How Did We Do? 10 CMS Predictions for 2014

At the beginning of this year, we made our CMS predictions for 2014.

Some of those predictions were based on trends we saw in 2013. Some were hunches.

Some of those predictions were fun, but some were really serious for us. After all, our business success depends on being able to see changes coming.

So, how accurate were our 2014 predictions?

1) Drupal 8 launches at DrupalCon Amsterdam

Wrong. 0 out of 1. Maybe DrupalCon Barcelona next year?

2) There will not be a new version of Joomla

Correct. 1 out of 2. There was a lot of talk about Joomla 4, but the community isn’t ready for it. Joomla 3 is the future of Joomla.

3) WordPress always updates automatically

Wrong. 1 of 3. WordPress was very successful with auto-updates and it prevented some serious security issues. But there are still kinks to iron out before auto-updates can be used more frequently. The last release broke several plugins.

4) CMSs become much more reliant on Javascript

Correct. 2 out of 4. One of our most popular posts of the year was Headless Drupal which covered the popularity of using Javascript to replace Drupal’s theme system.

5) Ghost starts slow, steady growth

Correct. 3 out of 5. Maybe I should have been more specific with this prediction, but I think we were right to predict that Ghost would neither be a failure nor a big hit in 2014. Ghost remains an interesting mix, it’s easy to use, but difficult to install and modify.

6) Flat file sites do not take off

Correct. 4 out of 6. Flat file sites are no more popular than they were in 2013. They aren’t easy enough to use and don’t solve more problems then they create.

7) Acquia has an IPO and Automattic follows

Wrong. 4 out 7. I don’t think we were even close here. IPO rumblings actually seems to reduce in 2014.

8) Freelancing becomes less attractive

Meh. 4 out of 8. We should have been more specific here. It’s hard to judge this prediction, but unlike 2013, I didn’t see a strong trend towards people quitting their freelance gigs and taking a salary.

9) CMS technologies become more fragmented

Correct. 5 out of 9. We saw a good number of WordPress people starting to blog with Ghost. We saw Yootheme build Pagekit and Rockettheme build Grav. It’s highly likely that the move away from one-size-fits-all systems will continue.

On to 2015!

So, we scored about 50% with our 2014 predictions.

We’ll publish our predictions for 2015 in the next couple of weeks.

Do you have ideas on what trends we’re likely to see next year?