To Wordpress or Not to Wordpress

I am, among many things, a web designer/developer. I tilt far more to the design side than the developer, but nevertheless I’m comfortable with several languages (PHP, Actionscript, HTML, etc.). I’ve had limited experience developing Content Management Systems, but fully understand their true power and how much “easier” they can make a web designers’ life. I really debated using any “out of the box” system because I was confident it wouldn’t do everything I wanted it to do. I considered Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, and a custom built system. I had the following concerns/thoughts that weighed in on my decision.

• Stress on the server
• Extendability
• My ability to customize the development side of things
• Growth potential
• Platform dependence
• Efficiency
• Data organization
• Advertisement support
• Fast content generation

The platform thought process was really spurred by the users over at digg and their ability to crash a WordPress website in a matter of minutes. (Everybody using Wordpress out there should download and install the WP-Cache plugin so you don’t get dugg.)  Generating all the content from a database tends to be stressful on the server, but I digress.

Why was Wordpress right for me?

In the end I decided that Wordpress did enough things right for it to be the platform of choice for me.  It allows me to quickly produce content and does a decent enough job of organizing the non-blog pages of my site.  I was very close to going with Joomla!, but decided that their platform was overkill for what I needed.