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Microsoft moves 20,000 blogs from proprietary CMS to WordPress

Microsoft blogs on WordPress
October 2, 2016

Are your law firm’s blogs running on a proprietary CMS (Content Management System), or for that matter matter, any CMS other than WordPress? If so, you may want to think again.

Marie Dodson (@Mdodson12) reports for Torque that Microsoft just migrated 20,000 blogs with more than 1 million posts and 1.2 million comments off its own proprietary content management system to WordPress. Most of the blogs were running on the same proprietary ASP.NET and SQL Server based CMS.

The result?

  • Sites have experienced an uptick in speed
  • Major SEO improvements
  • Improved site navigation on desktop and mobile browsers

Brian Messenlehner (@bmess), head of WebDevStudios, which worked with Microsoft on the blog migration, told Dodson that as part of Microsoft’s push into Open Source Software, versus proprietary/closed systems, they researched the best CMS to use and decided on WordPress.

You’d think that the largest software company in the world use their own publishing technology to run all of their websites, but like a lot of other companies they wanted to save time and money by going Open Source.

The adoption of Open Source software for publishing, with WordPress leading the way, isn’t going to slow down any time soon, per Dodson.

It’s free, flexible, and easy to use, maintain, and update. It provides companies with the agility to move faster without breaking the bank.

Per Messenlehner, it makes little sense for a company to continue to publish on proprietary software.

Lots of enterprise companies still pay a lot of money with licensing fees and maintenance on outdated proprietary software. These companies could dramatically cut their costs by switching to an open-source solution like WordPress.

Law firms do continue to publish on outmoded publishing software for blogs and other content, all of which could — and probably should be published on WordPress.

In addition, website development companies and consultants are advising law firms to use an underperforming and expensive proprietary CMS. In many cases, a CMS that the website development company built and that is exclusively maintained by the company — things which increase short and long term costs and limit innovation.

Look at Microsoft. An Open Source CMS, probably WordPress, is likely the best publishing software for your law firm.

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