Come for the Price, Stay for the Community
January 18, 2018

Come for the Price, Stay for the Community

Benjamin Hale | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with WordPress

We use WordPress to create and maintain websites for multiple universities across the country. These websites are used to capture prospective students contact information and inform them about our education programs. We also use WordPress for some of our internal websites. This is our main source for any public facing, robust website we created for ourselves or our school partners.
  • WordPress is quick to implement and have up and running. The combination of the quick installation to the user-friendly interface of the back end, makes WordPress a great tool for experts and novices alike.
  • There is a huge community of developers and experts to provide customization and tips for any website. A quick Google search will find numerous solutions to most WordPress and website issues that may arise.
  • Plugins everywhere! This is great because there are options for plugins. Some other CMS solutions offer one or two options for different features, but WordPress has multiple options and allows you to find free and more premium options.
  • Because it is built using free and open source platforms, there are no additional software or specialty hardware costs needed to get a website up and running. Just a basic website package will do.
  • Security can be an issue, because you are dealing with both core WordPress code, and any plugin code. WordPress is usually quick with updates, and does a good job of keeping up on any possible security issues. But, plugins can be a different story. Add to that, as one of the largest CMS systems around, it is often a target of attackers.
  • The plugin marketplace can be a minefield. While there is a review process, we find that we have to be very vigilant in looking for plugins that are actively being patched and updated.
  • The extensible of WordPress can make it slow. If we are not careful with our plugins and customizations, we can sometimes create sites that do not perform up to web standards.
  • Zero/low up front cost. (Depends on plugins we choose to buy.)
  • Loads of talent to help us create and maintain the site.
  • Quick turnaround when launching new sites and updating existing sites resulting in less downtime.
  • Need to monitor for updates and verify updates don't break plugins or customization.
We selected WordPress because of the community, flexibility, and cost. With the main reason being the community and support system that exists. This means we can find talent to make custom plugins, customize themes, and maintain the website easily and on a reasonable budget.
WordPress is well suited to most conventional or eCommerce websites. There are features to use the built in database for data driven sections of websites, like a store finder. The flexibility of WordPress can help make it a good choice for almost any website type, but if someone is looking for a very simple one or two page website that will not change much, WordPress may be overkill.

WordPress Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG editor
8
Code quality / cleanliness
9
Admin section
9
Page templates
7
Library of website themes
10
Mobile optimization / responsive design
7
Publishing workflow
9
Form generator
8
Content taxonomy
10
SEO support
10
Bulk management
9
Availability / breadth of extensions
10
Community / comment management
10
API
Not Rated
Internationalization / multi-language
Not Rated
Role-based user permissions
9