Ask HN: Why does WordPress dominate the market?

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.

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."

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.

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) 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.

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.

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.

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.

Re: the "what is appropriate on HN" see 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Check out 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.

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).

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

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.