WordPress has been the blogging platform giant for a good few years now, but is it beginning to outstay its welcome? It’s used on millions of blogs and is by far the most popular self-hosted blogging software, but the bloated code is putting off more and more designers and developers.

If you don’t want to create your CMS, then popular alternatives include TextPattern and Expression Engine. TextPattern is popular because it’s an extremely lightweight and simplistic framework which is easy for end-users and non-technical types to pick up. Expression Engine is increasingly popular with designers who want a flexible content management framework with plenty of opportunities to create modern web designs.

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WordPress is difficult to drop because of the huge community and availability of themes, plugins and support. If you’re trying to incorporate some kind of functionality, chances are someone’s already done it for you and it’s just a case of modifying a theme slightly or tweaking a plugin. With other content management systems, it’s often impossible to get ready access to development functionality to take your install beyond a blog. WordPress’s plugin system is incredibly easy to use, especially as you can search for and install plugins from within your admin panel. Other CMS require modification of core files, which causes big problems when it’s time to upgrade to a new version. With WordPress, you also never have the worry that the software will be discontinued or the developers will give up on it to move on to new projects and the platform will be abandoned.

In my opinion, there’s definitely a gap in the market for a strong WordPress competitor, but it’s a very tough nut to crack and a lot to compete with, especially as WordPress has largely grown organically. On the other hand, a smaller, dedicated group of developers would be able to control the code and make it more effective and less bloated. Twenty Eleven in particular seems to have changes purely for change’s sake, and it’s a big step away from being as user-friendly as the previous default theme, Twenty Ten. In our minds, a good theme doesn’t rely on functions.php for anything less than deep-rooted, more complex changes rather than simple stylistic ones, and don’t even get us started on the poor search offering that has seen very little development since WordPress’s original release.

At the moment, WordPress is strong – it’s backed by so many and has a generally good reputation. It’s also fantastic for search engines. But it needs to go back to its roots with all the bloated code stripped out and basic functionality developed further if it wants to hang on to its place at the top.

What do you think? Do you use WordPress, or do you prefer another CMS?