Pros and Cons of WordPress
Accounts
Free Trial
Projects
SSL
Storage
Domains
Sub-domains
Your Text
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WordPress Advantages
Pros
Excellent Content Management System
Plugins
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
eCommerce Capabilities
Forums
Blogging, Posting, and Creating Content with Ease
Low Cost
Professional Appearance
Updates
Performance
Responsiveness
WordPress Disadvantages
Cons
Difficulty of Using Custom Layouts
Too Many Updates
Lots to Learn
Planning
Hackers
Pros of Using WordPress
1. Excellent Content Management System
The features of WordPress are extensive and all these features create the content management system that WordPress is. Whether you’re creating blog posts, pages, user profiles, and way more… WordPress is an excellent content management system to keep and organize the information you put into your WordPress website.
2. Plugins
There are between 50,000 and 60,000 plugins available (the exact number is unknown to account for premium plugins not listed on the WordPress company website, plus privately non-public built plugins). These plugins have one main central goal and that is to provide WordPress websites with additional functionality. Being able to find the functionality you want with a plugin is more than likely possible and if not, a plugin can probably be developed to suit your needs. You can turn WordPress into a social networking website… using a plugin, or an eCommerce store, a course or educational website, you can build your site with better Search Engine Optimization, and way more… all with plugins.
3. Search Engine Optimization
This could possibly be one of the most important aspects since this is how you will get organic traffic and make more money or get more regular visitors. With the excellent plugins, such as Yoast and Rank Math, Search Engine Optimization is now easier than ever. I remember the days before I knew about WordPress and still, anytime I create a website from scratch, Search Engine Optimization has to be done manually by writing code. It’s a pain, but highly necessary for any successful website. I prefer Rank Math over Yoast because Rank Math offers premium features that Yoast would charge for, completely free.
4. eCommerce Capabilities
I really like this one because now, anyone can own an online store with ease, little bit of effort, and less money spent in website development. If you were to purchase a simple eCommerce (WordPress) website from me, I’d only charge about $250. Some functionality might have additional charges, but either way, this is cheaper than the $5,000 to $20,000 you would have spent before this option was available. eCommerce websites with WordPress are as simple as installing and activating certain themes and plugins, but it’s not “that” simple. Settings have to be adjusted, products added, pages set up, and more. At least there’s not 10 million lines of code to write.
Interesting Fact: Did you know that all of Google’s services combined total 2 billion lines of code?
5. Forums
Forums are a great way to bring a community together and with the vast abilities of WordPress, creating a Forum is now easy with the use of plugins and choosing the right theme. However, although it’s “easy” doesn’t mean it’s a 5 minute project. After installing and activating the appropriate plugins and suitable theme, you’ll need to create pages, optimize settings, and more to ensure the forum acts in an expected manner.
6. Blogging, Posting, and Creating Content
I remember the days before I learned about WordPress and any Content Management Systems. I had to manually write all my content in code. If I wanted a centered paragraph, I had to write <p style=”align:center”>This is my Paragraph</p> – it was annoying. Still is as sometimes when I create a website from scratch, I still have to do that. However, that information is usually static and doesn’t change often. Now, if you want to create content on a regular basis, such as a blog post, the best way is with use of a content management system, or WordPress where creating new posts and formatting that post, is easy. Very rarely will you have to edit the html of a blog post as most formatting options are available in WordPress or through plugins.
7. Low Cost
As you may have heard, WordPress is free. There are premium plugins and themes you may purchase, in many cases, premium themes and plugins have better functionality than their free counterparts, I’ve tried several premium themes and plugins and was amazed at most of them. The theme of this website, Portfolio Web, is a free theme with premium options, which cost $55 and I seriously am considering checking out the premium version. Other than this, you probably have to pay for hosting (generally $3 to $25 per month, depending on your needs) and a domain $12.17 per year from GoDaddy (more or less from other registrars, depending on where you purchase your domain) and you might spend a couple hundred if you need the help of a developer. In my case, I usually charge $75 to $250, which is cheap in comparison to others or non-WordPress types of websites. Websites is easy to setup, especially for an experienced developer, and this helps developers to keep their cost low and still make a profit. If you need a website like the one you’re reading now, I would charge $250 because of the extensiveness of the setup and it would probably take me 2 to 5 days to complete (possibly longer, depending on my current workload).
8. Professional Appearance
This is essentially where themes come in at. With the vast amount of themes available, you’ll be sure to find one that suits your needs with a professional appearance. Themes in most cases are developed by professional developers with years of experience and sometimes a college education. But, not always… anyone can create a theme. With the way WordPress was created, creating themes isn’t really that hard. Every database table can be accessed easily, functions can be written easily, etc. I recommend, first taking a tutorial in PHP and MySQL, and then consider a tutorial on creating a WordPress theme. You might be surprised just how easy it is. Don’t confuse easy with 10 minutes of work. Easy simply means, it’s not hard to figure out… it will be time consuming and you’ll probably have to create hundreds of files (or thousands) to create a really good theme that is also mobile-friendly.
