Actually, it's about using the wrong tool for the wrong purpose. I tried building a custom CMS with both Drupal AND Wordpress, just like the author and I realized how horrible it is build something custom out of an existing CMS.

I wanted to build a Metro-like interface for a shopping cart application with some extra functionality, just using Wordpress. Should be easy and was easy, until I discovered some horrible stuff within the code. You would think that Wordpress being so popular, would be top-notch as a development platform too. It was for the most part, but there were some trivial issues that made me develop a sense of hatred for developing for it.

No, I'm not talking about themes, I'm talking about building off something different using Wordpress as a base platform.

For example, on Wordpress, for pagination on posts, the GET variable is 'page' and for pages it is 'paged'. There is absolutely zero documentation on this and no reason as to why they have different (inconsistency) names for the same functionality. This is just one example. There were lots of other annoying bugs that pushed me too far. For example, sometimes, updating Wordpress would break a lot of plugins and leave you stranded.

Does this mean Wordpress is bad? No certainly not. It's the best blogging platform out there. But, if you want something custom, just build it yourself.

That's why I said 'fuck it' and moved on with rails. I get what I want, nothing more, nothing less. If I want an authentication system, there's Devise, if I want something else, there's always a gem for that, let alone writing my own code for the functionality I want isn't a big deal either.

In short, if you are building your start-up based off on an existing CMS, you're doing it wrong. Unless you are focused only on developing themes and frameworks for these platforms, or if you just want to run a Media company like Techcrunch or Mashable, just don't go with it.