Why the World wants WordPress?
WordPress is relatively easy to work with. Even many experienced web designers can set up a WordPress site quicker than they’d a static site built traditionally. It is the go-to platform for newbie web “designers” that don’t really know how to code a site; just drag and drop widgets onto a pre-made template and you are done! Well this isn’t always the case as there are plenty of benefits and cons to using WordPress for your website.
So what are the benefits and what are some of the common disadvantages when it comes to using WordPress?
First of all let’s take a look at the advantages.
One of the biggest pros to using WordPress is that it is 100% free! Not only that but there are literally, no major bugs in the system, and when some come out, Automattic, (the leader developer) has always been quick into addressing the issues and coming out with a solution. Among the easy to spot advantages, when installing WordPress for the first time, is that it is easy to install and configure, and, when is kept simple, also very stable. Another advantage is that it comes with all of the tools that you would ever need to build a professional looking web site. There are several disadvantages when it comes to using WordPress, but the biggest pros are its easy installation and its stability. One disadvantage is that there are a ton of plug-ins available that may not be useful.
Perhaps the main advantage of using WordPress as the platform of your choice is that there is thousands of plugins to choose from and many if not almost all of them are free to use or at least offer both a free and a paid version. This also counts for the many thousands of themes available on wordpress.org website. Literally there is anything you might ever need, and not necessarily your site have to be a blog, actually in recent years we have seen many big names in the corporate world using WordPress as the Content Management System of choice.
Now for the cons.
There are also cons when using WordPress, we’ll just discuss a few of the main ones here:
Incredibly enough, one of the biggest con is that there are a ton of plug-ins to choose from that may not be useful to your site, Indeed some are really made from developers that had a good idea in mind and some time to spare but then got caught off with some other jobs and abandoned their project. It is not unusual to see plugins that have not been updated in years, and this ofcourse is a security risk, nobody should install a plugin that hasn’t been updated for years.
Obviously, one of the best way to find out if a plugin is useful for your purposes is to read the read me file that comes with the plugin. I normally also check how many request of support the developer was able to answer and how nay have been closed as solved. This last one will show you how dedicated the developer is to his cause.
There are several risks when using WordPress. Because of its notoriety it is now also the most attractive platform to exploit for hackers and hackers wannabes. In order to stay secure you should set up your WordPress website with Backup and Security software available both free and on a premium offer.