word press is widely used just because it is easy to use .One can easily do blogging,development through this platform.It is extremely awesome.
In my survey, there is this question:
“What was the most important criteria that led to the decision for WordPress?”
While ‘SEO’ is not an available answer option, some participants state that the main reason they chose WordPress is because of it’s SEO capabilities,
and because Google would ‘index WordPress faster’.
Google may treat dynamic and static websites differently, but it doesn’t ‘prefer’ WordPress. I wonder where people get this idea…?
Thank you! I’m in the middle of writing a blog post “Why I probably won’t use WordPress for your website” as I’m sick to death of people having the reaction “Oh, you don’t use WordPress?” The most frustrating thing is I have been using PHP/MySQL for 12 years and they talk down to me like I don’t use it because I don’t understand it. I like open source projects and don’t do everything bespoke but to me, WordPress should never be used outside of simple publishing.
It makes me cringe when people refer to WordPress as a full-fledged CMS and make it do things like eCommerce. I have also found those that are the most enthusiastic about promoting it are the ones that are least qualified to comment (designers, SEOs, et al) as they can’t program and have never used anything else. If you’re recommending WordPress—or any system—before listening to clients’ requirements first, your business model has major flaws.
The reason my new blog post is “Why I probably won’t use WordPress for your website” is because for simple blogs, it’s okay. For anything else, there’s almost certainly something better out there but for now, here are some good reasons to leave it well alone:
- It has created a community of non-programmers attempting to program
- You need a plugin for just about everything, and I mean everything whereas “proper” CMSs do most of it out of the box
- It’s slow
- The code base needs rewriting to use objects and a proper design pattern
- It insists on hard coding absolute URIs making it difficult to move from dev to live
- It serialises too much data
- It has no in-built spam prevention or brute force attack prevention
- It’s not particularly great for SEO (see below)
- It clutters the database with draft posts
And don’t get me started on it being “good for SEO”. What does that mean exactly? I thought SEO was mostly about content and links. True, WordPress allows you to have rewritten URLs but so what? In this day-and-age I’d be more surprised if it didn’t do that. If fact, I’ve used a few systems like Concrete5 and CMSMS and I’d say WordPress is the worst for SEO.
These are just a few off the top of my head. A full critique of WordPress is coming soon.
The next time a WordPress shill extols its so-called greatness, ask them what their yardstick of comparison is. Nine times out of ten, they won’t have one. I have nothing against it per se so long as it’s a) used by people who know what they’re doing and b) if used as it’s good for a site’s requirements.
Hey DrQuincy,
I’d really like to read your blog post.
Since it fits the context, maybe you could post a link here when its’s online?
Cheers
Will do, and great question, by the way.
From a none-technical stand-point I understand why it is but from a technical one, coming from someone who appreciates innovative, modern software solutions it is not.
I beg to differ. The reason why people use it is because at least it has the support of a huge community. Heaven knows I’ve bought many scripts that don’t work as advertised or where the developer got bored of actually providing support (programmer flakiness seems to be a rule). You buy a script built specifically for a specific task - unlike the Wordpress you so revile because it is trying to do everything - you start using it, you realize it has features that need improving to do what you want, or that it has idiotic design choices (one example problem I had with a CMS I bought - articles marked as subscriber only are hidden completely from the public, not like for example on NY Times where an excerpt is visible and you have a link like “subscribe to read this full article”. I told the developer that this doesn’t make sense. If the articles are hidden completely, no one is going to know they exist, so how am I going to get subscribers? His response: “I’ll see what I can do”. One year later I would still be waiting for him to see “what he can do” because he hasn’t done anything despite my constant reminders even though I am a paying customer. Unreliability among custom developers seems to be the norm, if I treated my job like I’ve been treated by the script developers I’ve worked with and bought applications from, I would have been out on my ass a long time ago). At least with Wordpress you get a platform that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, like it happens with the custom applications if the developer stops answering their phone or e-mail. And if you get to the point where you need some custom development, you might be better off paying for a Wordpress custom module, then paying the developers of your custom script bought off the internet or custom built when they start milking you for money for fixing their own bugs (assuming they do acknowledge them and don’t blame those bugs on your hosting or the phase of the moon or what not, Steve Jobs “you’re holding the Iphone wrong” style,) or for adding every feature that Wordpress already provides for free through a plugin.
- It has created a community of non-programmers attempting to program
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You need a plugin for just about everything, and I mean everything whereas “proper” CMSs do most of it out of the box
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It’s slow
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The code base needs rewriting to use objects and a proper design pattern
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It insists on hard coding absolute URIs making it difficult to move from dev to live
-
It serialises too much data
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It has no in-built spam prevention or brute force attack prevention
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It’s not particularly great for SEO (see below)
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It clutters the database with draft posts
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Not everybody who writes software/web applications is a good programmer. PHP-Nuke anyone?
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That is not necessarily a bad thing. Many scripts claim to do lots of things out of the box and do them badly, or include everything from a forum to a web directory to a wiki.
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I will have to agree with you there, it does feel slow on the backend.
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Not a programmer, can’t say much about it.
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If I can do that as a programmer surely you can do that too. And it’s not like it’s the only one.
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Neither are many others. But W does have fantastic plugins like seopressor and 1 click-SEO. Plus SEO is something that should be done manually.
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Won’t argue with you there since it doesn’t provide an easy way to turn it off or to manage those. But after writing for five minutes in the browser and then having it crash or like this forum, which has an autosave feature but doesn’t seem to offer any way to get to it if you get a crash or close the window by mistake, I can live with it because I can at least get to the version from the database.
