Well, I'm using WordPress instead of Joomla on all of my websites that need content management. Dunno why, never liked Mambo in the first place, and now Joomla is still not my choice. But we'll see!
I have always used custom scripts in the past, but I just launched my first WordPress site. I am really impressed with the features and being able to install plugins. Plus if you know a little php, you can customize it to your needs.
Wordpress does have quite a few shortcomings as far as I'm concerned regarding "ARTICLES" vs. just plain blog entries. There isn't any easy way to paginate a Wordpress article without breaking it out into various parts, which isn't necessarily the best idea. There are still subtle differences between what I consider a news site vs. a news blog, and if you're going for "website", then Wordpress may work for you. What it does, it does exceptionally well, but if you outgrow it (which will not happen with Joomla,) you're either writing your own code or migrating to something more complete.
I think that Wordpress will only get better. There's a ton of community support behind it and it seems that when a feature doesn't exist, there are always people willing to create a plug-in/hack for it.
I've used Wordpress depending on the need, other than that I use another CMS I had built, but WordPress has great features and seems to be always improving, plus there are many plug-ins/mods.
The WP community is really the key. It's no better or worse than those for other systems... but it's healthy enought that you pretty much always find what you need, IMO.
i like it for two reasons: it is php based and the biggest advatage of WP over blogger is its 'categories'
I have tried WordPress and Joomla. I like WordPress because it is simple and accessible to someone who is not a strong coder. If you take the time to learn and experiment, Joomla is a powerful CMS. It offers a wide array of features, such as basic ad management and links directory. It was overwhelming for me to learn and use different features after I first installed it. WordPress is simpler to use and work with. I am amazed at the one step upgrade system. All I had to do is to upload all of the files from the newer version and run the upgrade script. I did not have to modify any templates or update any plug-ins. I hope that this helps.
Did you know you can turn wordpress into a cms with certain plugins! You can fully customize your whole wordpress by just installing simple to do plugins! But I agree that if you are growing more and more, your site would outgrow wordpress and would need a more sophisticated cms like joomla or something similar!