How did WordPress win?

For as terrible as the internals of Wordpress are, the user-facing part of it all isn't bad. So if you never have to hack the core, it's a solid product. And since 99% of people using Wordpress like this won't touch the code, beyond maybe basic templating, then the ease of installation is really the biggest part of it's ubiquity.<p>There's something to be said for open source packages which work really well out-of-the-box for the vast majority of people who use it.<p>But oh, my lord, are the internals awful.

Absolutely the dead-simple install has been huge for Wordpress. Getting into Wordpress’ bowls is disgusting, and some configurations you might think would be trivial are impossible, but they hook you in those first five minutes. It’s just so easy to start blogging.

The core difference between the platforms was that wordpress was designed for any schmuck to follow a howto, while MT was designed to sell the <i>real</i> product, professional services billable hours. There were soooo many things about MT that stayed locked up in "plugin packs" or were completely undocumented that if you weren't paying a few (hundred)grand in proserv it was just plain not a usable product.<p>For the record, I was the enterprise customer clamoring for ldap support in Byrne's post, and I've since worked for another high profile site built on MT. Its a solid product if you bring a handful of good engineers in on top of it, its just got that "you must be this tall" barrier to entry that makes it an immediate loss for broad-consumer adoption.

An even better question is why WordPress continues to win.<p>I've done a few startups and quite often I will create the marketing front end in WordPress/PHP. Even if the main application will be written in Ruby or Python.<p>The reason is that there are just so many off the shelf templates and themes you can download and/or buy. And the themes are generally in the under $25 price range. Plus finding people who can maintain a marketing site in WordPress is extremely easy. For the simple stuff like "add a post" or "update the text" you don't even need to know PHP.<p>Now it would be nice if there was a dead simple platform like WordPress for Python. But until that day comes it is still a pretty damn good solution for a site.

The license debacle got me to switch (I clearly remember Dive Into Mark's spirited long rant), but Movable Type's weird Perlisms, and quirks like rebuilding all the posts when you changed the layout, would have sent me running eventually anyway. MT just wasn't a great package in the first place.

I was there when it happened, as were many around here.<p>Movabletype did their pay-only nonsense after version 2.66<p>People starting looking for alternatives.<p>WordPress 1.5 out and 2.0 was in beta and it seemed the strongest choice at the time. 2004 is like a lifetime for the internet, seems like a poor choice now but things were different then.

I switched from Blogger to WordPress and began learning PHP in January 2005. In August 2005 I went to work for Automattic as the second full-timer (after Donncha, inventor of WPMU). That was before WordPress.com was announced. I am still working for Automattic.<p>Byrne, in his MT-centric worldview, fails to mention a man who contributed more to WP's success than MT's failures could. The name "Matt" only appears within "Automattic" and the name "Mullenweg" doesn't even show up until the comments.<p>Many have said it and I agree: WordPress is shitty software. Having written a significant percentage of the code in WordPress since version 2.0, I can proudly accept the blame for some of the shittiest parts of WordPress. I was responsible for the integration of the rich editor, the widgets system, the media library, and many other poorly-designed components I have since expunged from memory. I wrote this crap because Matt asked me to.<p>In wisdom or dumb luck, Matt saw that a feature that mostly works for most users next week is better than a perfect feature next year. He coded as much as he could, then he learned to delegate and trust others. Then, as far as I could tell from inside my coding cave, he shifted most of his attention from engineering and design to promotion and business. He brought Toni and Raanan into Automattic and that's when the switching campaign really took off.<p>From the early days to now, Matt has exploited every resource for the benefit of WordPress. Even now, non-WordPress Automattic projects help subsidize the core development of WordPress. I don't know how much money Matt has made but I know that everyone who makes a living with WordPress owes him some credit for feeding so much power back into the project.<p>Matt wasn't the only contributor to the success of WordPress. It would be impossible to cover them all; go look at the About page on wordpress.org to get a taste. But if you could use a time machine to kidnap one person off that list, you would do the most harm to WordPress by choosing Matt.<p>Byrne says in a comment that his piece is about WordPress, not Automattic. He works hard to avoid delving into personalities. But the story of WordPress can't be told without discussing Matt Mullenweg. If your goal is to "see what lessons can be learned from WordPress so that others seeking to build a successful product can learn from it" you really should be looking at the people and the work they did more than the project that they worked on.

