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I'd say it's partly because WCM is what is referred to in user experience design as an "implementation model". It's a category defined by technical considerations (library services, workflow, templating, etc), rather than by a user's idea of what they want to achieve. That kind of mismatch is a recipe for unsatisfactory software.

It's also a broad problem domain, with ill-defined boundaries. Nobody's quite sure which features are core and which are not. If the user model is "I want some software to update and manage my website", then the exact functionality that boils down to will vary wildly from website to website. What about analytics? Analytics certainly fit into the user model, even if it's not usually considered core to WCM.

So WCM solutions tend to end up with rather large codebases, as they grapple to deal with all contingencies. To make things worse, the web keeps evolving. RSS, UGC, Ajax, widgets, the web as a platform... Websites are much more complex than they used to be, and need a lot more managing. More significantly, successful websites are no longer islands; bits of them are embedded in or aggregated by other websites.

WCM vendors have struggled to match this pace of change. The larger vendors mostly attempt feature completeness through aquisition, building up huge suites of applications that are not necessarily very well integrated.

I think WCM has got to stop trying to be all things to all websites. Future WCMs will be a set of mashable services based around widgets and APIs that can be integrated into any number of different web frameworks, or even just social networks. Plus they will build mashable websites, delivering components to new, widgety channels.

Before you say, "but wait, your own PostCMS app doesn't do that!" - yes, I know. Not yet. But that's what we're working towards.

We're pleased to announce that we are sponsoring the Future of Web Design conference in London this April. I've been to a couple of the Carsonified conferences and they always get a great line-up of speakers. Hope to see you there!

Jamie and Aanand are heading off to SXSW today, for five days of interactive fun. Plus they might catch the odd film or band, and the party schedule doesn't look half bad either. If you're attending too, say hi.

I'm pleased to announce that we are supporting LitCamp, an unconference for fiction writers taking place in London later this year, and organised by our friends at Pulp.net

As you can probably guess, it's a riff on the kind of event that Barcamp has been pioneering (though less geeky). There are lots of literary festivals in the UK already, but they're mostly the author-talks-down-to-the-audience variety. Time for a fresher, more democratic approach.

You can preregister now to get discounted tickets and—more importantly—throw in your suggestions and ideas. If you're a writer, hope to see you there!

Salesforce are always worth watching, and their Spring 08 release is full of interesting ideas. "Development as a service", "User interface as a service": why not? These are things we're trying to do too with PostCMS. The new Salesforce Content app looks nice too, though not content management in any real sense.

One thing that is striking about their site is how complicated their offering has become. I guess this is deliberate. It's about selling into the enterprise, saying "we've got as much complexity as you need", because enterprise types like to think what they are doing is really complicated (which it probably is) and so needs a really complicated-looking solution (which it probably doesn't).

Compare that other well-known hosted CRM app, Basecamp, where the focus is on simplicity.

We've introduced a new service for PostCMS, our hosted content management service. Called Code Monkey, it's aimed at less technical web creatives. The idea is that you can upload your Photoshop (or whatever) designs and we'll take care of the business of turning them into XHTML + CSS + content-managed web templates.