9. Updates
Updates are easy. Literally, you click one button to update plugins, themes, and even the WordPress core files. Updates are delivered automatically, once they enter the repository (indicated by a new version than the version you have), you can click a link that says, “update” and it updates. If you have version 1.05 of a plugin, but the repository says the most recent version is 1.06, you should see an update in your dashboard. Some plugins or hosting providers might offer automatic updates for you. Updates are especially important as these can contain security and bug fixes, as well as new and updated features. Every time I update my plugins, I enjoy reading the changelog so that I can see what changes I am getting. By doing this, I might be finding out about a new feature or bug fix that I never would have known existed if I didn’t read the changelog.
10. Performance
Just like SEO, this could potentially be one of the most important aspects as well. Performance is good for your user satisfaction, your bounce rate (how many people leave without venturing through your website), the money and conversions you make, and also Search Engine Optimization. Google and other search engines use your website’s performance to rank you in the search engines. How often do you Google something and the first result takes 23 seconds to load? Probably never or rarely. The first result earned their position and part of that is probably due to their performance, such as speed. With WordPress, most themes are probably optimized for performance and usually, a WordPress website only starts to slow down after plugins are installed or large images are placed. With WordPress plugins, such as Autoptimize and reSmush.it, you can optimize for speed and performance. I would also reconsider using plugins that add a heavy load to the website. Also, try using a simple theme over an extravagant theme with lots of unnecessary animations and bloat. When I chose Portfolio Web for this website, I almost reconsidered because of the animations on the homepage, but the simpleness of the rest of the website essentially made the website still perform well and so far, I am happy with my decision. If you need a portfolio-type of website, excellent for actors, authors, artists, or 1-person sole proprietor businesses, I would highly recommend Portfolio Web. Confused with the many options you have? I’ll set it up for you… only $250.
11. Responsiveness
This is a very important feature as well. Many themes offer responsiveness and if not, usually there are AMP plugins available to turn your website into a mobile-friendly, tablet-friendly, laptop-friendly, desktop-friendly, and even smart tv-friendly website.
Interesting Fact: Did you know that 53% of all web traffic in 2019 came from mobile devices?
That is more than half of all web traffic, therefore, in today’s society, you need to be mobile-friendly or you will be missing out on a lot of traffic or high bounce rate when a mobile user visits your ugly website. It’ll be ugly on a mobile device if it’s not mobile-friendly.
Cons of Using WordPress
1. Difficulty of Using Custom Layouts
Depending on the theme you choose, there might be limited options for custom layouts, and if they’re offered, navigating through the options might be a big task in itself.
2. Too Many Updates
I remember once when I had 55 plugins on a WordPress site. Don’t worry, it wasn’t poor decisions, most of them were necessary for that website. Almost everyday, I had between 25 and 35 updates. This is not only time consuming, but also, when you’re updating, WordPress enters maintenance mode… which is seen by all of your website visitors.
3. Lots to Learn
Let’s face it, WordPress is a vast and complex system. You have to learn about optimizing settings, installing & activating plugins, installing & activating themes, finding plugins you never knew existed, optimizing plugins & themes, creating pages and posts, styling/formatting posts, custom CSS, customizing the theme, adding functions to functions.php, and way more to learn. But don’t worry, that’s why you have us.
4. Planning
WordPress takes a lot of planning. Which plugins and functionality you want, what theme you want, do the plugins work well with the particular theme (Learning Management System for example should use a theme specific to online courses and education). Trust me, I created a course website and at first, the theme I used didn’t work well with the LMS plugins. What to blog about, frequency of blogging, Search Engine Optimization, etc. It all has to be planned out for an efficient website.
5. Hackers and Spammers
WordPress websites are high targets for hackers and spammers because an inexperienced website owner, might not have incorporated the proper security plugins and hackers & spammers know that. I’ve created some WordPress websites and prior to installing security plugins, I’d be bombarded with comments like, “This is an excellent idea, thanks for the post”, which made zero sense to the post the comment was on. These are usually accompanied with websites and spam-looking email addresses. Spam can be reduced or eliminated with plugins such as Akismet, which used to be free, but now has a low cost to it. Also, WordPress is easy to hack if the security plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts Reloaded are installed & activated. My WordPress websites are the only ones to ever be hacked or receive spam. I’ve created multiple non-WordPress websites from scratch, and not one single one has ever received spam or been hacked.
Conclusion
In this list, there were 11 pros and 5 cons. Each of the pros outweigh the cons as the cons can be overcome or fixed with the use of plugins. Overall, I would say that WordPress is definitely worth it’s price… free. And some of the premium plugins and themes are definitely worth their price. Even paying for developers would be worth it as WordPress developers often charge a fraction of the price they would charge if they custom coded an entire website. This website you’re reading, I would charge about $250 for. If I was to make a similar looking, similar functional non-WordPress website from scratch, to match this website, I would charge about $2,500… that’s ten times the price. You also wouldn’t get some of the same features, such as Elementor, which is a drag and drop visual page builder. Long story short, need to save money? Need a website up quickly? Need some awesome functionality? Need to create your own posts & content without hiring content writers and web developers? Choose WordPress.
