Why wordpress?

Why not Wordpress?

Without a doubt the most popular content management system in use today is Wordpress. It is said that 30% of the whole internet is run by WordPress. One of the reasons why WordPress became so popular is that it can be installed by anybody without any technical knowledge in under 5 minutes. Another reason is speed of development. As there is such a vast collection of WordPress Themes available, novice users can define the look & feel of their WordPress website by just choosing any of the free themes offered at wordpress.org. Installing a theme couldn't be easier-just login to your WordPress install, choose a theme, click "activate"-that's it. This is the perfect scenario for web developers looking to make money. It is simple, fast and profitable.

So why don't you useit?

Wordpress started as a blogging platform and added to and patched so it can power whole websites and even ecommerce sites. This wasn't the initial reason for Wordpress, so if it is used as anything more than a blogging site, the website site will most likely be bloated with unused code, making your site slower.

Are they all bad?

No, I'm not saying that all Wordpress sites are slow or bad. If the website creator doesn't use a pre built template or template creator, then it is possible to get a fast site. The fact of the matter is that almost all Wordpress sites are using templates. This is definitely something to be concerned about.

Why would I worry aboutthis?

Many studies have shown that a website's bounce rate ( the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. ) are higher when the site takes longer to load. For users with an average page load time of 2 seconds, the bounce rate is quite low-only 9.61%. This goes up slightly for those with an average page load of 3 seconds, to 13.0%. 4 second page load time having a bounce rate of 17.1%. This raises to 22.1% for a 5 second page load. And if users experience an average page load time of 7 seconds, the bounce rate is 32.3%. This is such an important factor for your website to be successful, and one that should not be ignored. Google also factors your page speed in its search engine rankings, so for great SEO you should be aiming for a blazing fast site.

So if not Wordpress, thenwhat?

There are loads of other options available. I am an advocate for JAMstack sites. This means that when a change is made using the content management system of choice, this triggers a build and the site is compiled into static files and automatically uploaded. This means faster load times, more security and better search engine optimisation. For basic sites, I really like using a GIT based content management system. For a lot of uses this is sufficient. Any unwanted changes can be restored from the complete history. For more complicated sites, I have used Strapi and really enjoy the flexibility and simple user interface.

Have you used wordpress? Would you recommend it to clients?

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