WordPress is a great blog engine. I don't have exact statistics in front of me, but I would wager that WordPress is one of the most prolific blog engines on the net. I myself have set up several sites over the years for family, friends, and such using it. Its quick and easy, there's a gabillion themes to pick from, more than a lot of plugins (I would say a "plethora" of plugins) available, and with PHP hosting pretty cheap, its often a no-brainer when you just need to get something up and running. It has a very strong community, many of which contribute to the plethora of widgets, gadgets, and plugins to be found, and there is a fair amount of awareness about what it is. These things contribute to its (imo) well-deserved reputation.
Now enter Mango Blog stage left. Everyone that listens to me rant (so like two people) knows that I'm a big fan of Mango Blog. Its a beautifully written blog engine with a really usable plugin architecture, and it lends itself well to re-skinning (themes). It has one of the most simplest and intelligent setup wizards I've seen in a web-based application. Its also written in ColdFusion, my development language of choice. To name drop, Ben Forta commented back in February that the code behind Mango Blog is some of the best ColdFusion code he'd seen to date. That's pretty impressive coming from the ColdFusion man himself. And I am inclined to agree with him. At the very least, its some of the most impressive work with custom tags I've come across. Anyway, all these things are what make Mango Blog my blog engine of choice. And naturally, when you find something you like, you want to promote and share it so that other people can see the good that you see in the thing. So my disclaimer for the following statement is that this is completely my opinion based solely on my own whimsical perspective:
I think Mango Blog has the potential to be for ColdFusion what WordPress is for PHP.
Now, granted Mango Blog is much younger than WordPress in development, community, and in volume of contributed work, but imo all the right qualities are in place. Obviously this being the internet, I'm sure opinions vary, but I see its value having the capacity to stretch far beyond the venue of ColdFusion developers which, judging by the list of who uses it, seems to be the predominant demographic. Not that there's anything wrong with that at all because there isn't (I'm one of them), but when the average non-technical person goes looking to set up a new blog, Mango Blog is probably not as high on their radar as it could be. And until recently, there's enough reason that it might not have made it to the list of options for the average plotting blogger, given the typically moderate increase of costs for decent ColdFusion hosting (I said "decent") over that of PHP, and also given the fact that most netizens start off by looking for what's free, and ColdFusion just wasn't.
But the landscape is changing. CFML isn't proprietary anymore. Between Railo and Open BlueDragon and the emerging CFML Advisory Committee, the platform is widening. The fact is there are now lower cost options for those looking to platform ColdFusion applications (I'm of course currently referring to Mango Blog, but its true across the board). These other options can open up the previously proprietary world that ColdFusion development was locked into, and can more easily serve to contribute to the non-technical user base at large. It is an opportunity to step onto a more level playing field in terms of accessibility. That's a bit of a rant but my point is that as this trend continues, cost becomes less and less an obstacle to the use of ColdFusion, which in turn can garner a more positive role in application selection ("Hmm, WordPress? or how about this Mango Blog?" says Joe Blogger.).
Given these things I ask you, the reader, does Mango Blog have the potential to be WordPress for ColdFusion in terms of adoption rate and community? What obstacles keep that from occurring? Is it already the case in your opinion or is this a ridiculous sentiment?
I'm Matt Hill, a Sacramento area application developer working with CF for close to a decade, and this is my personal blog. 
Jun 13, 2009 at 1:24 AM Hi Matt,
I can sum up my thoughts on this in a few words. I hope so.
Mango Blog is awesome. I currently maintain several sites using Mango, and I have nothing but good things to say about the product, and I think it will thrive in an environment where open source CFML alternatives are available.
That said - Mango Blog is young, and it's not fair to compare it with WordPress. WP is an incredible product, backed by a massive community. I use it for my own site, and the plugins available never cease to amaze me. I'm often torn between choosing a ColdFusion solution, and using a product that may be better, currently, but uses a different technology. I usually choose CF, but in this case, WordPress is just too good to pass up. Using WordPress for my own site is like having a personal assistant - it does everything for me.
Jun 15, 2009 at 9:58 PM @Chris, I agree completely that Mango Blog is much younger than WordPress, and the comparison is meant in terms of potential rather than actuality at present, although I think many of the right attributes are in place. I also agree that WordPress has a much, much larger community with a vast array of plugins, but at one point it did not. Early in its development it started out as a small tool with a small amount of users similar to Mango Blog. Over time it evolved into what we have today, but was not always as it is now. I imagine one could make that comparison about pretty much any small application and I'll even concede that perhaps its too early to make a comparison such as I have, but the overall point of my post (which perhaps I did not convey effectively) is that I see in Mango Blog that seed of great success that grew into WordPress and its community as it exists today. I hope with you that it continues to develop. Thanks, Chris.
