Barry Abrahamson CTO of WordPress.com Interviewed By Frantic

Barry Abrahamson, the CTO of WordPress.com, was recently interviewed by the folks over at Frantic.com during their Frantic Day event. While the interview didn’t contain any brand new information, I thought Barry’s response to the question “How do you see the future of Content Management Systems. What will change and what won’t?“ was interesting.

I think we’re going to see more and more content creation move to an interface that looks similar to the content consumption. In the next few years, you’re probably going to see a lot more editing and a lot more interaction with the content on the front-end of the site.

The actual content organization will probably remain the same. People like having the same types of content associated in the same place, but the way in which that content is created, published, edited and curated, is probably what’s going to change.

Merging The Front And Backend Of WordPress Into One Interface

Taking Barry’s thoughts into account, I’d love to see WordPress progress to a point where the difference between the backend and frontend of the software becomes negligible. A true what you see is what you get experience. Instead of logging into WordPress to perform specific administrative tasks, I’d rather see most of those become accessible on the frontend or inline.

Screenshot Of The Proposed Front End Editor

Luckily, there are two projects already underway to accomplish the task. Inline access and the front end editor. Both projects bring some form of editing to the front end. However, each one takes a different path in solving the problem.

Which one, if either, ends up in the core of WordPress is anyone’s guess. However, I’m looking forward to the day when content creation moves to an interface that looks similar to the content consumption.