Why use a CMS like WordPress?

I had a discussion at work the other day after some WordPress plugin vulnerabilities came up. “Why not use Dreamweaver?” my coworker asked.

For a site that changes a lot like a blog, you need a content management system with a database backend. Otherwise the site gets unmanageable in a matter of months, if you’re updating it with any regularity.

I know. I’m an old-line blogger. There are people who got started before I did. I could have started as early as 1997 but I didn’t; I blame burnout. In 1998 and 1999, I was distracted with writing a book, but in October 1999 I was free and I started experimenting with blogging. That earliest content is gone now and it’s probably better that way; I was experimenting.

But those early efforts used a product called Netobjects Fusion; a Dreamweaver-like product that tried to help make site management easier. It worked for a while, but I wanted search capability, and I wanted to be able to relate new content to old content, and automated commenting, and lots of other things that just can’t happen easily with a static site.

So here I am, with about 3,200 posts in a WordPress site (another 300 or so are gone forever). I learned quickly that I could draft content and let it sit and come back to it. Sometimes it takes months or even years for me to come back to something and finish it, but WordPress facilitates that easily. I can schedule content to come up, which makes administration easier. If I only have five minutes one day, I can probably still post something. Without WordPress, blogging consumed an hour of my day, every day, whether I posted something new or not.

So, while it’s imperfect, I wouldn’t be without WordPress. At this point I’ve written more posts with it than without it, and I have no desire to go back to any other way.