New to WordPress - How viable is it as a CMS for a small business website?

Question

I know the huge community of people behind WordPress has pushed it towards full-blown CMS territory over the past couple years, but I'm still unclear as to what extent. Would it be a good option to handle something like a small biz website with simple shopping cart for example?

Answer 1

Yes, you can use a spanner to bang in screws if you need to, but you might be better reconsidering.

WordPress may well be capable of running a small website with a shopping cart, and that's probably useful for people who have grown a blog up and are branching out into sales.

But why would you choose a blogging platform for your CMS when there are perfectly good CMS systems that target that role?

Answer 2

Something to consider—something I've come to notice, at least—is the savvy-ness or level of familiarity the client may have with WordPress. Directly related to it's growth is it's saturation. It's likely that whomever is in charge of managing the sites content has spent some time with WordPress and would be more effective continuing with it.

That said, from what little I've read about WordPress 3, one of the biggest hurdles to clear, custom post/content-types, is present in the core. To what extent, I'm not sure. Probably better to leave that in the hands of a diehard WordPress dev.

It's certainly true that there are dedicated CMS that pack more of this, or more of that, but don't discount the value of experience. The right tool for the job needs to be the right tool for the job.

Answer 3

That depends on how small the site is and your intentions; Wordpress is perfectly fine as a cms. If you want a fairly simple site or need to have it moderated by non-techies, its perfect. Wordpress has amassed a huge amount of plugins, taking it from a blog engine to an entire platform. Here's a very rough power vs simplicity scale:

easiest to use

ascii art
microsoft paint
wordpress
joomla
drupal
self written cms
Tapping out your own html in binary on a telegraph key for each HTTP request

most powerful

Its advisable to use the simplest one that will fit your needs for a long time.