After a dozen years, WordPress is still my go-to CMS, design and development platform.
May 13, 2021
After a dozen years, WordPress is still my go-to CMS, design and development platform.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with WordPress
As a digital marketing firm, one of whose core services is web design, we use WordPress exclusively for our client websites, as well as for our own. At this point, WordPress powers around 40% of websites on the entire Internet and has come to be the 'gold standard' for content management systems when it comes to search engine friendliness and design/development flexibility.
- The rock solid architecture and code base is great alone, but the open source nature of WordPress that has fostered a massive global community of 3rd party developers who create plugins, add-ons and enhancements, both functional and design related, is amazing.
- WordPress is extremely easy to install and, because it's become the de facto CMS for most websites, many hosting companies make installing it even easier with 'push button' tools inside the hosting account that allow you to install it without any technical experience or need to access the actual directory via FTP etc.
- When working with client websites, another feature I really appreciate is WordPress' ease of migration. I build a client website on my own server, and then move it to the client's hosting account when it's complete and ready to go live. I use a simple plugin that allows me to do this in just a few clicks from the front-end WordPress dashboard, without the need to access the database or hosting backend.
- While the amazing WordPress developer community has created hundreds of useful plugins for adding functionality like duplication pages and posts, changing the display order of pages and posts in the dashboard and migrating a site, it would be nice if WordPress would create those features (and others) built into the platform. It can be cumbersome to install so many plugins (and shouldn't be necessary for WordPress-specific functions related to administrating the WordPress platform itself.
- Another major shortcoming that's frustrated me for years is the extremely limited functionality of the Media Library. For a site that has lots of media (images, videos, etc.) it's incredibly difficult to organize and manage. There really needs to be a folder system to separate, group and search for media items. I've tried countless 3rd party plugins that try to overcome this, but have yet to find one that is effective as well as drag and drop easy.
- Because of the vast, almost 'wild west' nature of the WordPress 3rd party plugin landscape, it's sometimes difficult to use multiple plugins that all play nicely together. Because of the required troubleshooting, research on alternative plugins, testing, etc. I've often found my web design end up taking much longer to deliver than I initially estimated, which can cut deep into my profitability as a contractor who charges on a flat-fee basis for web design.
- On the upside, because WordPress sites are easy to clone and migrate, I do appreciate the ability to save myself some time when I can by spinning out a copy of a completed website I've already created as a starting point, and then modifying and customizing the design from there, saving a lot of time on setup and basic configuration, etc.
While still being relatively user-friendly (or at least pretty easy to learn the basics), WordPress blows the other hosted, 'out of the box' platforms like Wix and Squarespace out of the water. They simply can't compete when it comes to customizability, especially back-end and functionality customization, like installation of 3rd part analytics and marketing software (like conversion and visitor tracking software, analytics, etc.). Joomla was a decent standalone website framework and CMS that was flexible and 'developer-friendly' with advanced user controls, but simply doesn't have the extensibility that WordPress' massive ecosystem of 3rd party plugins, themes and support communities... which is why Joomla (as the second most used CMS) only has about 5% of the market share of websites.
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