WordPress is a very popular Content Management System for bloggers, companies, and individuals. Its ease of use, support, and scope for theme and plugin development make it unique from the rest. However, there are certain disadvantages too for WordPress. In this article, I will explain the Advantages and Disadvantages of WordPress in detail. By the end of it, you will be able to decide whether you should use WordPress on your next project or not.
Advantages of WordPress
- Ease of Installation: WordPress is pretty easy to use. Many web hosting solutions are offering free WordPress installation support if you are unaware of the installation process.
- Ease of Use: WordPress is pretty easy to use. After installation, all you need to create your profile and start using it.
- Support: Google is filled with many WordPress help and support articles. All you need to search your query on Google or WordPress support page.
- Open Source: WordPress is an open-source platform, which means you can expect huge communities and developer support for WordPress themes and plugins.
- Integration: WordPress can be integrated with almost any popular service out there. For example, if you want to automatically publish WordPress posts to your social media, there are services like IFTT.
- Cost Effective: The core version of WordPress is completely free to use and can be installed on any domain. It is one of the best cost-effective methods to start a website.
- SEO Friendly: Even though WordPress can be extremely flexible and customizable, it is also SEO-friendly. Plugins such as Yoast SEO makes it even easier to configure your website to be search engine friendly.
- Themes & Plugins: WordPress has thousands of themes and plugins available in order to customize your website in whatever way you would like. You can also create your own plugin or themes for custom functionality.
- Security: Even though WordPress is known for some bugs, vulnerabilities, and security issues, comparatively, it is one of the most secure Content Management Systems for beginners. Especially if you don’t know how to make your websites secure by default.
- Easy Migration: It is pretty easy to migrate to and from WordPress. No matter which platform you choose, as long as it has a database and media storage, you can easily migrate your website to or from that platform.
Disadvantages of WordPress
- It is Open Source Again: Being Open source has both advantages and disadvantages. Open Source is hacker-friendly; your site is vulnerable to attacks if you use nulled themes and plugins.
- Plugins: WordPress needs Plugins in order to work. If you run a simple blog, some basic plugins are enough for work. For bigger sites related to tech niches and other gadget reviews type sites, some bunch of plugins needed to work. This will create an extra load on your hosting
- MySQL Database: WordPress uses the MySQL database in the backend in order to run. When it comes to hacking, MySQL is vulnerable to hackers.
- Heavy Code: WordPress runs on heavy code; it causes the load on the hosting server. Some basic hosting plans can’t handle the load of WordPress and cause the “error establishing database connection” errors frequently.
- Performance: Even though WordPress can be tweaked to be extremely performant, by default, it could be a bit hard to make it fast on lower resource systems. You might need a caching plugin and additional configuration to make it a bit fast.
- Maintenance: WordPress should be frequently updated and maintained in order to eradicate security flaws and bugs, especially because the platform is coming with a lot of additional features and functions that remain unused by most websites.
- Hosting Requirements: WordPress can be resource-intensive and certain features should be installed prior to running it. You might need a pretty powerful server, especially if you have a lot of traffic coming to your website.
- Learning Curve: This may not be true for everyone. However, for people who are used to other forms of content management systems, getting used to WordPress could be time taking. The newer block editor is especially disliked by the community.
- Customization: In certain areas, WordPress is an extremely flexible and customizable CMS. However, every single aspect of it cannot be customized like other web apps built on React or other frameworks.
- Prone to Threats: Maybe because WordPress is powering more than 40 percent of all the websites on the Internet. It is prone to a lot of hacks and threats. This is not a problem of WordPress itself. However, you can still get hacked if you are not careful enough.
Conclusion
These are the major advantages and disadvantages of WordPress CMS. If you’re planning to use WordPress on your next web project, you should be aware of all the things mentioned above. For beginners, WordPress could be the best option to get started because of its ease of use and beginner-friendly interface. However, it may not be suitable for everyone. So make your decision wisely.
