Any decent CMS today has to be able to utilize themes and plug-ins, the whole question is how much the CMS is flexible beyond that, and how many plug-ins can interfere in the work of the site (in a good way, when it is really necessary).
By the way, in case you somehow haven’t seen these numbers already: WordPress is installed on 34% websites in the World AND has a 60% Content Management System (CMS) market share.
Equal WordPress if possible, modify the behavior of the site, perhaps, does not exist. There is no need to edit the CMS sources, any behavior of WordPress can be changed with the help of hooks. This is not always convenient, and somewhere CMS is quite a hindrance, but it is nothing compared to the speed of deployment of the project.
For example, with the help of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin. BTW, Pods is an open-source free alternative to ACF, BUT I personally just go with the standard, already built-in Custom Fields 🙂
Whatever solution you use, with custom fields you can create interfaces in the admin for content managers in a few clicks. ACF is an example when the benefit of the plugin is equal to the benefit of the CMS itself.
Editor’s note: it should be noted that after Gutenberg is included in the WordPress core, the position of ACF superiority for creating interfaces may falter.
Do not forget that WordPress has a powerful REST API (by the way, even WooCommerce can communicate via API). This opens up the possibility of adding virtually any technology (read – features). You can even put the WP Open Graph plugin, and make quite complex selections with a single GraphQL query.
WordPress is a modern, event-oriented framework, and it was released long ago and has the biggest community of developers adding new plugins and themes every day (both free and premium).
Yes, in some cases WordPress is still lagging behind custom development from scratch, but hey, the timeline and budget requirements differ big time. More on that below.
Table of Contents
Key benefits
Development cost
The key benefits of WordPress websites are minimal development costs and extremely fast Turnaround Time (TAT) compared to custom development. Minimal hosting is required, and a premium theme (usually costing less than $100) can be many times cooler than a turnkey solution without CMS.
Just check out the ThemeForest, to get the taste of it.
Scalability
WordPress is not only about “Blogs”, but also about the premium themes one can build an E-Commerce solution with. PayPal, Stripe and tens more payment gateways come out of the box and require minimum tuning. The same goes for shipment, order tracking, Amazon integration, and whatnot.
Are you skeptical? Check out the WordPress scalability myth-busting below.
Support, maintenance, and usability
Having once created a working and full-fledged site, through a simple admin panel, people unfamiliar with IT and development will be able to carry out the maintenance and updating of the site content by themselves or delegate to internal employees without the involvement of developers.
This saves time and money – the most important thing that small and medium businesses have.
WordPress Myth Busting
It is slow
Funny enough, that’s my favorite one. Check this out:
Argument: WordPress VIP powers such global publishers as New York Post and TIME; chances are in good hands they can power your project as well 🙂
Skeptics: alright, that’s media and I want to do an online store. I am sure WordPress + Woocommerce will die on 500 SKUs and I need much more!
Argument: see the crash test by Premmerce – guys tried to break the setup adding tens of thousands of products and it worked just fine.
Skeptics: alright, that’s an online store, and I want to create a startup!
Argument: There are plugins to create Job Boards, Educational Platforms with courses and whatnot. In good hands, it will shine and save you a ton of time and money.
At GRIN tech we recently built GRIN jobs with RSS feeds plugin alone 🙂
SEO problems
Previously, it was believed that sites on WP are not particularly friendly to search engines, but WordPress was originally built as a blogging platform and most of the developers’ attention has always been paid to SEO.
A lot of plugins such as Yoast SEO easily solve the task of promoting sites on the search.
If you have not achieved a certain success in promoting the site, it is likely that you just did something wrong or did not know how to do it right. SEO is not a simple thing and beginners in it are not easy.
Security problems
That’s what almost all negative WordPress reviewers usually mention. Most likely they have never worked with WordPress, but simply copy articles and each other.
Funny enough we are building a Reviews section with a single plugin too 🙂
This myth came after a couple of students hacked into the site using the standard link /wp-admin and admin:admin login bundle. Change the link to login to the admin panel from the standard one to the unique one or put complex passwords and logins, also do make a limit on the number of attempts to log in.
As our practice shows, WP is quite a secure system and 1-2 plugins completely close the security issue of your site.
WordFence is one of these plugins, offering a full range of protection.
Work only with proven plug-ins from proven sources and with reviews. As a rule, it is through dubious plugins that the hacking occurs.
Alternatives
Is WordPress the answer to every brief?
I think, nowadays, it’s a matter of taste as WordPress is versatile enough to do virtually anything. At GRIN tech we use Tilda & custom coding (PHP & Python) as well.
Conclusion
In the meantime, WordPress has made some changes in the CMS market. Now it is a progressive platform in the right hands solving a complex of tasks at a high level.
Beginners will find in it a convenient and modern product for site development with a lot of technical documentation and guides in free access. Professionals are increasingly turning to its functionality. Owners of business in search of universal and complex solutions minimize the risks of losing money and time using WordPress.
I hope this material was useful.
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Author’s bio
Dmitrii B. is the CEO and founder of GRIN tech – a full-cycle digital agency doing design, marketing, and development alongside white-label agency & media outreach solutions.