According to reviews and stats, WordPress is the most popular website builder platform. However, is it the best choice for your website?
Over the last few years, OSM’s development team has created many custom-code websites and crafted even more by using website builders, such as WordPress. Therefore, we’ve decided to wrap up our experience into an in-depth review (with all pros and cons) that would help you to decide is WordPress the right solution for your needs.
Just a quick disclaimer: this review is about WordPress.org content management system, not the WordPress.com blog hosting service.
What’s the Catch With WordPress?
At the moment, WordPress powers about 33% of all websites on the internet – to be more precise that’s several million websites. Worldwide. We are sure that nobody expected the boost of this CMS back in 2003 when it was just a simple blogging platform.
What’s the secret ingredient that WordPress has compared to Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, and other website builders.? To put it simply: you can easily build any type of website using WordPress. Furthermore, it is open-source software, free for everyone who downloads and installs it. Well, perhaps the CMS itself is free but you should count on additional costs such as hosting, domain name, themes, plugins, etc.
Can You Make any Kind of Website Using WordPress?
Yes. WordPress is so flexible that it can be used to create almost any kind of website. Its flexibility is perhaps the main reason why is it so popular.
Use WordPress to make a (small) business website, to write a blog, create an e-commerce store, a podcasting website, personal portfolio, to run a membership site, or a marketplace – there’s probably a suitable plugin for each one of these. In addition, if a plugin can’t fulfill all of your needs, a developer certainly can.
How Does WordPress Work?
Unlike many other builders, WordPress allows data portability. It keeps content, design, and functionality separate from each other so, for example, you can add or edit content without affecting the design. Here’s how:
How to Add Content in WordPress?
When working in WordPress, you can easily add new content using the post editor that has two forms. The first form is the Visual editor. It is very easy to use and comes with some basic formatting features: change your font’s style, color, size, add bullets, align your text, etc.
However, if you need additional edits, you can switch to the Text editor where you can make all needed edits writing HTML.
The WordPress content editor doesn’t have drag&drop features like most of the builders do. However, you can use one of the WordPress page builders, such as Elementor, if you prefer to craft your site this way.
How to Manage Your Website’s Appearance in WordPress?
To manage the appearance of a website, WordPress uses a templating engine. This engine allows developers to create Themes, pre-made templates. There are so many themes available on the market, from free to paid (premium). If you don’t find a suitable one in the WordPress theme directory, check out Theme forest and other third-party providers.
Depending on the theme you chose, there are settings to use in order to customize the theme according to your site’s needs (the customization options vary from theme to theme).
If you don’t find a suitable theme, you can always hire a professional to create a custom WordPress theme from scratch.
How to Extend WordPress With Plugins?
As mentioned before, whatever you wish your website to do can probably be done with a suitable WordPress plugin. At the moment, there are more than 55,000 plugins available. That’s why we say that there’s a very good chance that there is already a plugin for the feature you need.
To get a better understanding of what are plugins let’s compare them to mobile apps. Just install WordPress plugins to add a new feature to your website. Plugins are often cited as the main reason why website owners choose WordPress over its competitors.
Check out our post Ultimate List of 20+ Best WordPress Plugins (2020) for our personal plugin recommendations.
Let’s be Honest Now: Pros and Cons of Handling WordPress?
Pro’s:
If you ask us, the advantages of using WordPress are numerous. Here’s a quick summary:
- It’s free and flexible
- You are not tied to a hosting service
- There’s access to a huge collection of plugins, extensions, add-ons, etc.
- It is SEO friendly
- Very customizable
- Easily connect other tools such as email marketing software, SEO tools, CRM, etc.
- A wide choice of pre-made themes
- The editors are very easy to manage
Why You Should Use WordPress?
- You can make a professional website on a tight budget
- There are a bunch of tutorials available to learn the basics
- You can have complete freedom over your website
- If you are running a blog or a personal website you can easily monetize it
Cons:
Of course, WordPress has some disadvantages. Here are some to keep in mind:
- You need to take care of your website’s security
- Backups and updates are needed on a regular basis
- By default, it doesn’t come with a drag&drop builder
- Even though you don’t need to learn to code, some basic HTML and CSS will come in handy
Why You Shouldn’t Use WordPress?
- You don’t plan to use any third-party services for monetizing your blog
- You are not keen on learning to code or enabling features
- You don’t want to worry about updates and backups
- You just need a small website to present you/your business
How to Get Started?
If you decided, after reading this article, that WordPress is the right choice for your website there are two ways to start leveraging it. First, you should pick a domain and a hosting service and find a good step-by-step tutorial on how to craft a website with WordPress.
Or, you can choose to talk with an OSM development team that will provide you with an affordable solution for a website you always wanted to have. Just name it and we’ll build it!
