The second definition, which a lot of recent wordcamps have gotten at, is operational. WordPress as a CMS is being taken to mean a larger installation that is not centered around a reverse-chronological blog. This usually involves a greater variety of moving parts: a larger entity or organization than one blogger, more types of pages along a continuum from fixed to dynamic, a theme friendly to menus and maybe more plugins/widgets, and more end users than the web designer. There are already many solutions to changing the admin interfaces for various user roles so that some of them don’t necessarily have to see the word “blog.”

Note that this is much more than “WordPress, Debloggified.” Either a blog or posts reused as “articles” often remain in this second use/definition.

The phrase “content management system” is a mouthful of awkward, but hard to replace. Sites like cmswire, cmsreport, cmsmyth, cmswatch, and cms critic really do like to talk about WordPress. We should be glad that we’re talking about WordPress and not “WordBlog.”

Maybe it’s because I tend to smile while telling people why they’re wrong (and should be committed into an insane aslyum until such time as they find a cure for idiocy).. Could soften the blow a bit, I suppose. :)

Wish I could be more like that :-)

If somebody wants to make a translation file with better text, then let them do that first, and we’ll see how much traction it gets among the “it’s a CMS” crowd. My prediction: It won’t get any, because it’s a stupid issue and only stupid people care about it.

Yes, I mean you. :-P

WordPress is an amazing blogging platform, and provides some great light-weight CMS capabilities along with the vast array of plugins and functions. But simple CMS functionality like page and file management are still weak and neglected. Some of this functionality is available through plugins, but these can often be out of date or incompatible with other plugins. (Example: WP-Table breaks my cForms). To top it off, I have to install dozens of plugins for each WordPress install to get some of these features that I consider “basic” CMS functionality. Until these tools become more robust, and part of the WordPress core, WordPress will continue to be blog software that has some great CMS capabilities.