WordPress is the Wrong Choice for your Business – 9 Reasons Why

Imagine if every time you wanted to update your website you had to edit a file, mess around with HTML and PHP code, upload the file to your server and then open it in a browser to see what it looked like.

When I built my first website way back when, that’s exactly what I had to do.  I went to my company’s website and viewed the source code (the code of every website is publicly available – just press Ctrl+U or Option+Command+U or Command+U on a Mac).  I would copy chunks of the website code, save it to a file, change the code around and see what happened when I ran it in the latest Netscape browser.

I was armed with nothing more than curiosity, a desire to learn and the code of the existing websites I saw online.  I suspect this is how many an early website got their start and it’s definitely a fun if not very efficient way to learn.

Back then there was less competition than today, especially in the design of a website, but also in the areas of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), site content and versatility.

Fast forward to today, when setting up a professional-looking website – although by no means a trivial task – can be done in a matter of minutes once you know what you’re doing.  With platforms like WordPress and Joomla requiring no coding knowledge whatsoever, there’s no excuse for any small business owner not to have a web presence.

Well, almost none:

bethmccoll

 

WordPress is at the forefront of these easy to use platforms.  Running about 25% of the WorldWideWeb and with over 80 million websites, it’s the number one choice for small business owners who need very little technical expertise to have an online business presence.

But is this a good thing?  Read on for why WordPress is not necessarily the best choice for your small business.

Why WordPress May Not Be Right For Your Small Business

1. It’s Easy.  Really Easy.

The sheer popularity of WordPress speaks for itself.  No piece of software gets to run 80+ million websites, or 25% of the WorldWideWeb, by being difficult to use.  Sure, nowadays there are many easy-to-use website frameworks, but WordPress is the original and was always designed with good usability in mind.

1.2 WordPress is Easy to Host

Almost every mainstream hosting provider provides a simple way to install WP, usually with a few clicks and little technical knowledge.

wordpress install on siteground

WordPress installation icon on Siteground

It’s also not hugely demanding on the web server’s resources.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]Where’s the challenge there?  No challenge means you learn nothing.  If you look forward to a challenge when building a website then WordPress is not for you.[/thrive_custom_box]

1.3 WordPress is Easy to Build and Customise

With the many different themes and plugins, you can pretty much do what you like with WordPress with little to no programming knowledge.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]This lack of learning is absolutely detrimental to your personal and professional development.[/thrive_custom_box]

1.4 WordPress is Easy to Learn

Although it’s estimated it takes about 100 hours to learn WordPress well at a technical level, it takes practically no time to learn how to get started.  Thousands of inexperienced users are starting with the platform every day with few problems.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]These people are taking the easy path to an online presence.  Do you really want to be associated with that crowd?[/thrive_custom_box]

follow the crowd

1.5 WordPress is Easy to Maintain

WordPress can be quite easily maintained with a bit of time, consistency and diligence.

Just like you bring your car or your teeth for a regular checkup or service, there are now services designed just to make your life with WordPress even easier by outsourcing these regular maintenance tasks.  Check out sites like ourselves here at WPStrands or the more established folks over at WPSitecare.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]My great-grandfather built his own house with his own hands.  Really!  He had to be a jack of all trades to survive; carpenter, tailor and builder and farmer.  He had to do it all himself the hard way.  If it was good enough for him …[/thrive_custom_box]

1.6 WordPress is Easy on the Search Engines

Out of the box WordPress is pretty good at getting found by Google and Bing and the rest.  Although it’s getting harder because of all the noise online nowadays, it’s still much easier with WordPress than some other platforms like Drupal.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””] Doesn’t everyone know that playing hard to get is the best way to be valued![/thrive_custom_box]

2. WordPress is Full-featured

A default installation of WordPress has enough features to get an average, functional website up and running quickly.

But you want something extra, you say?  That’s where the almost 50,000 plugins come in.

Want to embed a Google Doc into your site? There’s a plugin for that!

Want your visitors to be able to play a game of Asteroids?  Yep, there’s a plugin for that!

Want your page to spin round and round for no reason at all?  Of course, there’s a plugin for that!

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]

Who wants to deal with the paralysis that kind of choice can bring? As Barry Schwartz said:

Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.

