Comments on: Do we need WordPress for the enterprise?

By: xiaolin

xiaolin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:29:33 +0000

By: Matt Hodges

Matt Hodges — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:38:18 +0000

Disclosure: I work at Atlassian.

Great article and topic for discussion. I found this comment particularly interesting:

“Take a look at how many millions of sites all run on WordPress, each with a unique look and feel and each with it’s own set of features and plugins that can be customized and added to make every site unique and individual. Currently we don’t have anything like this for the enterprise”

There are over 400 add-ons available for Confluence on the Atlassian Plugin Exchange. One of particular interest in relation to this article is StepStone’s Zen. More than a theme, Zen makes Confluence ideal for all users with complete branding, advanced design tools, drag-and-drop layouts, navigation, and drafts.

Here are a couple of live sites powered by Confluence and Zen:

https://developer.atlassian.com/display/HOME/Welcome
http://www.artemissoftware.net/display/art/Home

By: Jessica Stillman

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:04:38 +0000

Good distinction between customization and configuration — thanks for the discussion spurring post.

By: Terri Griffith

Terri Griffith — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:10:50 +0000

I also think we’re missing the “bits and pieces” — the way that an email can get from my email client to your email client. The collaboration nuggets that we can pass from one system to another — at least that’s what I’m hoping for.

By: jacob

jacob — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:39:09 +0000

Thanks for mentioning the post Jessica.

There is a difference between customization and configuration and what I’m actually trying to convey. Any platform today allows you to customize and configure it in several ways, but it’s all based around their platform. I’m talking about the ability to extend beyond platforms to combine features, plugins, add-ons, UI, functionality, and data into something that makes sense for you.

As with the millions of wordpress sites out there they all have a unique look and feel and addition of add-ons plugins which already exist and can be built.

Right now the lack of collaboration standards make it impossible for these platforms to communicate with each other in an easy and effective way (from what I have seen).

By: Jessica Stillman

Jessica Stillman — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:38:51 +0000

Morgan mentions Atlassian, etc. as close but no cigar. I think he’s saying that though current tools aim for it, none have reached the required level of customization in his opinion. Was curious to see if readers felt the same. So far they don’t.

By: Enoch Root

Enoch Root — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:23:26 +0000

Drupal. Exists already. In use in this way in many places. Highly configurable, huge community of open source developers. It has collaboration distros, such as Open Atrium and Drupal Commons.

By: cryptochrome

cryptochrome — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:14:51 +0000

Not sure what the original author you are writing about is up to, but he seems to be living in the past. Stuff like that for the enterprise is already here, and not just since yesterday.

Movable Type, Socialtext, Jive, Atlassians’s Confluence, (to a certain extent: Socialcast and Yammer as well as Salesforce’s Chatter).

By: Jordan Krueger

Jordan Krueger — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:50:45 +0000

We won’t see anything like this until the recession is firmly behind us. Companies get far too entrenched with their business software to be willing to jump on the bandwagon with something like what’s suggested, and that gets even worse in a time like now when the adage is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

For example, I worked with a company that was using enterprise CRM software that only worked on Internet Explorer 6 (use anything else and an error message would pop up saying your browser wasn’t supported) — they’re still using it today.

I think hiring is probably a good indicator of corporate willingness to change software systems. If you have the money to grow your business with new employees, you probably have the money to think about overhauling your software.