
Ask HN: Why does WordPress dominate the market? - michi
WordPress dominates the CMS market with overwhelming numbers (61%: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensourcecms.com&#x2F;general&#x2F;cms-marketshare.php).  I know very well the strengths and weaknesses of WP - I worked on a single WP site for 2 years, pushing its limits every day.<p>My general understanding is that PHP is being surpassed by Node and Rails.  I&#x27;m jumping on the Node bandwagon:  the synergy between JavaScript on the front and back end seems like a game-changer.  Add web sockets and its unbeatable.<p>So maybe a better question is, why aren&#x27;t there any contenders?  Clearly WordPress thrives on its massive community, and maybe its just a matter of time until a worthy opponent emerges to gain the necessary momentum.  I&#x27;d like to help make this happen, and I have a lot of great ideas to do so.<p>Why doesn&#x27;t Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, etc. etc. make their own Open Source CMS &#x2F; web platform that competes with WordPress?  You might say they <i>have</i>, and I&#x27;d be interested in looking into these alternatives, yet WordPress + Joomla + Drupal have 86% market share, which is ridiculous.<p>Sidebar: This is my first HN post.  Comparing to the heavily-moderated Stack Overflow, I&#x27;m wondering what kind of posts are NOT okay here.  Let&#x27;s say I have big plans to create the next Google-scale company, and need help to get started.  I need to find people who can help me discuss, collaborate, design, and develop.  Is HN an appropriate place to do this?  If not, is there a better place? Another forum? An IRC channel?
======
krapp
Wordpress dominates, I think, for a number of reasons. Primarily, low
technical debt for users - it's as close to a plug and play application as
i've seen, and nowhere are you expected to understand 'arcane' concepts like
version control or the terminal. Want a plugin? Done entirely through the web
GUI. Want to upgrade? Same thing. New theme? Same thing. The vast community
also helps, obviously, but that community is only as big as it is because the
barrier for entry to setting up and modifying a Wordpress install (assuming
all you want is to use existing plugins and themes of course) is so low.

Also, many existing webhosting accounts come with an option to install
Wordpress on the account. Wordpress even has its own self-hosted service. Many
of the alternatives i've seen, in terms of frameworks and CMS software,
haven't been able to replicate the relative painlessness of Wordpress' model.

A contender would, first, have to deal with the network effect of Wordpress
which is considerable, but also (if it's written in a language other than PHP)
the network effect of PHP. Since the UX in Wordpress generally works pretty
well, switching to another CMS would be a difficult sell to the general user
(why switch from something that's easy and works and you can hit a developer
for by throwing a rock out of the window?) meanwhile most of what is terrible
about Wordpress is only apparent to coders, who frankly don't really matter in
this dicussion, since they're probably using Octopress or something anyway.

~~~
chc
I think this is the crux of it. All the objections to WordPress are from a
developer's point of view. But when you scoot around to the user's side of the
table, all of those issues are invisible. WordPress dominates because
WordPress addresses its users' needs well enough that it's _really, really
hard_ to be so much better that you can overcome the network effect. In order
to beat WordPress, you need not just a better technical foundation or some
whizbang design — you need something that makes it so much more attractive
that people who aren't developing for the platform say, "You know, this is
worth the extra effort compared to WordPress."

------
acesubido
Disclaimer: Not a Wordpress expert. I don't know much about Drupal or Joomla.
But what I noticed was back in the early 2000's PHP was the craze; a simple
language for the web, it was those one-click LAMP/XAMP installers. All in all
it was just a bunch of small circumstances drawn together that snowballed into
enough momentum for the mainstream spotlight.

A ton of budding 'techpreneurs' whose $family_relative_or_friend 'knows PHP,
therefore can wrangle Wordpress' could get them a site up and running when
they 'come over to their house for some snacks and chips over a weekend'

"Why aren't there any contenders?" Those entrepreneurs are now successful
businessmen who have enough budget to keep being on Wordpress, because 'it
just worked'. That battlecry spreads like wildfire for a large amount of time,
hence "production-ready/polished" comes into mind.

Moreover, depending on the businessman, it's not much about 'the synergy
between JavaScript on the front and back end' or other technical detaiils.
It's more of the can I get my $son to do that for me on a saturday afternoon
given the following X things I need.

"Clearly WordPress thrives on its massive community, and maybe its just a
matter of time until a worthy opponent emerges to gain the necessary
momentum." Yes, empires rise and fall. It won't be sudden, like any piece of
software, Wordpress will also slowly lose relevance in the course of time
depending on the amount of people working on it.

------
rachelandrew
PHP is a big reason for WordPress doing so well, because it's everywhere, it
is cheap to host (as in you can stick a whole heap of PHP sites on one box and
it will generally be fine) so it's cheap to get hosting.

My product ([http://grabaperch.com](http://grabaperch.com)) is a CMS - I guess
a competitor to WordPress, although we're certainly not trying to be
WordPress. We're PHP and MySQL because that's what our target audience has
available. We would not have been as successful as we have been had we written
it in Python, Node, or Ruby or anything else.

The content editors using the CMS, and the website users do not care what the
software is written in. Most of our actual customers (web designers and front-
end developers building client sites) do not care what the software is written
in as long as we make it easy for them to get it installed.

Successful with a CMS product doesn't have to mean that you kill off the
competition. There is plenty of space out there for products targeting a bit
of a niche, or just those who want an alternative for whatever reason. If you
can figure out what that reason is, what problem isn't being solved by the
main players, it's possible to build a product that serves it.

------
gesman
Users and businesses doesn't care if it's PHP or Node or Rails or whatnot.
They want something that allows them to achieve what they want, no matter how
custom or complex the thing they need.

Wordpress allows to build very customized web portals at close to zero cost.
Zillions of free and pre-existing plugins helps.

If something really custom needs to be created - there are plethora of el-
cheapo programmers bidding to do Wordpress stuff for you.

------
csixty4
WordPress is where it is because the core team puts users first. They've taken
on tons of technical debt in order to maintain backwards compatibility with
themes & plugins. PHP 5.3 reached end-of-life a year ago, but WordPress
continues to support _5.2_ because so many shared hosting and un-maintained
VPS servers use it. Even cleaning up some of the PHP3-style code in wp-admin
needs to be weighed against the risk of breaking some five year old plugin.

From a UX standpoint, it's easy to use, install plugins, find themes, and get
help. If you spend money on a commercial theme, you can be assured the
platform is going to support it for years even if you don't have all the cool
new features. It runs on PHP, from a $2/mo shared hosting account to WordPress
VIP.

The community is great. WordCamps cover a variety of technical and non-
technical topics. Most people are welcoming. It's just a great bunch.

Could you create a CMS with a cleaner codebase? Easily. And the people who
make WordPress want to, too.

