Wordpress is currently making it’s first venture into the Content Management System arena (CMS). They have turned their Wordpress Multi User (Mu) platform into a social networking apparatus, but will this be enough to ensure their foray into the CMS ring? More importantly is it what their audience really wants?

http://mu.wordpress.org/

Buddy press is the Wordpress contribution to the dozens of free CMS products that are on the market today including Drupal, PhP-Fusion, Jamoola, Mambo, Typo3, and many others. Can Wordpress pass muster and does it have a chance of standing up to it’s competition in the ring?

I think if Wordpress takes the time to really listen to what it’s user want it has every possibility of being king. Let’s look at some of the finer points of Buddypress.

I have used Wordpress MU before, but I have never used Buddypress. Part of what the average website owner is looking for is something that can run on their shared website hosting account. Many webmasters want social networking, but they want it on budget hosting. The other CMS products provide you with the opportunity to do so, many of them also come pre-installed in Cpanel. Does Buddypress do the same.

I checked several articles and they suggest that Buddypress does not work well in a shared hosting environment. Can it work in a reseller environment, again the articles that I came across suggested this is not the case and that Buddypress would best function on a virtual Private Server or full server environment. If this is the case, then this will be a very large barrier for the creators of Buddypress to cross.

http://www.howtospoter.com/web-20/wordpress/make-a-community-site-with-wordpress

Another obvious issue that I came across when researching information about Buddypress is the issue of privacy. As it stands now Buddypress is a very open social network. I checked at the forum to see what they had to say about this and Andy Peatling the creator of Buddypress, says that it’s meant to be for open networks. Meaning that there are no immediate plans to implement privacy settings on the future 1.0 release of Buddypress. I disagree with leaving a privacy implementation for later versions, because we all know that website such as Facebook have thrived on the privacy feature.

http://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=128

Then there is secondary option and more favored by many webmasters, the option of using the core Wordpress application as a CMS. From what I am reading and hearing, many webmasters are saying they love Wordpress and they want that love affair to continue. This means that they want to use Wordpress as a CMS. If the creators of Wordpress are listening then they will realise that many people already have Wordpress installed, and what they have been saying loud and clear is that they are looking for ways, primarily plugins that will transform the core application into a CMS.

Many other CMS’s have this option. You start off with a basic core, and then add on, until you have what you need. In recent months many wordpress plugins have come along to make this near possible, but there is still a way’s to go.

There are now several nice directory plugins, forums, website management, forms, revenue sharing, article’s, video sharing, photo album, plugins that help make it easier than ever to turn Worpress into a CMS. There are even plugins that will allow you to create additional blogs, based on domains and sub-domains, and even a user profiles.

Where Buddypress provides instant Social Networking, some advantages will be lost if this platform can not function in a shared hosting environment which many webmasters thrive on, and which has helped other CMS’s to grow in popularity.

Where the basic Wordpress core offers comfort, familiarity and the convenience of working well in a shared hosting environment, it’s lacks several key components necessary to truly be considered a full featured CMS by some.

If Wordpress hopes to someday be CMS King, which I think is very possible, then in my opinion, it should listen to what it’s fans are saying and work towards bridging the gap that exists with it’s core product and it’s new social networking apparatus Buddypress.

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