Opinions expressed by Contractor the contributors are theirs.
I’ve been a professional developer since 2005, which has given me the experience of creating just about any custom code I want. Yet when it comes to real-world business applications, WordPress is my choice in almost any situation because it almost always makes the most sense for businesses.
The problem of paid platforms
When it comes to choosing a platform, you have an incredible choice. Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace are some of the most popular. For the most part, these platforms are designed so that you can quickly launch something with just a few clicks and it looks good enough. They usually do this job well.
The problem arises when you inevitably have to do something that should be simple and straightforward, but the platform itself doesn’t support it. In order to make things easy, a lot of code editing capabilities need to be limited. As a result, you have limits on what you can do.
The other problem is that when you use a paid platform, you are married to it. What you’re allowed to do is tied to the monthly fees you pay, and critical business features typically require a higher monthly subscription. Additionally, most platforms make it difficult to extract your data (content) from the site, so switching is expensive and time consuming.
To top it off, you don’t own the platform you are using, so if you unintentionally violate their terms of service, your website may be completely removed and deleted, and there is nothing you can do about it. The cost of convenience is enormous.
The problem of personalized development
With custom development, you have no restrictions. But the problem is, it’s easily expensive to build and maintain because you have to build everything from scratch. For most small businesses, this just isn’t a viable or affordable option.
If you want to make it easier for a non-technical content publisher to publish content, you either need to pay for a license for another program, write something yourself, or hope to find an open source program that meets your needs enough to be put. implemented. . It all takes precious time.
Most small businesses don’t have the budget, even for a small development team, to build something in-house or hire a competent agency. Moreover, managing a project like this is not easy. If you don’t have any experience in this area or if you don’t understand the common obstacles, this is going to be incredibly frustrating for you.
When you create something custom, you need to have a full-fledged developer to make changes. Even with popular frameworks, finding people who can get started with your project, make changes, and fix bugs usually costs hundreds or even thousands of dollars more. For example, when I debug or add functionality to a Django project, I can easily charge 10 times more for the work.
WordPress allows you to get the custom features you want without reinventing the wheel. If one of the 50,000 available plugins doesn’t help you, you can do any custom coding you want without restrictions.
Related: Learn How to Create a WordPress Site
Benefits of mass adoption of WordPress on the internet
WordPress powers such a high percentage of websites on the internet that this is the de facto standard. This means that pretty much all software creates an integration with WordPress straight away, because they don’t want to exclude 40% of all websites from using their services.
It also means it’s incredibly easy and affordable to find courses, training, and professionals to run your site. Websites are constantly evolving as your business evolves. Eventually, you’ll need someone to help you scale or manage it. The majority of designers, developers, content managers, social media strategists, and professional administrative assistants know WordPress at least and are in abundance.
One of the downsides of such an open and accessible platform with such a low barrier to entry is that it’s easy to hire someone cheap who does shoddy work that then has to be repaired later. We have had to resolve a number of these situations and they are generally not pretty.
Related: 25 Reasons Your Business Should Switch to WordPress
Open source means you are in control of your site
WordPress is available in two versions. WordPress.org is generally what most people want: it’s completely independent and open source. This means that when you download a copy of WordPress and install it on your server (where every web host usually has a one-click install option for WordPress), you can literally do whatever you want with it and no one else. can you take your site. . This is called “self-hosted” WordPress in the technical community. You have no cost to run WordPress other than what your web host charges you for your website server.
WordPress.com is owned by Automattic (founded by the co-founder of WordPress). It is a paid platform like Wix or Shopify. Although it is powered by WordPress, there are limits to what you are allowed to do. For example, you can only use approved plugins, and there is limited custom coding for just about anything other than CSS.
The improvements to WordPress are all done by independent contributors who volunteer to improve the code, debug it, and improve the platform, meaning you have a collection of some of the best developers in the world working for improve the platform that powers your website without paying a dime for it.
Related: 5 Strategies For Building An Online Portfolio That Improves The Performance Of Any Business Website
WordPress is adopted to modern technology and is easy to optimize
While there is the “WordPress way” of doing things, new additions like the Block Editor (also known as Gutenberg) are using ReactJS to power everything, allowing for the benefits of more modern web technology. The majority of the new features are all JavaScript, while also using classic PHP.
Optimizations are incredibly easy to implement and in every way imaginable, from SEO to hosting, where most of the time there is a “one-click†installation and configuration option.
WordPress certainly has its flaws and it’s still a work in progress like any major tech project. Like anything else, it is not a perfect solution for all situations, but it is the most powerful and flexible option for the vast majority. It does this with no high monthly fees, no development fees, or no limitations to what you can add with some of the best developers in the world backing it, while being extremely easy to train and find people who know how to use it. .
