I’ve been using WordPress for 2 months now. I was reluctant at first to adopt it. My main concern was having a whole system in the way in case I ever needed to code an unusual feature for my website. Then I listed several reasons why I was definitely wrong about not using WordPress in my personal website:
1) Turns out I don’t have time to deal with code in my own website. The shoemaker’s son always goes barefoot.
2) How many times I have to remind you: don’t reinvent the wheel. At the moment you just need a tool to blog. Go for a ready made solution.
3) “Unusual feature“? Really? Please, list one that is crucial! A feature that you need to implement right now! The answer was… duhh…. none!?
4) WordPress is under GPL. If you ever need a fancy feature you can actually code it! … although I doubt I will ever need to do so.
These should be enough reasons to have WordPress installed. There is one more important reason, though: Plugins.
People should be able to extend the functionality of the software. If you add well documented procedures on how to write plugins and build an environment for people to share them, then you dramatically increase your chances for a hit. A killer app. Programmers and designers will write plugins and add-ons so cool that you won’t be able to live without their functionality. The competitors will have a hard time changing your mind.
That is why it will be hard to leave killer apps like Emacs, Apache, Firefox, etc.
Right now I have only 4 plugins installed on WordPress but they all came out of pure necessity. They were easy to find, install and use. Things that work out of the box? Magic.
I agree, I love wordpress and use it not only for my site, but for inexpensive solutions for clients to get online. I actually use some good premium themes and I can get a client a professional site online in about 5 hours.
Seems that you also have the possibility of large scale installations with WordPress MU.