Item: WordPress
Rating: 8
Author: Taylor Morgan

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our professional services department began using WordPress to create custom client websites 5-6 years ago. It provides a consistent framework for our projects, allowing us to create custom solutions while providing a solid, secure, and user-friendly experience for our customers.

Pros and Cons

In-depth customization
Well-developed ecosystem
Open-source

Opinionated development direction
Frequent bugs / security flaws requiring updates
Bloated if not using all features

Return on Investment

Open source and easy to extend
Custom development using it must share the open-source license

Alternatives Considered

Joomla! and Drupal

WordPress is perhaps the best developed and most active community simply for its sheer size. It is extendable and has plentiful existing extensions.

Key Insights

Do you think WordPress delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with WordPress's feature set?

Yes

Did WordPress live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of WordPress go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy WordPress again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Cyberduck, Adobe Illustrator CC

Likelihood to Recommend

WordPress is well-suited for custom client work when developers understand the underlying architecture, and how to expand and redirect it. It simultaneously targets content-creators with no development background, and can do this moderately with user-friendly features and a plethora of pre-created plugins and themes. However, users attempting to create websites without any coding inevitably come across frustrations and obstacles that are more difficult to overcome than they seem.

With the help of knowledgeable developers to create custom themes, templates, and functionality, it can quite flexibly be extended to support custom needs. It it too bloated, however, to easily lend itself to advanced web application development.

Solid, easily-extendable content management system

Overall Satisfaction with WordPress