~~~
csixty4
Ok. That was my WordPress cheerleader post. Now, here's the snark I edited out
of that because it didn't fit the flow.

If you want people to adopt a different CMS, here are pain points I've heard
repeatedly from users. Address all of these and you're golden:

* It should have perfect security. Vulnerabilities should be patched immediately, not the next day.

* There should constantly be new features to enhance my site.

* It should never need upgrades.

* It should do everything out of the box instead of needing plugins.

* It shouldn't be bloated. Keep the core code base small.

* It should be easy for me to do anything and everything from the admin interface.

* There shouldn't be a lot of options because it's overwhelming.

* 24/7 phone support should be included. Or, if I have to use a support forum, I should get an answer in 5 minutes.

* Everything should be free.

------
lifeisstillgood
Re: the "what is appropriate on HN" see
[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

The basic idea is to share things that satisfy one's intellectual curiosity.
If you share links like that, or contribute comments that help others
intellectual curiosity you will find lots of fellow souls.

And that is I guess the answer to your second part - if you want to build the
next Google you need fellow souls - talented people who also fit in with your
brain. You can find them here, and even discuss the finer points of arranging
servers or compensation

What I would avoid doing is shouting "who wants to join my startup?"

Got an idea? Great - make a prototype and a bazillion of us will tear it down
for free to help make it better. One or two might jump on board. apart from
that you will just make a few friends, gain some respect and have us cheering
you on from the sidelines.

Good luck.

------
dennybritz
Even if PHP is being surpassed by Node and Rails, the typical users of the CMS
don't care. Wordpress does what it is supposed to do very well, and the
typical (non-technical) end-user just doesn't care (or understand) what
technology it is based on.

Now, if you design a "better" (I'm not sure what that means, but you seem to
know) CMS, would you be able to take away WP's market share? Probably yes.
Does it matter what language the product is written in? Not directly. It only
helps you indirectly in that the technology may be able to help you build a
better product faster, or allow for new features that aren't easily
implemented with PHP.

Why hasn't somebody done this? My personal guess is because it would take a
lot of time (=money). Wordpress has gazillions of features and is very
polished.

------
photomatt
Thanks for the kind comments on WP, folks who made them.

In terms of Node, at Automattic we also think it's the bee's knees and have a
number of projects that are built in it. But it's pretty weak for
distribution, PHP/MySQL is still tops.

I think to the extent WP has been successful over the past 11 years it's
because we've always been gradually rewriting and refactoring things, and have
listened to our users and been driven by a community rather than just a
company. We have a vision (democratize publishing) for more than just money,
and it drives efforts from education to localization.

------
lauradhamilton
Wordpress has a huge ecosystem of plugins, including a wide variety of
powerful and innovative anti-spam plugins. I chose wordpress (twice), in large
part because I am confident that the anti-spam offerings will continue to
evolve at a rapid pace alongside the webspammers.

Yes, PHP sucks, but an easy-to-use, well-tested, flexible platform > a brand
new ruby on rails framework.

~~~
stevekemp
Which of the available antispam plugins are you using, or would you recommend?

I wrote [http://blogspam.net/](http://blogspam.net/), and a matching plugin
for Wordpress but it's been a few years since I seriously investigated the
alternatives..

------
ninthfrank07
Check out [http://www.webhook.com](http://www.webhook.com). It's not launched
yet, but I've been playing with it as an alpha tester for a few months. It's
pretty cool.

------
gregcohn
Regarding your sidebar, a good filter would be whether the topic and ensuing
discussion are likely to be of general interest to the community here (vs.
specific to helping you).

------
seren
Have you checked ghost.io? I don't know what is their business model, but it
looks really close to a new Wordpress, based on Node.js

~~~
krrishd
I'd say the primary differentiator of Ghost is that it's meant for blogs, and
nothing more. Wordpress has evolved to the point where blogs are just one of
the many uses.

