In 2003, when it started, WordPress was only a blogging platform. There is a misconception that it works best only for a blogging website. It is far from the truth. Today, it is being used as the largest CMS in the market. As per 2021 data, there are over 455 million WordPress websites, or one in every three websites is a WordPress website.
When it comes to selecting a platform for a business, you will definitely consider using WordPress as one of the options. If you are considering WordPress for your website, you must understand the pros and cons before you go ahead and start the work.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPLv2. This basically means that any user can modify the WordPress software without having to make any sort of payment. It comes with a content management system (CMS) that makes it easy to manage essential aspects of the website like content without the need to know anything about programming.
What kind of websites can WordPress make?
WordPress can help you create any type of website – from blogging to eCommerce. With WordPress, you can create business websites, portfolios, resumes, forums, social networks, membership sites, and everything else you want to create. This is one of the major reasons why a lot of companies hire dedicated developers for WordPress.
Pros of using WordPress for your website
Below are the pros of using WordPress for your website:
- User-friendly CMS
As mentioned earlier, WordPress originated for blogging sites, and hence it has a strong content management system. It is very easy for an admin to navigate through the backend of their WordPress site, upload new content or edit the existing content. Even if you don’t have any technical or programming knowledge, you can easily understand the interface and start working on the website.
- Open-source
It is open-source software that you can use, study, change and redistribute. Using an open-source platform is very beneficial especially if you are working with a 3rd party agency or partners who help you develop your WordPress website.
- Thousands of Plugins
You will be amazed to know that WordPress comes with over 50,000 free and paid plugins. Using these plugins, you can conveniently enhance and customize your WordPress website as per your requirement. If you want specific functionality or a feature on your website, there is a high chance that a plugin for it would be available. You can download the plugin and add the functionality within minutes.
- SEO-friendly
The importance of SEO cannot be emphasized more. If you want to succeed as a business, you need to work on SEO. WordPress comes with some inbuilt features that do a good job of promoting the best practices that are good for your website. You can use them through plugins. Many SEO-related plugins help you focus on keywords, work with meta tags and optimize your website content so you can rank higher. There are free SEO plugins like Yoast that help you create an SEO-friendly website.
- Plenty of responsive themes
You will be spoiled with choices when you come to the WordPress world – there are so many of them. Most of these themes are reliable and very responsive. Being responsive means that the website will work well on computers, tabs, and mobile phones. In today’s time, most people are accessing the website on their phones, and hence having a mobile-friendly website that is consistent across all devices is not just an option but a necessity. WordPress does a good job of offering you such themes.
- Multiple users can contribute to a website
If you want multiple people to work on your website, adding new users is a cakewalk. You can open the WordPress CMS, go to the User section and add the user. A new user will get their username and password, and they can start using the website as per the role assigned to them – author, contributor, editor, or an administrator.
- Speed optimization is possible
In today’s world, no one likes to use a slow website. As per a Google report, 53% of mobile users leave a site that takes longer than three seconds to load. If you plan to create a website and want your users to stay on your website, you need to optimize your website for speed. With WordPress, you get many plugins that help you optimize images and caching website content to help decrease the load times.
Cons of using WordPress and possible solution
Nothing is perfect, and neither is the WordPress platform. Below are some cons you must know before creating your website using it:
- Frequent updates
Updates are important for a website as they help you keep the health of your website in a good condition. Premium WordPress themes are improved and updated regularly and sometimes too often. Though updates are a must to have, some updates may cause small problems to a website. In such a scenario you will most probably have to go back to an older WordPress state.
You will have to work with the IT company or hire Indian programmers for instance to ensure whenever there is an update, your website is not impacted. If it is, they should be able to fix the problem in time.
- Vulnerability
WordPress is an open-source platform, and hence it attracts potential hackers. However, it is not a serious problem as there are plugins that can mitigate this risk. You must carefully choose plugins to increase the security. Regularly monitor the health of your website and in case of alert, do the needful.
- Slow speed with some themes
There are certain themes that come with an unnecessary generic code. If you opt for such themes, you will end up having a website that takes a lot of time to load. You can take help from a website development company to remove the unwanted code. You can use the theme of your choice and also improve the speed.
- Customizing the core website is not easy
You can easily customize the theme that you have selected but it won’t be possible to update core WordPress unless you are WordPress expert. If you do it on your own, it may cause problems for your website. These updates might lead to breaking up a few of the functionalities. You can also create issues if you don’t have best practices employed while you were designing the site.
Conclusion
With all the above information, you can decide whether opting for a WordPress website for your business is a good option or not. You can always take help from experts who will guide you to get a better outcome, this service is a bit expensive so you can hire remote developers that not only reduce the cost but also give you same level of output
Guest contributing author information
Harikrishna Kundariya, a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies @Software Development Company. His 10+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot.
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