And in closing, I’m not being snarky. Please mention some alternatives. After all ifyou say there are better CMSs out there, everyone woudl benefit from knowing what they are.
I don’t revile it. I just said it is used in the wrong conditions and promoted by people who don’t really know what it is they’re promoting. Can I ask you what else you offer clients? As I said before:
If you’re recommending WordPress—or any system—before listening to clients’ requirements first, your business model has major flaws.
In response to your points:
- You’re not a programmer and yet you’re building websites. That’s up to you and best of luck to you but you need to appreciate that some people who are programmers may be able to look at WordPress without rose-tinted spectacles.
- My point about plugins is that if WP is such a great CMS it should do all these things out-of-the-box. Relying on plugins is not a good idea as the more you have the more you need to keep up-to-date, the more clashes you can have, etc. If functionality is part of the core system, it is being tested against everything else—including when updates are done
- It’s slow on the front end as well. I just don’t think hooks are a great ways of doing it
- See above.
- I’m not saying I can’t do it, I’m saying it’s stupid and wastes time when you want to move things between dev and live environments.
- Every other one I’ve used at least lets you set the description meta.
- There is a global to turn it off. I’m actually not too fussed about this one as you can run a query every few months to get rid of the dross. Like you says, once in a while it can be a life-saver.
This is the problem, there is no such thing as a “better CMS”, it depends what you want to do. This highlights the problem: people are look for a panacea to all their website problems. You need to learn various options and use them based on client requirements. Right now (all real life examples) in my work, someone wants a quick, simple, easy to update brochure site: I’m using CMSMS. Someone else wants good user management, I am using Hero Framework. My main job is for an uppermarket multi-million turnover food company and it’s all bespoke and no CMS would fit their requirements and it needs to be fast as lightening.
To summarise: Choose the best tool for the job! My opinion is that WordPress is okay for certain sites and has its place in the community but there are many situations in which it is not.
I use wordpress because of plugins, I always build new themes.
Yes this could be one of many reason, same as WordPress have many useful plugins also and WordPress blog can easily optimize by search engine.
The point is plugins aren’t always a good idea as you don’t know how well they’re coded, they might clash with other plugins and may not work with future versions of the core. As a rule-of-thumb, if a CMS needed more than a handful of plugins my gut would say i’m using the wrong tool for the job.
As mentioned before, there is nothing intrinsic about WordPress that makes it “good” for search engines. It doesn’t even support the description meta by default; every other CMS I’ve used does.
Off Topic:
Wordpress has an official survey:
http://wordpress.org/news/2013/07/annual-wordpress-survey-wcsf/
The 2011 and 2012 survey results are available. No word yet on when the 2013 survey results will be available.
I did not read it anywhere i experienced it, comparing to other blogging sites like blogger, tumblr etc WordPress blog quite easily indexed by search engine. I have many example in which many of mine WordPress blog and some blogger, tumblr, buzznet,xing,webnod, blog, devhub blog ranked to a particular keyword.
“It doesn’t even support the description meta by default”
If it is then why we use yoast plugin?
I was very stubborn before I decided to make WordPress the only web design software i use. Now that i have finally committed myself exclusively to WordPress, I can’t see going back to the old wysiwyg, html coding.
However, I can narrow the reason i use WordPress to two:
First, the url’s do not contain the extension .html. The only time I will use an html extension is when i don’t want something to appear in my search, such as download pages.
Second, I think there is something about WordPress that seems to draw traffic more than the old html sites.
I was also slow to use the plugins. Now that i use them, I consult the plugin directory for everything I do in my sites.
Obviously word press is the best CMS as well as word press is very user friendly. In word press we can use lots of plugins and it’s very easy to optimize.
@bloooming, sorry it’s taken so long but here’s my post: http://www.texelate.co.uk/blog/why-i-probably-wont-use-wordpress-for-your-website/
Great pop off.
Quote of the day:
Furthermore, I believe WordPress (through no fault of its own) has created a breed of diabolical websites and web designers.
Couldn’t agree more.
I’d have to say that post is excessively slanted in the negative direction. You completely missed some big benefits:
-Detailed & thorough documentation
-Community support
-Easy templating system
-Ease-of-use for end users and content producers who don’t know programming.
-Plugins offer an impressive range of functionality to any CMS, so I would consider this a benefit, rather than a detractor.
-Updates, while frequent, are simple and don’t typically require extra configuration or work. One click and you’re done. Also, if you’re complaining about frequent updates, you’ve probably never relied on older software that is rarely or ever patched–it can be a nightmare from a usability and security standpoint.
I appreciate what is an advantage is subjective but I personally feel that it is a generally bad idea to let non programmers build websites.
My other gripe is most people who push it have never tried anything else.
Well, if you think those are subjective, what benefits would you look for in a CMS?
but I personally feel that it is a generally bad idea to let non programmers build websites.
Why?
My comment about letting end-users add content doesn’t mean they would be actually doing the initial site setup.
Even so, there is a thorough setup guide in the wordpress documentation that should even get a beginner up and running. Getting a website up and running isn’t as difficult as it used to be 5 or 10 years ago.
My other gripe is most people who push it have never tried anything else.
I’ve tried Joomla, drupal, expression engine, concrete5, a handful of custom solutions, and still I keep coming back to wordpress. It just does what I need it to, is fairly easy to extend and modify and develop themes for, and a majority of the environment is free (which isn’t necessarily the case with other CMSes). Granted, there is a bit of spaghetti code in wordpress, but it’s hard to find a project that doesn’t have some of that.