January 5, 2016
This blog post is going to be controversial. I'm going to be talking about my reasons why you shouldn't use WordPress. Okay, so I'm going to backtrack ever so slightly from that. The first reason is a bit of a soft touch one, but when you're going in to meet a web developer or designer for the first time, you should leave it up to recommend the chosen CMS platform which they use.
The reason behind that is because they've probably built 100's of websites over their time as a web developer, and they will know best what solution matches up with the problems that your business is facing. So if you just march straight into the room and tell them that you want a WordPress website, you might be shooting your foot because that might not be the best solution for you. It might just be that you need to give that developer the opportunity to maybe suggest some alternative solutions to you, which might work better for your business.
Buy a copy of my #1 best selling book, Online Business Startup from Amazon.
At the end of the day, this game is about making money and being an entrepreneur. You want a website which is going to reflect your business well, regardless of whether that's built on WordPress or another platform. That's just my caveat to start off with.
My first reason why you shouldn't choose WordPress is because it's a supercharged blogging platform. It was only ever designed as a blog and then, over the years, more and more plugins got built for it. All of a sudden, now, it's turned into this great big CMS platform that everybody talks about. Ultimately, it's not an enterprise-level CMS platform. If you're serious about your business and you know that it's going to get scale. WordPress isn’t a suitable platform.
WordPress has its place in terms of solving some time and cost issues, which small businesses might have working against them. But if you're serious about your business and you think it's going to get scale, then I would suggest choosing an enterprise-level CMS platform.
WordPress does work to a certain point, but it lacks a lot of inherent functionality, which I feel a CMS platform should have. The functionality it is lacking tends to be the front end quality and the user experience that your customers are going to get when they look at a WordPress website. In my opinion, a CMS platform should be inherently secure, yet with WordPress, you have to install at least two plugins in order to make sure that it is secure. That's just a joke! I mean that says to me that WordPress isn't a serious CMS platform. Are you serious about your business?
The same goes for if you want to create a high performing website where the pages load instantly. Again, you've got to install a whole series of plugins in order to improve site performance and load speeds, and, even then, the plugins don't always talk to one another. I've seen WordPress websites that have got all of the caching turned on and all of the security patches installed. Yet when somebody tries to switch on a Content Distribution Network (CDN), which turbocharges any normal website, the WordPress website fails. This is not good for any business because it's just a poor user experience. You could lose customers over something like this! So take it seriously.
There are thousands of plugins available for WordPress. Many of them are built by very good programmers. Those I don't have a problem with. Some of them are going to be developed by programmers who have very bad habits. Now, do you want a website built on WordPress with a plugin installed by somebody with bad programming habits? The likelihood is that, you install that plugin, it's going to break the rest of your website, and if you're not a developer, you're not going to be able to fix it.
What this means is that those plugins probably contain lots of errors, poor site functionality or don't meet standards compliance. All of these things have an importance when it comes to search engine optimisation. What does Google think of your website, and what do your customers think of your website? If it's not standards compliant, if it's not accessible, if it's not responsive, Google is going to mark your website’s PageRank down. Do you really want that to happen with your website? I've seen so many, I'd say 99% of the WordPress enabled websites out there, have all of these issues with them: standards compliance, accessibility, responsiveness. Look it up!
You can't always guarantee, as well, that WordPress developers build their sites to a high standard. Okay, so you may eventually be handing your website over to a developer, but those plugins that you've installed on there, are they any good? Are you going to end up spending two or three times the amount of money having those problems fixed? And it might be that those plugins are just a bit buggy and could probably be fixed, but those poor programmers may not be commenting their code, so you've got no idea what's going on.
"My friend's friend told me that WordPress is the best thing since sliced bread” and, “I built my website myself using WordPress." Are statement I commonly hear about DIY website builders. A lot of people don't realise, when they're asking for WordPress, that there are alternatives out there. It's tunnel vision. WordPress is all they want.
If you want to build a relationship with your web designer, perhaps let them suggest a platform, especially if you're very specific about what outcomes you want out of this. If you want your website to be highly optimised for Google, to be quick loading, load on mobile devices without any problems, then maybe you want to consider some of the alternatives to WordPress, or even having a custom CMS platform built for your website.
Finally, I think if you're just focused purely, solely on having a WordPress site, then there are lots of WordPress developers out there. I suggest you go and find somebody who specialises purely in WordPress websites. They will understand how the plugins work and which plugins are going to be best suited to your website.
I know a couple of brilliant WordPress developers, and whenever I get asked for a WordPress website, I've always got a couple of great guys, who I know, to recommend and refer work to.
When I speak to customers about optimising their website, from a performance perspective, especially, I know that the two guys who I use to build WordPress websites know how to make WordPress work for them.
Phew! Glad I've got that off my plate! That's been in there for a little while, and I just had to get it out there. But don't get me wrong; I know that WordPress has its place. There's a lot of great things that you can do with WordPress. There are thousands of plugins available which do a multitude of things.
If you want a cheap website, set up quickly, that you can install e-commerce plugins onto, with a customisable theme, then it's the perfect platform for small business. But don't forget: if you're going to go enterprise and scale your business, then maybe look for something else, or look for a specialist WordPress developer.
Why I don't like WordPress:
The Entrepreneurs Guide to Launching a Fast, Lean and Profitable Online Venture.
This is where the magic happens.
