Millions of websites are built on WordPress. It allows users to create their own platforms with a relative ease and control, providing decent customization possibilities. But everything has its dark sides, and that is what we are going to talk about today: both sides of the medal for a big player in the CMS arena: WordPress.
What We Love About It?
It’s free. You don’t need to buy it, as WordPress is an Open-Source platform. Bear in mind that you will still need to pay for a domain and hosting. It has a big community. WordPress is one of the most popular platforms, and it’s community is the biggest among other CMSs. Chances are you will be able to find needed help among thousands of people who use it for their websites. It has a lot of plugins. There are thousands of plugins available for the WordPress, and the community is constantly developing new ones and updating old ones, so customization possibilities are pretty much endless! It is user-friendly. You will be able to add and customize content on the go easily, as WordPress was built with content creators in mind. It has great SEO potential. Plugins like Yoast can help you set up SEO and constantly remind you to update outdated content. Search Optimization is very important, and WordPress plugins make it a lot easier to maintain.
What is Wrong With it?
It is costly to maintain. Every company that asked us to deploy their website on WordPress eventually came back with additional tasks. Even though basic stuff like posting a blog update can be done by hand through an admin panel, something like moving a picture on the landing page 2 pixels to the left needs to be coded. What nobody tells you is that you actually need at least some basic knowledge at HTML and CSS to do these basic procedures without relying on developers who require a fee. Troubleshooting on your own is time consuming. If your website uptime is very crucial to you, you are in for a wild ride. If something goes wrong, and you decide to resolve it on your own, you will be searching through endless posts with the same problems and trying to recreate what others did only to realize that five hours have passed since you began… Updates. WordPress and its plugins are updated at least twice a month, and for security reasons, you might want to update your website too. That is where problems come in. As it is Open-Source, there can be many bugs in updates, and updates themselves can break your website. If you want to update, please, make sure to back up to revert your website to a prior state if something goes wrong. Malware. If you are familiar with basically any freelancer platform, you have seen those job postings that beg you to remove the malware from a WordPress website. You see, as there are thousands of plugins, there are millions of security holes in them. People who try and maintain their websites often install unknown stuff or give access to their admin panel to random people, and then they pay for it twice. Design may be limited. If you use themes and something like Elementor, your website won’t be unique, to say the least. If you want to stand out, you might want to look at custom design options, and make yourself look one of a kind. SEO plugins are not magical. They are meant to help you, not do everything for you. You will still need to work on it, and with no knowledge of SEO, it won’t be good. That is why it is better to contact professionals and have them do their job so search engines start bringing you new customers.
What Should I Do?
It may sound like a lot of problems, but it is crucial to understand that every solution comes with its negative sides. It is better to know them before your website gets hacked because of some contact form. Still, if you are unsure about WordPress, there are other options. One of the best would be a Custom CMS. You can read about its advantages in our blog post here. Contact us for more information if you are interested, and we will gladly assist you in creating your own CMS, fitted perfectly to your needs.
