WordPress: Why The Frustration?

At first glance, WordPress seems to have just about everything a blogger or novice web developer could want. Originally just a platform for blogs, WordPress now allows users to create full-fledged websites.

What’s more, it’s easy, which is a huge advantage in an era where everybody feels it necessary to have a web presence. However, any platform is going to have some flaws; WordPress hosting is no exception.

WordPress presents many issues for businesses, for example. Entrepreneurs, managers, and business owners like Toronto website design should have an extremely responsive, secure, and reliable website; sadly, WordPress cannot always provide those features.

While WordPress is a good service, there are some elements that keep it from being a truly great service. The following are four common frustrations that WordPress users often develop.

1. Updates

Because of certain security issues, WordPress regularly releases update patches; these can be rather time-consuming to apply just to secure your website. They require a relatively advanced level of technical knowledge, which means that, on a long enough timeline, you’ll likely have to pay somebody to perform these updates.

As if that wasn’t enough, it’s possible that these updates can completely botch your site; this is especially true for users who have chosen a customized theme.

2. Security

Millions of websites utilize WordPress; as such, they are a big target for hackers. When hackers find a vulnerability within a system, they can exploit that same vulnerability in other systems. This means that periodically, many WordPress sites get hacked at the same time, often resulting in pretty catastrophic problems.

This eventually spurs some users to stop relying on WordPress hosting and moving on to buying their own web hosting and domain name. Even though any site is vulnerable to hacking in one way or another, having your own customized website would require a hacker to target your specific and unique website and find its vulnerabilities, as opposed to being a “sitting duck” in a pool of a million sites with the same weaknesses.

3. Speed & Lack of SEO Control

If you’re trying to drive traffic to your site or blog, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important tools at your disposal. However, even if you’re using one of the best SEO plugins offered by WordPress (free or otherwise) you’ll never have the level of control over your search engine results as you would with your own custom website.

Some users barely notice this at all, but for others it’s a huge issue.

Search engine results can also be affected by a website’s overall speed. The code that comprises many WordPress themes is extremely bloated, which forces visitors’ servers to process much more code than necessary.

That’s one of the foremost advantages of having your own website: the code and webpages can contain exactly what you want them to, and nothing else. It’s a matter of efficiency, really.

4. Plugins

The last issue we’ll address is that of WorPress plugins. Google “WordPress problems” and you’ll find this topic close to the top of the list.

In concept, plugins are a great idea; they should act as a type of third-party-authored extension for your site, adding functionality and elements that weren’t available in the original WordPress system.

However, due to the vast range of plugins now offered by WordPress, some written by people with…shall we say “limited” coding experience, many of these plugins are also subject to security vulnerabilities, even if your site is not.

Certain plugins also work fine independently, but will conflict when used alongside other plugins.

Perhaps, even more annoying, as we’ve mentioned above, updates can also cause plugins to fail. And because for many WordPress users, the plugins are their most-used feature, this completely destroys their site’s function.

What Do You Think

With those limitations in mind, we’d like to re-state our opinion that WordPress works perfectly well for a certain type of web user or blogger, but for those looking for leaner, more optimized sites, nothing beats a “bespoke” site.

However, we realize we’re not the proverbial “last word” on the subject, so we’d like to know what you think. Do you find these critiques of WordPress to be correct, or do you think they’re unfair or misguided?

Some feel, for example, that if users properly read the descriptions and reviews of these plugins, they wouldn’t deal with the security problems described above. While we feel that’s valid, it’s beyond the average user’s capacity to sit down and read all of the fine print and to cross-reference one plugin with another. But maybe we’re just old-fashioned…

Whichever side of the fence you’re on, let us know by commenting or sharing this piece with a fellow blogger, developer, or WordPress user who could use a gentle nudge in the right direction.

Republished by Imagincreation