During the discovery phase of almost any website project these days, Monsoon is asked to recommend a Web CMS (Content Management System).  This post is an attempt to explain why, for the past year or so, we almost always recommend Wordpress.

Core Functionality

At their core, all strong web content management systems accomplish the following:

· Template: provide a collection of easily-edited design themes that determine the style for a website.

· Edit: simplify with a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) system that allows non-programmers to create and edit html

· Function: perform with core functionality and plug-ins that allow dozens of website features to be implemented easily (e.g. ecommerce, mailing lists, analytics, discussion, etc.)

· Process: organize permissions and processes based on business rules for publishing content within the organization.

· Document: store, organize, and retrieve text files, images, and video

· Syndicate: export website data in a standard format (such as RSS)

Dynamic vs. Static Publishing

For the vast majority of CMS projects at Monsoon, we consider three industry-leading Web CMS products that accomplish the above extremely well: Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress. These three systems use a dynamic publishing model.

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