WordPress is the most well known content management system in the world. It is also my favourite but is it suitable for you? What is it good for? What is it not so good for?
Let me try to take off the rose tinted glasses and give a more of an objective view into the pros and cons of WordPress.
The pros:
- WordPress is extremely flexible. With the right skills you can make it so anything.
- It has a thriving plugin ecosystem. A lot of the most common problems have already been solved.
- You’re in full control. The project is open source so you can host it wherever you want and modify it however you want.
The cons:
- It’s not as cheap as people think.
WordPress is not the most expensive option, but a good WordPress site is not cheap. Most quality plugins are paid and unless you have strong web development skills, you will need to hire a good developer to build any truly custom designs or features.
- It’s easy to go wrong.
Because it is so flexible, it’s not uncommon to find WordPress sites that are bloated with plugins and poorly written code. There is no happy path to building a WordPress site. Everyone has their own way, some good and some bad.
So when is WordPress a good option?
I think WordPress is a good option if:
- Your website has many features like a blog, contact form, donation form.
- If you have a requirement to have a network of subsites, all managed from one dashboard. WordPress has a great feature called multisite for this use case.
- You have some budget to hire someone or time to really invest in your skills.
- But can’t I DIY it myself in a weekend? You definitely can build a WordPress website yourself in a weekend. But we’re here to make good websites and unless you already have some skill, you’re almost always better off hiring a person dedicated to WordPress sites to help you. And if you don’t have the money to do so then you might be better off going with another platform, where ease of use is a focus. I’ll cover one of them tomorrow.