WordPress vs Frameworks

In this day and age where modern-day web development frameworks (and libraries) are the order of the day, it is hard to remember a time before all this noise about them as there seems to be a library and framework for just about any kind of task and app you might want to accomplish as a developer but we are going to focus on WordPress and why it is still so popular speaking mostly based on my experience. 

What is WordPress

WordPress is basically a content management system which was first intended as a blogging platform mostly. Although, WordPress has grown to become the single most popular technology powering the web today (no, it does not react). A study by W3Tech puts its total market share at 36.8% of all websites. So, why is WordPress so popular given the myriad of other popular and awesome web development frameworks and even other CMS platforms. What makes it stand out and gain users favour? Well, let’s look at some points.

It’s not all rosy

I have a bit of experience with WordPress and I can say it has its moments but like any other popular technology, it has its fair share of issues and criticisms. The most popular ones you are likely to encounter will be the performance and security issues.
WordPress is built on a PHP backend which means that it inherited a lot of the security issues in PHP coupled with the fact that it could get bloated very quickly if you don’t mind the way you install themes and plugins as even uninstalling them sometimes does not remove all their files completely.
Another issue that usually crops up is that it doesn’t have a built-in backup system and given that the regular updates on WordPress including could break your site, this is a somewhat big omission.
An issue that usually gets cited as a con is the fact that WordPress is the target of most internet hackers and bots who are constantly scraping the internet and trying to gain unauthorised access to your website. A WordPress website I built a while ago got a lot of scary attempts by those and I only found out because I had the WordPress cybersecurity plugin installed. It isn’t entirely surprising that WordPress is a major target by hackers on the internet especially when you consider the fact that it is the most popular technology on the internet. Hackers will always prefer products with the highest market share so as to increase their chances of success.
Lastly, a very pressing issue with WordPress is related to performance, the CMS could get bloated easily as earlier mentioned if special care is not taken and it also has a hard time coping with heavy traffic especially when you realise that most people using WordPress also opt for cheap hosting plans due to budget constraints.

The Pros

Relatively easy to use
WordPress is a great piece of technology and it helped me to build fully functional websites even before I learnt JavaScript. The promise of building your own website for free by yourself or at a very low cost is quite enticing for non-developers and the less technical inclined who couldn’t care any less about programming as a whole. I would go as far as saying that this is the main advantage of the platform in general as not everyone who needs a website has the time to learn to code one or enough resources to pay someone else to build it out for them.
Free themes and Plugins
WordPress also has a wide variety of beautiful paid and free premade themes and plugins which can be used by anyone as they mostly offer just a drag and drop interface to aid you to design a beautiful website in no time and while you can sometimes write your own custom CSS, HTML or even JavaScript, it is not required to use the full functionality of the platform.
Community Support
This point is valid for any popular piece of technology as it garners community and developers’ support which means there is no shortage of learning resources and materials on the internets to help you get started and also help with troubleshooting so you will hardly feel alone and lost if you opt to go with WordPress. The popularity of any technology is usually a double-edged sword as on one hand, it helps to create and build reliable community support while on the other hand, it becomes the biggest and logical target for hackers. This also means that security flaws which may be exploited by hackers will be easily identified and fixed by the huge community.

Conclusion

Websites can be built in a lot of ways and there is no shortage of way easier zero-code platforms to use or other more technical frameworks/libraries like Angular, React, Node.js and more recently Deno amongst other much more direct rivals like Joomla and Drupal etc. But all these usually have restrictions and there is a very limited number of customisations which can be done and unless you are building your own WordPress theme that limitation may affect you. At the end of the day, the numbers speak for themselves and the team behind WordPress must be doing something right because the internet is ripe with ruthless cut-throat competition and their ability to keep others at bay after all these years is quite intriguing.
 

 Written by Sumaila Bello