Examining Wordpress As A CMS: Should You Or Shouldn’t You?

WordPress was developed by members of the B2/Cafelog team and released for general use in 2001. Having been designed primarily as a blogging platform, it rapidly gained widespread popularity as a complete content management system (CMS). Recent research has revealed that just under 16% of the world’s websites run on WordPress. It also has a much greater share of the CMS market than rival utilities such as Joomla and Droopal. If you’re still unsure of the CMS capabilities of WordPress then it would be worth having a read of this post.

Short Term Savings V Medium Term Costs

Before we move on to a thorough technical analysis it is worth pointing out that you do have the option of installing WordPress for free. This means that you can try out the various blogging features and the different themes before deciding to purchase any upgrades. The downside is that you may have to pay additional hosting fees after opting for the integration of WordPress. You may also have to pay extra for exclusive themes and plugins from the vast WordPress database.

Simple to Install But Vulnerable To Hacks

Those of you who have decided to try WordPress as a CMS may be interested to hear that installation is relatively simple. If you lack coding knowledge then you can go ahead and choose a basic one-click installation. Alternatively you might opt to delve behind the scenes as part of a manual installation. If you do select the DIY option then you will need to gain access to an FTP client or shell. You will also be required to enter some data via one of the desktop text editing programmes.

The user-friendly nature of WordPress has made it a popular choice among webmasters all over the world. However, there are some downsides to the widespread take up of this CMS. One of the main issues is that websites using WordPress have become the focus of malicious hackers. A number of users have unknowingly downloaded ’bad’ plugins and failed to make the necessary updates as a means of protecting their sites.

Online Support For A CMS That Can Be Confusing

The WordPress developers have made a sustained effort to ensure that their platform is safe. They’ve released a series of updates, the latest version being WordPress 3.5.1. Users who do encounter problems with the platform are able to access various online support portals and extensive sources of information. You’ll find a number of WordPress experts who dedicate their time to solving different problems at support.

It’s already been mentioned that WordPress is fairly easy to install. However, the user is required to spend a great deal of time finding out about the different features and making minor adjustments if they want their websites to look just right. It may sometimes be necessary to read extensive and potentially confusing tutorials before you are able to make all important website updates. Of course the same would be true if you decided to use Joomla or Magento.

Positives & Negatives Of WordPress Plugins & Theme
When it comes to plug-ins and themes WordPress is most definitely the champion CMS. Users are able to build websites that have a vintage or futuristic feel. They have the option of customosing background images and integrating links to social media profiles. It is also possible to install plugins for the identification of comment spam and the creation of SEO friendly sitemaps. Developments are constantly being made to the WordPress repository, which contains over twenty thousand plugins at present.

Unfortunately some webmasters are so excited about the vast range of plugins that they install too many at once. This can cause a noticeable increase in page loading times, which may lead to the general dissatisfaction of website visitors. It is also worth pointing out that any plugins which are deleted by the site owner will leave a footprint. So it’s best to research the different plugins and only install those that are definitely going to be of use.

First Choice For SEO But Not For Ecommerce

One of the plugins that you should definitely consider installing is the all-in-one SEO pack. This will help with the optimisation of title tags, meta descriptions and keyword lists. It is one of the many tools that can aid in the attainment of high website rankings. The crawlability of regularly updated WordPress sites is also a big plus for major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Although WordPress is recognised as a winner in terms of SEO, it doesn’t have the same ecommerce potential as CMS utilities such as Magento. Users often start out with basic WordPress stores and then realise the benefits of customisation via the rival CMS. At the end of the day it comes down to the goals that you set in the creation of your website. If you’re a keen blogger and content developer then WordPress is the perfect choice. If you want to sell products and regularly customise your website interface then it may be worth checking out the alternatives.

Post by
This article was contributed by Hudson & Yorke; an international management consultancy in the specialist area of communications technology.