> Why it matters: CMS licensing was once seen as a lucrative opportunity for publishers looking to grow revenue beyond ad dollars. But WordPress' continued dominance in the space has made it harder to compete
I used to work for such a company. The problem is that you can go to a proprietary CMS vendor for a new website and get a really good, high tech product (that's also not written in PHP), but if you want to maintain your own site, you'll have to employ a team of software engineers trained in this proprietary product, or you'll have to pay the original vendor $150/hr for developer hours for new features. There are very few contractors who know these proprietary CMSs. Most know PHP/WordPress
Lots of publishers have their own proprietary CMS, like the Washington Post which developed Arc (https://www.arcxp.com/), or the New York Times (whose CMS I don't know the name of). They can afford to keep engineers on staff, but smaller publishers can't, and would rather pay less for contractors who know WordPress or Adobe Experience Manager to add new features to their sites. Some have even moved to 100% managed solutions like webflow, which I think is a really cool product
I couldn’t believe it when Microsoft started using Wordpress for TechNet, Microsoft Blogs, News Centre etc. That’s almost on par with them shipping WSL and an LF-aware Notepad.
Wordpress has come a long way since I played with it years ago.
> CMS licensing was once seen as a lucrative opportunity for publishers looking to grow revenue beyond ad dollars.
> It stopped licensing Chorus to external publishers last year
Gee, I wonder why proprietary CMS systems struggle to find lots of customers? If the company that owns the CMS gets bored and moves on or goes out of business you suddenly need to migrate all of your websites to a new system and teach all of your employees a new workflow. That leaves a lot of time where you aren't "focus[ing] on [your] "core" business"
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 23.2 ms ] threadI used to work for such a company. The problem is that you can go to a proprietary CMS vendor for a new website and get a really good, high tech product (that's also not written in PHP), but if you want to maintain your own site, you'll have to employ a team of software engineers trained in this proprietary product, or you'll have to pay the original vendor $150/hr for developer hours for new features. There are very few contractors who know these proprietary CMSs. Most know PHP/WordPress
Lots of publishers have their own proprietary CMS, like the Washington Post which developed Arc (https://www.arcxp.com/), or the New York Times (whose CMS I don't know the name of). They can afford to keep engineers on staff, but smaller publishers can't, and would rather pay less for contractors who know WordPress or Adobe Experience Manager to add new features to their sites. Some have even moved to 100% managed solutions like webflow, which I think is a really cool product
Wordpress has come a long way since I played with it years ago.
> It stopped licensing Chorus to external publishers last year
Gee, I wonder why proprietary CMS systems struggle to find lots of customers? If the company that owns the CMS gets bored and moves on or goes out of business you suddenly need to migrate all of your websites to a new system and teach all of your employees a new workflow. That leaves a lot of time where you aren't "focus[ing] on [your] "core" business"