People seem to freak out at the mention of WordPress.
If you google “why not to use WordPress” it seems there’s a million articles with a billion reasons why WordPress is the devil. But, used properly, it’s one of the best ways to make a website in the world. Brands like Tech Crunch, the New Yorker, even Facebook rely on WordPress for some or all of their digital presence, and there are more people who use WordPress than there are people who live in Turkey. Nearly 25% of all websites are powered by WordPress in some way.
There is however, two completely different meanings to the word WordPress.
There’s WordPress.com, a “do it yourself” service the WordPress offers and kinda works like most other blogging platforms (like tumblr or whatever is cool these days) but you pay for them to manage your service.
and WordPress.org, a completely free cms system you download and manage yourself.
Which is better?
That’s the issue. It totally depends on what you want, and this is where people trip up.
WordPress.org is fantastic if you have a limited skill set when it comes to the web, but you need something simple and straight out the box. You’ll never have to worry about it and you can totally edit it yourself. It’s actually really easy, and with a decent selection of themes it doesn’t end up looking like every other website.
WordPress.com however is what most people need. If you are a business or even just someone who wants more than just a blog then you need this, and you’ll need help too.
WordPress.com is widely considered to be both one of the best and one of the worst CMS systems at the same time, mainly because it’s so easy to use that people can do it themselves, but nobody looks after it properly!
First of all you’ll need your own hosting, with database support, this scares a lot of people into the WordPress.org route straight off the bat. Secondly, if it goes wrong and you don’t know what you’re doing then you’re in trouble. But once it’s set up, it’s super easy to add pages, posts, change your navigation and more or less do anything you need to keep your content up to date.
That falls into the next reason why people don’t use WordPress right.
Keeping it up to date.
WordPress has some of the best support in the world, due to it’s community and it’s range of plug ins you can make it do anything. Quite literally there’s a plug in for anything. But picking the right ones is key, and missing out on some important things can cost you a lot of internet points. A lot of the complaints about WordPress are so easily remedied with a few simple plug ins that people ignore. Page speed, SEO, security, and all the other reasons people say WordPress is rubbish, all require the right knowledge of the plug in world.
So why the hell would you go to all that effort?
Because it’s fully customisable. If you want something you can do it. If you don’t like something you can change it. If something looks wrong you can fix it!
Not many cms systems are as flexible as WordPress. A good WordPress developer can bring you the perfect set-up, with a fully bespoke look and feel, and with all the features you want, and because it’s free all you’ll need to pay is the hosting – which is a hell of a lot cheaper than any DIY website builder.
It’s true, WordPress is the devil, but if you know what you’re doing it’s also the best thing ever, you just need help from the right people.
P.s. you read all this on a website built with a WordPress cms.