Major Disadvantages of WP, MT, EE, AM CMS

What don't you like about Word Press, Movable Type, Expression Engine, etc.

[beavis]

I have narrowed my blog / content management choices to four:

1. WordPress
2. Movable Type
3. Expression Engine
4. Article Manager

I am not concerned about paying for any of the above. Rather, I need to know what difficulties other users have found that could be "deal breakers" for my purposes.

If anyone has a negative experience with any of the criteria below (or other things that you think are important) with any of the above, please share!

1. Easy to set up and run
2. Easy to integrate with look and feel of existing site.
3. Search engine friendly (This is perhaps the main area of concern - worried about unfriendly / duplicate URL's, ability to optimize pages, etc.)
4. Adsense compatibility

Thanks in advance for your comments.

[bill]

Of all those listed I'm a MovableType fan. It's the only one that generates static pages, SEO friendly URLs, and works directly with my templates right out of the box. As they've got enterprise level support my company doesn't mind paying for it, and you've got a security net that the open source packages don't.

1. WordPress

Didn't produce static pages

Couldn't control multiple sites off one install

2. Movable Type

Must pay for commercial licence

3. Expression Engine

Couldn't apply multiple permission levels to authors

4. Article Manager

Never tried it

[callivert]

1. WordPress
Didn't produce static pages

Wordpress can do static pages quite easily these days.

[bill]

I really haven't played with WP lately. My comments were from testing quite some time back. Those were the deal killers for me at that time. If you can do static pages with WP right out of the box now then they're improving. ;)

[beavis]

Thanks for the reply. So far, I'm leaning toward Expression Engine, because it appears to have more comprehensive content management tools and because it is presented in a well-organized manner. I am the only author, so user levels aren't that important to me. However, I like the idea of static URLs and will do a final review of MT, too.

[jgstyle]

I'm not that familiar with the others, but I wanted to share my experience of Expression Engine.

Beware of this one, because there are major issues with implementing a Google Sitemap.

Most CMS's have some sort of plug-in to take the work out of adding a Google Sitemap, but not EE. What I feel is an ridiculous amount of work is pretty much pushed on to your shoulders to get it working.

They have a couple of Wiki tutorials, which are not very helpful or in-depth. Also, if you have anything but the most basic template set up you will really have a difficult time with getting the sitemap to keep up dynamically with your site.

Check on their forums and search for google sitemap, you'll see pages and pages of frustrated users, and maybe one or two that could get it working.

When people ask for an easier method, EE employees come on there and essentially say "well that would be a lot of work for us". To me it's a pretty disgraceful attitude, given that Google Sitemaps are hardly a new development.

Aside from this, I've found Expression Engine to be very easy to set up and work with, but I wish I would have researched a bit further before I went and revamped my whole site with it.

Good luck narrowing down the contenders.

[graeme_p]

Wordpress is a brilliant blog CMS, but it has no particular strengths as a general CMS. I now use Modx for the later purpose: it is a lot less work to use the right tool for the job.

Wordpress also has a bad reputation for security.

It does produce SE friendly urls and there is a lot of advice on making it more SE friendly (and some plugins to help).