It's interesting the different perspectives that people have on WP. I spent years (since 1998 ) building websites with everything BUT WP: static html, dynamic html, dyamicl shtml, pure Flash, postnuke, roll-my-own cms (php, templates) — you name it. I finally tried a WP site and found a stable platform with a lot of built-in functionality. What it didn't have I could acquire through the plugins.
To be sure, there's a learning curve, especially coming from custom coded sites where anything is possible — for a price. And not all plugins, or WP itself, works the way you might think it should. But I tend to either throw out mis-behaving plugsins for something that may be be lesser functionality but works, or I hire a plugin developer to do what I want. It's really cheap, much cheaper than hiring a developer to do the same thin in Flash or postnuke.
I develop only in WP now, and can put up a site in a day, as long as I have a clear idea of what I want to do with graphics and copy. If not, it take forever! I even keep a couple of "test' installations scattered around for when I want to try out a theme or plugin. Must confuse visitors mightily to run across a fully functioning site that doesn't seem to do anything else! One day I'll figure out what to do with those who sign up for memberships to those orphan sites!
I think you'll find that Google is sometimes beaten to the punch by Yahoo, but is more consistent. Bing just plain cheats, relying on secretive feedback from users of IE Explorer to determine popular search results for a keyword.
Keep in there with WP. There lots of good things coming out recently, especially in CMS themes and inexpensive drip content management, that make the future of WP very exciting. (And no, I'm not associated with WP; they've just made my website building life easier, where I can concentrate of marketing, rather than building.)
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