SharePoint: WordPress for the Enterprise?
If you’re reading this, it’s probably obvious that my blog platform is WordPress. WordPress is the leading platform for independent bloggers, and it’s open source. And if you’ve been reading my blog for more than a couple months, you might know I recently changed platforms. My company’s public web site is on the MOSS 2007 platform, and for a couple years prior to February 2009, I published very well hidden blog posts at an earlier version of the trick bag: http://www.imginc.com/blogs/richardk/default.aspx
Comparing SharePoint to other Platforms
Plenty of SharePoint partisans like to compare that platform feature for feature against other products. For example, Todd Stephens has an interesting blog all about “Enterprise 2.0″ with a lot of coverage of SharePoint’s role in that phenomenon. Here’s an article comparing SharePoint blogging (favorably) to a blogging-specific alternative to WordPress, Moveable Type: http://www.rtodd.com/collaborage/2009/03/another_sharepoint_enterprise.html
Now I’m a SharePoint guy, tried and true. And until I started using WordPress, I would have completely agreed with the viewpoint expressed in that article.
But after using WordPress for a couple months, I can see why it’s the leading blogging platform and SharePoint’s not. In my opinion, if what you want to do is have a blog or a bunch of blogs, WordPress is better. Here are a few of the reasons:
- It’s much easier to manage comments in a WordPress blog than in SharePoint.
- There’s a vibrant third-party market for WordPress blog add-ons (themes, plug-ins and widgets in the WordPress world) that let you easily customize and extend the platform.
- There are lots of web hosting sites with support for WordPress. I use www.DreamHost.com for the Trick Bag, and it’s got a sweet one-click install to set up a WordPress site, which actually works!
SharePoint’s Role in the Enterprise
I could go on and on comparing SharePoint feature for feature to other products, but that’s really beside the point — which IS the point of this article. If I’m an enterprise IT manager, none of that matters, since SharePoint’s better for most of the things I’d care about: collaboration, ECM, search, portals…and even Web 2.0 for my internal enterprise audience! SharePoint doesn’t need to stack up, feature for feature, against blogs or wikis or other Web 2.0 application paltforms; the fact that it’s got baseline Web 2.0 features is generally good enough.
For example, I’m currently playing a small roll on a big SharePoint 2007 rollout at Kraft, and they’re huge into blogs, wikis and discussion groups — all on their SharePoint intranet. But they didn’t choose SharePoint because it’s the best blogging/wiki/Web 2.0 platform. They chose it because it’s the best enterprise portal/cms/collaboration/publishing/search platform. The fact that it also has web 2.0 features is a nice bonus, but not why they went with it. And the fact that it’s all SharePoint under the hood means enterprise users can leverage the same essential skills whether they’re collaborating in a document library or reviewing comments on their blog.
Maybe in the next release SharePoint will compete favorably with the leaders in web 2.0 categories like blogging. Maybe someday SharePoint will have the best blogging platform around. How many times have we seen Microsoft enter a niche with a baseline implementation, and keep investing and improving until their product is better? But again, that’s beside the point. Even if somebody has a better blog or wiki platform than SharePoint, it will still dominate the enterprise space, and that’s a pretty big beechhead from which to attack Web 2.0.
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buster Said,
March 26, 2009 @ 7:48 pm
interesting.. i’ve never heard of sharepoint being compared to wordpress. i haven’t used sharepoint myself, but our sys admin at work keeps it on our dev/implementation list of future projects (we’re a dot net shop primarily). anyhow, wp is rad isn’t it.
Richard Knudson Said,
March 27, 2009 @ 4:13 am
Hi Buster — thanks for your note.
I borrowed the title of that post from one I read a long time ago, something like “SharePoint: FaceBook for the Enterprise”. At the time I read it I wasn’t that into “web 2.0 stuff”, but now I can’t imagine not having a blog, not being on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn…
And since SharePoint has baseline functionality in almost all of those areas, there are plenty of SharePoint users whose “social networking” experience — blogs, wikis, profile, etc. — is mainly within SharePoint. And for an enterprise with enough critical mass for the network effect to kick in (like Kraft), these enterprise/social networks can be pretty useful. That’s my theory, anyway.
And I didn’t even touch on the role of SharePoint as a .NET dev platform, which your sys admin is correct to keep on your list of future projects!
And yes, WP is totally rad!
Regards
PK Moa Said,
May 25, 2009 @ 5:15 am
I have a pretty basic question … Our website is built with Moss (2007) for publishing, searchability, etc. We are adding blogs and have found the MOSS blogging tool is pretty clunky. Can you integrate a WP blog into a MOSS website easily, or are we stuck with the MOSS blogging features?
Richard Knudson Said,
May 25, 2009 @ 8:58 am
Hi PK,
As a long-time blogger on the MOSS platform and a relative newcomer to WordPress, I agree wholeheartedly. MOSS is definitely clunky compared to WordPress: nobody’s going to select MOSS purely on the elegance of its blog implementation!
As far as integrating a WP blog into a MOSS site, good question. I’ve never done it but I can certainly see some potential value in doing so. I just did a google search on “integrating moss and wordpress” and got a lot of search results, some of which looked relevant to the topic. I don’t have time to do this right now, but if you have time try this: join one or more of the LinkedIn groups having to do with WordPress and start a discussion on the topic. When I first started out with WordPress I did that more than a couple times on topics I wanted some help on, and I was always pleasantly surprised with the responses I got.
Good luck, and let me know if you come up with anything!
Regards,
Richard
SF Librarian Said,
January 29, 2010 @ 1:45 pm
Guys, I work for a large architectural firm and we have been testing SP for about a year. I have really mixed fellings about it, and getting into SP 2010 I’m still not that impressed. It feels like another MS product that has great intentions, but doesn’t live up.
Anyways, on the topic of blogging, I just started working with Wordpress and I love it! SP’s blogs are extremely clunky.
How about setting up WordPress as your defacto blog platform, then pushing the RSS feeds from it into SharePoint RSS viewers?
Jenny Said,
May 24, 2011 @ 9:27 pm
i agree with buster, quite curious how sharepoint is compared to wordpress. now trying to research about wordpress integration on sharepoint. thanks for this post! cheers.
aaron kempf Said,
October 23, 2011 @ 3:18 am
I think that it’s quite easy to pull information out of wordpress and into sharepoint.. if you just use the best tool for the job.
Instead of horsing around with webservices.. I think that WordpressAccess and SharePointAccess.. thus WordpressSharePoint is easy.