internet presence which edures and expands to ever more involved usefulness and effectiveness even to the moment.
Notably, WordPress wasn't anywhere NEAR either web site, and for good reason: It's not a true CMS, no matter WHAT Dana, et al, might think or say; and I'm surprised -- and even a little irritated, to be candid -- that this point even has to be made...
...again.
Granted, WordPress (WP) comes closer to being a true CMS than almost any other blogging engine... but that's pretty much really only because its users have, for a little while, now, been able to create their own fields in the WP backend... and that one thing, alone, is what contributes most singularly to the blurring of the line.
But it has taken WP until this new Thelonius release to finally get its menuing, taxonomies capabilities, and an embarrassing long list of other features even CLOSE to being on par with real CMS systems, most of which only, oh-by-the-way, are capable of blogging, too. WP, no matter WHAT its blindly loyal supporters claim, is still a blogging engine which, oh-by-the-way, is capable of pseudo-replicating a true CMS if one will simply take the time to do it.
Dana's thinking (and Jerome Armstrong's, and Markos Moulitsas's, too) -- in fact, their very paradigm -- is part of what's WRONG with today's worldwide web. Yes, the Web 2 look and feel when something less trendy just for trend's sake will do, and web sites which require registration just to post a comment, and the whole way that social networking works, pluse web site owners running roughshod over everyone's privacy rights...
...all of those things, among others, are certainly also what's wrong with today's worldwide web. But high on my list of things which drive me to distraction on today's Internet is the ease with which those of Dana's, Jerome's and Markos's ilk embrace the blogging format as the normative method of mounting a web site...
...which, as long as the site's primary (strike that, and make it "sole") purpose is being a blog, that's I suppose that's perfectly fine. But I have had it up to here with web site owners who think that a blogging engine is good enough to be the entire CMS for a more traditional web site, of which blogging should, by rights, be only a part. The opening page of such sites is a list of postings when it should be a "here's what we are, who we are, and what we do" page. It, and the product and/or services pages, and the "About Us" or the "Contact Us" pages (just to name a few) of such sites should not be mere blog postings, as tends to be the case with web sites whose owners mistakenly think that WP is (or that Joomla, or any number of other BLOGGING engines are) actually CMSs.
They're not, and the incessant driving of that square blogging engine peg into the round hole of what SHOULD be a true CMS is maddening! It's ruining the Internet and one's ability to quickly, intuitively and SUCCESSFULLY (at least within a reasonable period of time) navigate the darned thing! To them I say: Read a usability study, for godsake!
Yes, it's true that WP can be made to look and feel like a more traditional web site which does not necessarily have blogging as its primary purpose; but the blindly-WP-loyal Danas, Jeromes and Markoses of the world won't bother actually DOING it. They think that it all can just be a blog, and that's good enough...
...and they're wrong! They don't get it. And they're screwing up everything.
So why does it surprise us, then, that they keep calling WP a true CMS (question mark intentionally not used). After all, just look at their wacky collective perspective!
Blogging is just one (of MANY) things which people do on the Internet; and few, indeed, are the web sites which can be laid out, throughout, as a blog. If one wants to create a web site which has the look, feel, aesthetics and behavior that a fully-featured, properly-functioning modern site is really and truly supposed to have, then blogging (unless the sites sole purpose is that) should be but one function on the horizontal menu or tabs across the top of the page. All else should be more traditional, familiar and easily navigable.
Only a true CMS can provide that capability with aplomb. No blogging engine which, because of a few features which can be counted on one hand with fingers left over, and that happen to be capable of blurring the line a little between the blogging engine's core purpose and that of a true CMS, is up to the task.
As for the sentences "logging is well-understood by publishers and design houses" and "CMSs are the property of enterprises and communities," my response is: Only if the IT director at the publishing house either doesn't know what s/he's doing, or thinks like Dana, Jerome and Markos...
...er... oh... wait... I'm sorry...
...that was redundant.
_____________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Dana Blankenhorn has been a journalist, writer and part-time futurist for over 30 years.