&#60;i&#62;2 What makes Movable Type hard to install has actually nothing to do with Perl at all. It has to do with CGI. CGI was originally architected to allow any script to be run and invoked via an addressable URL, and when that capability was first introduced system administrators and programmers feared the security ramifications of allowing any arbitrary script to be executed in that fashion. Therefore, they instituted a number limitations enforced by the web server: 1) only certain directories on your web server can possess the ability to run CGI scripts, 2) only executable files can be invoked via CGI, and 3) no static files (html, css, javascript, or any text file) can be served from the same directory as a CGI script. These limitations are often inappropriately attributed to Perl only because Perl became the dominant, if not the only scripting language used to author CGI based web applications early on.&#60;/i&#62;<p>But... many (most?) shared webhosts - which support PHP and WP just fine - run in CGI or FastCGI mode. GoDaddy, IIRC - all PHP is CGI-based. It's been a while since I've done LAMPhp setup, and even longer since that P meant Perl, but it's always felt (as in, going back to 2000/2001) that configuring Apache for mod_php or CGI PHP was just <i>more straightforward</i> than Perl. Reasons?<p>PHP allows for (encourages?) very 'hack' based approach to development, which most other languages don't. Don't understand how or why to pass parameters around? Just use the 'global' keyword. Rinse, repeat, and you've got your customizations to WP.<p>I'm not saying all WP mods are hacks, but it was/is very easy for people to experiment with trying their hand and hacking around. IMO this was the biggest thing that has led to WP dominating, and PHP as a language continuing to dominate. Yes, it's not the cleanest around, but it does allow for rapid experimentation (far more than something like Java, and depending on the code you're hacking, Perl).

The first quote shows exactly why they lost the battle:<p>"""...in fact, if you want to say anything, why don't you run it by me first? And Anil, and through marketing, and while you are at it through a couple other people as well... Cool?"""<p>Every single issue is about giving maximum control to the users for wordpress. Licensing, easy of installation on almost any host, and language choice. All these said, "Wordpress lets you control your code, where you install it, and how you manipulate it."<p>In my mind it was a battle of cultures and philosophy. For example, wordpress had the idea of the five minute install. They focused on making the 20% that 80% of users absolutely need as easy as possible.

What do people use these days when they want to self host something a bit more light weight? I have setup a few wordpress installations but really if I wanted something to tinker with I think I would look elsewhere, the code has you trawl though many files at times to make simple changes.

The easy install and developer friendly focus is what attracted me to it. The license and the language attracted developers and designers towards making lots of themes and plugins. Furthermore a large professional developer base legitimized Wordpress in the eyes of bloggers.

Wordpress is probably one of the greatest things that has ever happened to the internet.

I pretty much know something like 0.1% programming and have very little artistic skill but decided to have fun with building websites anyways with html using frontpage and dreamweaver. They came out alright as i used a template then hacked the crap out of it. It took a lot of work still and gave up for a while. Then i decided to make a prank site and used moveable type first and tried a few other blogging software, ending up with wordpress because it was more flexible than moveable type at the time and much easier to use. I think this was version 1.5. I still have that blog up somewhere on a free server, oh man was it easy to use compared to today. Later i got a job at a local web design firm. They had their own CMS based on .Net. It was actually quite good, quite easy, and powerful as hell. They charged $4k to use it. I wouldn't know what to do with it even if i had access to the code. I played with some other CMSes while there, drupal being one that gained steam while a bunch of others. Oh man are they hard to use. It takes quite a while to figure them out. I gave up on websites yet again. A few friends needed a site so i fired up trusty wordpress, now at 3.0. Wow did they change a lot. Stuff that should have been there from the beginning are finally there. Its now 30x more complicated, trying to teach someone WP3 almost defeated the original reason why i chose wordpress, it had a simple backend. But its still a good bit easier to use than most other stuff and I know it well enough to hack most things up. And the themes/plugins jesus, try even searching for a theme for moveable type on google, i came up with 2 ugly ones. And Britney Spears website comes up as Movable types featured showcase? That can't be good...<p>WP makes thing easier and harder for me at the same time. Well I guess its like money, the more you have the more problems it brings. As for the backend, But try WP 3.1, it adds a top bar that was so useful from a plugin i used since 1.5. Also wordcamp rocks.

I started using it because it was easy to install and tinker with. I stopped using it because I fundamentally disagree with Matt on a variety of topics.<p>I don't like the management, but it is a good product.

<i>for all of WordPress' open sourcey, socialist, hippy goodness</i><p>Now I don't think socialism is a dirty word, but saying Open Source is socialist is wrong. If anything it's extreme Libertarianist. It's saying if I give you something, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it.<p>Open Source is not about the government, or any other organization, providing institutionalized software for the good of all.

Honestly, I think the answer is pretty straightforward in this case: WordPress was just a great piece of software, much ahead of its competitors.