The number of lines of custom code on the WordPress site was largely due to the custom installer that the team wrote to allow someone to install the entire package as quickly and easily as it is for them to do a base WP install. That team also did a lot of work updating various plugins to be WP-MU compatible, which is a big boon for the community.
As far as the user evaluation, I think that WordPress was hurt by the fact that they were third in the random draw and that our tester had already been acclimated to the “edit some things on the front end” paradigm established by Drupal and Joomla!, and she wasn’t used to having to edit everything through the dashboard. On the plus side, she has agreed to perform a second evaluation after having viewed training/orientation material provided by all three teams so that next time she’ll have had at least some basic knowledge of how the site is supposed to work.
We’ll be posting this and more information on cmsshowdown.org in the coming days and weeks, but I want to make sure to give major props to Matt, Beau, the other members of the WP team and everyone else who worked so hard to make this project a success!
