WordPress is far from perfect for a business which requires a flexible CMS. This is where Expression Engine makes WordPress look like a kids toy.

I never said it's best, only that it's a good choice for developers ;) Haven't tried expression engine (it's not free so it kind of doesn't go with the rest here). MODx sounds very interesting I'll give it a go!

I agree that WP is one of the hottest tools out there. WP is the most popular but is not the best. It may be the best blog specific cms and may have one of the best interfaces (possibly) but you can only build certain type of sites with it without going under the hood and yo ae very dependent on community tools.

Expression Engine is a more rounded tool and then there is MODx which is much more flexible and require no hacking. It is very relative what CMS to use. With so many new comers like Concrete5 and SilverStripe it is difficult to keep up with the trends.

I played with both WordPress and Drupal and I can tell you that WordPress is much easier to handle. Maybe it has it's quirks but setting a site on WordPress is still a 5 minute job in most cases, which is really hard to beat.

The statistics i put on, does not show download numbers but access numbers instead. Meaning numbers of people coming to download themes and plugins, therefore real user usage comparison.

1) "XYZ government agencies and corporations use it." You see that claimed by all kinds of software. Often times it means a few guys in a small corner of a huge organisation are using the software. The WP showcase makes it sound like the entire Wall Street Journal site runs off WordPress, or the whole of the US Navy uses it. Nope, only selected parts, for particular sites. For all we know, in most of these orgs it's a few guys running their blogs, not even using WP as a CMS.

2) Download stats and google searches likewise mean nothing. Lots of people have cobbled together blogs that they don't even update any more, whereas the chances are people who've downloaded Drupal were pretty serious about building a significant website.

Again, I like WordPress, it's just that the evidence you cite in it's support is not all that convincing.

Christy - That's good suggestion. This article goes from top to bottom but one can be made to do a bottom-up analysis (why is WordPress API good, etc..)

Adam - Yep, community is the key!

Andy C - That's funny :)

This article would be far better if you provided some insight into the features and capabilities of WordPress which make it a good choice for many developers instead of giving unsubstantiated comments with no real analysis or critical thinking.

'Habari - the anti-social blogging platform'
'Habari - the social blogging platform for your Auntie'.

Although I'm not a developer but I can report that Habari does have a small, passionate, intelligent (but perfectly formed) development community.

Not only that they are sociable and welcoming. They also seem to like the small, modular, well written clean code that forms Habari.

I'm sure they are all wrong though and they could have made fortunes by continuing to hack on WP.

As things are, it's still ahead of it's time and is probably just lacking significant crowd/financial support to push it to main stream.