Is WordPress the right solution for your next website?
Martijn van der Pol
June 8, 2020
WordPress is by far the most popular CMS. It’s easy to use and installable on basically any hosting provider. This makes it a perfect choice for starters who just want to build a website fast, but not want to build a fast website. Let me explain.
WordPress in short
The initial release date of WordPress was May 27, 2003. This means WordPress is (almost) 17 years old already! Don’t get me wrong, age doesn't matter when it comes to tech - innovation does. Within those 17 years of existence, WordPress has grown to be the go-to CMS solution for many (small) businesses, blogs and personal websites. The WordPress principle is the same as it was back in 2003 though; websites built on top of WordPress specific templates which are written in PHP.
Use-Cases
Why would you use WordPress in 2020? There are plenty of other CMS solutions that may suit a specific use-case better. WordPress is great for a lot of use-cases, because you can basically build anything with it. One big advantage is that non-tech savvy people can choose a template and directly start working with it. But what if you don’t want a commonly used template, but something truly unique? - That’s where you are going to need some coding skills to make your own WordPress specific PHP template.
Are you a casual food blogger that just wants to write about your daily food adventures? - WordPress is your friend. Are you someone who wants to take their business online? WordPress can be your friend, but it depends on what you want to achieve. Being unique will make you stand out among the competition, and having an overused WordPress template will not help you.
Alternative
WordPress basically dominated the world wide web. I often encounter people who immediately think about WordPress when I start talking websites or Content Management Systems. But why? There are plenty of alternatives for creating websites and managing content! I will highlight one of my personal favorites; a statically generated website, using a headless CMS.
I’m a big fan of not overthinking stuff. Is your goal to have a simple informative website with content that barely changes? If so, why would you choose a WordPress website, when a static website will do the trick even better? In contrast to a WordPress website, a static site has no rendering times, no maintenance and it’s easily deployable on a Content Delivery Network (CDN) which makes the website “super-duper” fast!
Does that mean you can’t change the content afterwards? Of course not, but it depends if it’s needed. You can easily host a server which runs a headless CMS. The site will be generated based on the data provided by the headless CMS. In comparison to WordPress, a static site doesn’t query any databases for data, because that only happens once while generating the static pages.
On the other hand, if there’s no need to change the content often, it would be cheaper to pay a developer to make a content change then paying server costs every month. It all depends on your use-case and available budget.
Conclusion
You can easily build websites using WordPress. But if you don’t have the knowledge to create a custom WordPress PHP template, you are stuck with choosing an overused template which decreases your chances of standing out among competitors. WordPress also requires a lot of maintenance; updating plugins, PHP versions, databases and of course WordPress itself.
Just think thoroughly about the use-case. Do you want complete freedom in regards to the design, UX and speed of your website? If so, WordPress isn’t the answer and you should probably contact us. We create fast, beautiful custom designed websites that just work 😇