Advantages of WordPress

Advantages of WordPress

WordPress is not something that is new; it has been around since last one decade now and has evolved. It is one of the most popular Content Management System and is the base for millions of websites both small and large. However, there has always been a debate about its advantages and disadvantages.   
We need to understand that every CMS was initially build to meet specific needs, for example, Zencart for the e-commerce solution, Joomla for membership portals, etc. Similarly, WordPress was conceptualized for Bloggers. Its initial motive was to provide an easy to use and manage platform for bloggers who are usually not coders but would like to manage things with minimal investment.
 
Soon, WordPress became popular for small informational websites like corporate websites, informational websites, etc. And with its popularity, more developers came along to build plugins to be used readily with WordPress. As far as I can understand, the most important factor that made it popular is its Search Engine friendly structure. And now it is being used for building e-commerce platforms, big social networking portals, etc. However, we need to understand that we should choose a Content Management System as per our needs and not because it is popular and get you ranked easily. I would like to list the advantages and disadvantages of WordPress and you can decide whether it suits your needs or you should go for another CMS.   

Advantages of WordPress-  

1. Ease of installation and operation: Several hosting servers provide one-click installation of WordPress and that too without knowledge of coding. Just go through the tutorials and you can do the basic installation. Thousands of tutorials are available which will guide you to install and manage WordPress sites.   

2. Free resources: You can find n number of free themes, specific to your needs. This saves a lot of investment in designing and planning the website layout. Most of the plugins are free and thus you can start with as small as an investment of USD200 which we charge for a 5-8 page informational website.

3. Search Engine friendly: As I mentioned one single reason for the popularity of WordPress is its search engine friendly structure. You will several popular and easy to use plugins for the same and most of them are free. 

 4. E-commerce extensions: WooCommerce is an extension of WordPress if you want to build an e-commerce website. It is robust and offers all the features that are needed to run a small to the mid-level e-commerce platform. However, for large portals, I would not recommend it. Please get in touch for the free consultation and we will be more than happy to assist you.    

Disadvantages:   

1. Wordpress is updated frequently: Definitely, it is nice to see your CMS update to adapt to latest changes in browsers, become mobile friendly and fight latest malware or virus threats. However, most of the plugins that we use are developed by individuals or small teams which are not able to provide an update at the same speed. This means that if you will have a lot of outdated plugins which you need to either replace or wait for the developer to provide the updated version.   

2. Knowledge of HTML is needed: Although we say that a person does not need coding to manage CMS based website; but it is not completely true. Sometimes you put a content and it doesn't look right. You might need to tweak HTML for that page to make it look better. You need basic HTML knowledge which you can easily acquire through several online resources.   

3. Security: Wordpress provides security updates frequently however you need to ensure that your WordPress is up-to-date all the time. If your website has several plugins, it becomes more vulnerable as we never know if one of those plugins is hacked.  

Conclusion:   Choose the CMS you want to use wisely and one which suits your needs. This will ensure that you can easily manage your website, libraries/plugins that are available and give your users friendly experience.