Is WordPress the right choice for your business?

We have a lot of discussions at Studio44 HQ about the right choice of platform, particularly when clients make specific requests for platforms during the tendering process. In the vast majority of cases, the platform of choice is Wordpress.

Before kicking off, it’s worth noting that there are two flavours of WordPress. The first, WordPress.com is a hosted platform-as-a-service, meaning that it is updated automatically and limited to a relatively small number of (more secure) plugins and themes. The second, WordPress.org, is the WordPress package available as a download for self-hosting and installation. For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll be focusing on WordPress.org. The hosted version is great for small, personal sites and blogs, but the highly limited degree of customisation available makes it unworkable for commercial projects.

I think WordPress can be brilliant. It offers a wonderfully simple installation process, meaning you can be up-and-running with a new site within minutes. This is very appealing, and certainly offers a much cheaper route to getting online. There are thousands of plugins and themes available, offering you a choice of looks and functionality that would be incredibly expensive and time-consuming to craft from scratch.

However, the simplicity often belies the potential pitfalls in the platform…

Creativity
We pride ourselves as an agency on starting every project from scratch. A truly blank canvas. We believe this is the only way to start. Every company, school or organisation we work with is unique. A template cannot truly represent any organisation that is serious about their online presence. It’s certainly more time-consuming, and, as a result, more expensive, but we believe any business that values their brand will value NOT having a template site.

What’s worse is that we’ve come across situations where clients believe their sites to be unique – not realising their agency had used a $50 template, and charged them “bespoke rates” for the privilege – ouch!

Security
This is the big one. As I mentioned earlier, the key advantage of WordPress.com is that it is updated automatically. A terrifying number of self-hosted WordPress sites are not kept up-to-date, and this is where issues start to arise.

Because WordPress is open source, the code is free to view. This is great in many ways, as it allows developers to extend and enhance the software in almost any way imaginable. The downside is that any bugs or flaws are visible, and can be exploited by those with malicious intent. This often results in site content being deleted, site visitors being redirected to malicious sites or infected sites generating hundreds of thousands of spam emails. None of which are good for business!

You could also end up with a real problem if you use plugins – as happened twice already this year when a plugin that was on 200,000 WordPress websites became vulnerable as well as one installed on 80,000 websites. If this happens your website’s data and security can be very much at risk.

All websites are vulnerable to some degree, but the risk is much higher when using an open source platform. So – your site may have been cheap, but it’s critical to factor in a higher on-going cost to ensure it is maintained and upgraded on a regular basis.

Site Features
Although there are a massive number of plugins available, we’ve often found clients trying to “shoehorn” plugins to suit their requirements. If a plugin isn’t quite right for the task, they end up changing their processes to suit the plugin.

Similarly, when it comes to WordPress upgrades, it’s not uncommon for themes or plugins to break, requiring further work to fix them, and the potential of affecting the core functionality and availability of your site.

We start every project with a requirements brief, ensuring we understand the requirements and that the solution we deliver addresses those requirements exactly.

Are yoooou a web designer?
We are firm believers in sticking to what we do best. We don’t do IT support or offer financial advice. We design websites. In the same way that I’d never consider trying to run our own payroll, I struggle to understand why businesses try to create their own websites. They should be focusing on running their business, and doing what they are best at! With our Content Management System (CMS), making on-going updates is quick, easy and free!

Support
Which leads nicely on to support! WordPress is community-supported, which essentially means Google, support forums and trying to do-it-yourself. By contrast, we believe in supporting every site that we launch. A problem with your site shouldn’t be your problem to fix – it should be ours.

Search Engine Optimisation
A lot of people are fooled into believing that the many search engine optimisation (SEO) plugins available are a one-size-fits all “fix” to “doing” SEO. They’re pretty good, and can achieve measurable results. However, nothing beats completely customisable control you’ll have over a bespoke site, meaning the results will never be quite so good.

Depending on how they’re built, many WordPress websites can be unnecessarily heavy in terms of site features which slows your website down – and we know the importance of site speed on SEO performance.

So, in summary, WordPress is a great tool for certain jobs. However, as a platform choice, it’s well worth doing some research and ensuring the potential downsides are understood. The areas of concern I have highlighted almost all result in potential downtime, additional cost or more major business risks.

We’re always very happy to demonstrate how our process works, and how our bespoke Content Management System (CMS) lines up against WordPress. Just give us a call – and see if you agree with me!