For my customers
- The first reason is the easy-to-use feature. Many of my customers are entrepreneurs who want to focus on their business, not on managing technical things. Using WordPress helps them to minimize the time for publishing content. That’s why WordPress is the most popular CMS.
- WordPress is powerful. Starting as a content management system with the main purpose of a blog, WordPress nowadays is more than a blog. It can be used for e-commerce websites, digital newspapers, or still a simple, personal blog. See WordPress showcases here. WordPress is featured rich.
- WordPress is open source and backed by thousands of developers around the clock. That means people can find out security holes faster. The good thing with that is security patches are also released as fast as possible. This is also a reason for me to move from my own CMS, which I started from 2000, to WordPress.
Any risk in using WordPress?
WordPress in the CMS market is like Windows in the desktop OS market. Both of them are the most popular in their market. WordPress is backed by many white-hat hackers who find security holes and patch them. Unfortunately, that also means many other script-kidders have been trying to exploit any WordPress-based website, whether it’s a big e-commerce website or just a new personal blog. I have seen people saying it’s just a simple blog, no one wants to attack it. Then the next day, their website is defaced. Those script-kidders don’t care about whether their victim’s website is big or not, they just want to «show their achievement».
But don’t worry too much. If you keep the codebase updated, have good security tools, and have good admins on the system for your website, I still highly recommend WordPress.
As a consultant, and a developer I can help my customers
- I keep the WordPress-based website secured. Whenever Automattic releases a new security patch, customers can be assured that the patch is applied immediately. Of course, a test after patching is always performed to make sure no feature is affected.
- I am checking the hosting system to make sure the servers and software are up-to-date and secure.
- Even though WordPress is SEO-friendly, you should know how to optimize your content for search engines. That helps potential customers know about you faster. My entrepreneur customers rely on me a lot on this in the maintenance phase.
- Web core vitals consulting. Don’t get me wrong, numbers don’t mean everything. But without numbers, it’s not easy to get jobs done. When I learned to drive, my teacher said in Norway, many laws have been released or adjusted based on survey numbers. While I don’t know if it’s true or not, I would agree with that conclusion.
For building WordPress websites, I am using several tools.
- Framework: either Genesis or GeneratePress.
- When I started, I used Genesis. It’s secure, fast, and developer-friendly. But since it was acquired by WP Engine, it’s rarely updated. People keep convinced that if nothing is wrong, don’t need to update. However, technologies change fast. The same in the software industry. Keeping the same codebase for a few years is not a good sign.
- GeneratePress and its premium module. Since I was looking for a new WordPress framework, I tested a few themes. Then ended up with GeneratePress. It’s one of the fastest themes on the market. Even when compared with Genesis, it’s creating fewer requests, and using fewer resources. Most websites I build now are based on GeneratePress Premium and GenerateBlocks.
- ACF – Advanced Custom Fields: the secret for building applications based on WordPress.
- WooCommerce: when you need an online shop.
- WPForms: it’s not only a form. This plugin can be used for surveys, collecting payments, file uploading, etc.
- FacetWP: filtering the content. It can be used alone or combined with ACF to make it even more powerful.
While all the tools I am using have GUI, which my customers can also customize themselves, they also have rich hooks and API libraries. That means as a developer, I can help my customers build online applications based on their needs.
Besides, when working on on-page SEO, I am using:
- Google Tag Manager (GTM) and Google Analytics 4
- Google Search Console
- Accuranker
- UTM.io
Not sure if your WordPress-based website has all the powerful features yet? Let me know your website, and I can check.