Should WordPress Be Your Next CMS?

CMSs generally make it easier to make updates, add pages, and simply maintain the content on a site. Lately, there has been a lot of buzz about using WordPress, traditionally a blogging tool for sites, as a CMS. The question is this: is it right for your site?A Step in the Right DirectionWordPress, especially version 2.7 released late in 2008, can do a lot for small sites and blogs once you've got the basic installation up and running. And let's face it, with so many hosts providing one-click installs of WordPress and a multitude of plugins available via direct download, administration is much easier.Further, the revamped user interface is a huge boon to finding what an author needs quickly. On the design side, being able to easily select custom templates to apply to a page is a wonderful improvement and helps separate the setup and design part of the site from authors' needs.Challenges with WordPress as a CMSWordPress though is not a quick solution for any content management system problem. There are many sites which just won't work on WordPress. For example, recently a company was discussing whether WordPress could handle their many thousands of pages as they migrated from static hand-linked HTML. (Thankfully, they wanted to move to some modern CMS.) However, their site wasn't really designed to center around blog entries, and their static page count is huge. Both of these factors work against WordPress, despite its recent advances.All we had to show them was how long the single page selection menu would be presented in the administration panel to give a good example of some of the shortcomings still inherent in WordPress as a full-fledged CMS. Even with plugins such as pageMash, there's only so much effort that's been put into general site control that one would expect in a modern CMS.A Question of ScopeThe changes that have come out in WordPress recently render it a valuable tool for CMS in some cases, but it's still not (nor ever will be) everything for everyone. The key is to look at the type of site you want to manage. If you manage a large site with dozens or even hundreds of pages, WordPress is probably not right for you. Its ability to manage large volumes of content leaves much to be desired. However, if you have a small site with a simple and more blog focused architecture, it might be just the tool you need. As a site grows in number of pages or complexity, there's a point at which WordPress goes from being a help to being a hindrance.