ThoughtThought

Every now and then I think to myself, how did Wordpress all of the sudden emerge as the best CMS in existence? Snooping around the web for interviews, profiles, reviews and other hints and clues, I came across this gem on their website:
“Everyone who joins, regardless of position, does support for their first three weeks.”

Wow!

This internet has many self-contained “Incidental Easter Eggs” — unexpected gems that surprise and delight us more than they are meant to. This line from Automatic’s Employee Handbook is evidence. When I run across something like this it reminds why I fell in love with the Internet biz in the first place — where else is innovation found in employee manuals?

Now I don’t know if this tidbit alone accounts for the supremacy of Wordpress, but I think it says a lot about the company and their success. The question of ‘contributed vrs core’ functionality is a tough one for every internet software application — open source or not, but somehow Wordpress nails it right on the head. We’ve seen other open source CMS projects like Drupal and Joomla spiral out of control and make no sense to any but the inner sanctum of engineers. Now Wordpress is not perfect of course, but the way it grows and evolves (wisely and with moderation) is darn near perfect in my book. In other words “how” they do things, if not what they do, is pretty darn near perfect.

Maybe the fact that every person on staff spent their first days fielding customer phone calls is why they do things so well?

p.s. And by the way, way to go on WP 2.5! I love how you brought Jeffrey Zeldman’s Coghead into the process!