Jun 23, 2009 at 11:22 PM I mentioned this to Laura in an email. I really think we could turn Mango into the WP of CF if we all do our part. I have a lot of plugin ideas and theme ideas. I need to clear a few projects off my plate, but then I am going to start developing more Mango stuff. I love it.
Jun 24, 2009 at 10:24 AM Everything under the sun has potential to be great but only a few achieve their potential or come close to it. We wanted a blog application so I started my search. Since our web server is CF, I prefer a CF blog application over Wordpress or BlogEngine.Net. It’s been few weeks and I am still having hard time customizing and getting things to work well. As a end user, I see limitations of Mango Blog as of now are – available skins, plugins and community support.
Jun 25, 2009 at 9:38 PM @Bret, community is definitely key and I look forward to whatever plugins and themes you bring to the table. The more the merrier. I'm currently playing around with a new admin theme (time permitting, of course).
@Joe, I kindly disagree in terms of all things having the potential to be great. Its my estimation that many things (perhaps even most) will never be more than mediocre at best. Its unfortunate that you've been having some issues getting Mango to work in your environment. I myself have had a couple issues here and there. Although, I was not attempting to imply that Mango Blog is without flaw; simply that it has what it takes to bubble over into the non-technical world over time in the way that WordPress has. While I completely agree that the list of available plugins at present is not large, if i may ask: what sort of plugins were you looking for that would have made a better impression on you?
Jun 26, 2009 at 7:36 AM E.g. The Google Custom Search Plugin is not good for us because our blog will be host on intranet which is behind restricted firewall and cannot make any exceptions due to policies in place. The Mango Blog search is only limited to posts and not pages.
The other major turn offs were limited number of skins and lack of community support. I posted questions in forums and didn't get much help at times. Hopefully community support and variety of plugins will grow over time.
Jun 29, 2009 at 8:47 PM @Joe, I wouldn't expect a google custom search to work behind a firewall for any kind of intranet application, but I do agree with you that being able to search pages as well as posts would be a good out-of-the-box feature for Mango. Its unfortunate that you didn't find it as helpful for you as it could have been. Perhaps try back in a while and see if it works any better for you :) Thanks for replying. I appreciate your candor.
Jul 21, 2009 at 7:38 AM Matt I hope so as well. Mango shines as a example of how you can develop a ColdFusion application that is a pleasure for users and developers. The ABC install is great and the auto updating feature rocks. The API's and plugin architecture are well though out and easy to work with. I could go on but I think it would be easier to list what might stop Mango becoming a ColdFusion wordpress and I can think of only one: not enough themes
People love to psuedo customise, they want to think their blog looks different from everyone elses and having a bigger range of themes to choose from would definately help this. I hear mangowear.com will be helping in this regard and I am sure others will provide themes it's just a matter of time.
Fly your mango high!
Cheers, Mike G.
Nov 9, 2009 at 6:45 AM I posted your blog to my facebook group
Regards
Courtney
Jan 21, 2010 at 3:42 AM Can i have more info on this ?
Regards
Feb 3, 2010 at 12:11 PM It has been my experience that the best blog software is wordpress by far. There is no one else that even comes close.
Feb 5, 2010 at 4:53 AM mango is very slow and way behind now.
Feb 6, 2010 at 8:50 AM Four things that will prevent Mango to become a real viable alternative to WP
1. The lack of support/schooling of CF in College vs PHP or ASP.NET
I live and work in The Netherlands and most webapps run on PHP overhere and prorprietary MS .NET applications. Young kids at kindergarten for instance should be lured into using and learn to read and write in CF. A task for Adobe to stop looking for the next big Photoshopper in the class
2. Lack of (paid and free) themes for Mango
3. WP is now with plugins like the iThemes Builder Plugin very far away for Mango to
even overtake, free plugins are fine but laymen like myself are more than happy to pay for plugins that make CSS manipulation much easier.
4.Quicker responding and broader CF base
That's my take on things. I have to say again, I rely on other peoples skills in design to have design looking website although I work from a WYSIWYG principle and I guess many like me who's core business is not programming but writing article, giving presentations etc.
2.Two things that come to mind that will
Feb 11, 2010 at 4:18 PM Question: How easy is MangoBlog to skin? I'm using BlogCFC, and well, I've made a few tweaks here and there for the CSS and layout. But, with each iteration of BlogCFC coming out, I have to keep redoing all those tweaks. Quite annoying. I'm not putting down Mr. Jedi's work at all. I'm just frustrated with the skinning aspect. Is MangoBlog easily skinned? Can I go to a Wordpress template site..grab the CSS and throw it on top of MangoBlog?