[/thrive_custom_box]

[bctt tweet=”… learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard. #WordPress #WPStrands” via=”no”]

3. WordPress is Flexible

WordPress is so flexible it’s practically double-jointed.

The 50k+ available plugins can probably be put to use to do pretty much whatever you need.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]Restricting choice can force your creativity to bloom.[/thrive_custom_box]

4. WordPress is Versatile

Although it started as a simple blogging platform, WordPress has evolved to become much more than that.  Today it is a full-featured CMS (despite what some say) used to run every kind of site from Mom and Pop blogs LINK to ecommerce sites to huge media empires.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]Your website only needs to do what you want it to do now. You’ve no idea what the future will bring so why bother planning for those eventualities.[/thrive_custom_box]

5. WordPress will Save you Money

WordPress is free, as in open source.  Setting up a website is as simple as buying a domain name, a hosting account and clicking on “Install WordPress”.  You no longer need to pay a specialist developer thousands of dollars to have an online presence for your business.

where is the value in free wordpress

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]We all know that free is perceived as worthless; people only attach value to that which costs something.  When you pay for something you can be sure you are more invested in its success.  Obviously, it’s a complete mystery why the current online business model is to give something away for “free” in exchange for an email address.[/thrive_custom_box]

6. WordPress is great for DIYers

Any averagely intelligent person can learn how to set up a WordPress website in a matter of hours.

Invest a mere 100 hours more and you’ll be able to program it to do whatever you want.  It takes nothing but time to learn the ins and outs and time is so plentiful we all waste lots of it on sleep, entertainment and keeping fit.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]Time is precious.  Don’t squander it learning new skills.[/thrive_custom_box]

7. WordPress Integrates with Everything

WordPress is so popular that most software companies will have a way to integrate with it.

For example, if you use Google analytics to track your site visitors (and you should) there’s a plugin to bring that info right into your WordPress dashboard.

If you use MailChimp to manage your list there’s a plugin to connect it to WordPress.

There are even plugins to integrate e-Commerce services and Microsoft ActiveDirectory networks.

With Zapier you can integrate WordPress with FaceBook, Twitter, Evernote and 100 other services.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]Integrating with so many other services will disperse your focus and take energy away from the core of your business.[/thrive_custom_box]

8. WordPress has a Great Support network

Documentation – The Codex

WordPress is very well documented, due in part to its age, fanatical open source community and ease of use.  From absolute beginners to coding nerds, they’ve all written about it.

Forums

A great community of mostly helpful people is there waiting to answer your questions and solve your WordPress problems.

wordpress community

WordPress Support Forums, FB groups, Websites

A ton of helpful sites dedicated to WordPress exist to round out the channels of available help.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]If you want to do it, someone has already done it and probably written about it.  Reading about their experience won’t teach you anything as too much readily available information makes the brain lazy and reluctant to learn.[/thrive_custom_box]

9. Security risks

This is the BIG one!

WordPress fans claim it’s pretty secure out of the box.  But then, you may rightly ask, why do so many WordPress sites get hacked?

Surely it’s not just because WordPress is so popular and website owner knowledge is often not enough to effectively manage the site on an ongoing basis, as I’ve written about before?

Recent Hacks

WordPress is the most hacked website platform in the world and brings disrepute to many a would-be Website manager who makes the simple mistake of forgetting to update for a year or two.

Hacks on out-of-date WordPress sites like the Panama papers or the spree earlier this year where over 1 million sites were hacked and defaced should be enough to scare away even the most die-hard WordPress fanatics.  But it doesn’t and they’ll probably never learn.

No small business owner should be burdened with the inconvenience of having to update software more than once every year or two, with taking and checking backups day in and day out and with running security scans to make sure his/her site is not one of the 30,000 that have been hacked in the past 24 hours.  You have enough to do in your business without this overhead.

[thrive_custom_box title=”Why this is not good” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]The argument here goes something along the lines of “If you buy a car then you are more likely to have your car broken into.”[/thrive_custom_box]

Conclusion

If you insist on using WordPress then the simple solution is to have a professional management service look after it long term.  This way you can free yourself of most of the ongoing problems small business owners are faced with when using WordPress.

When I think back to my first hacked-together website I get that happy jittery feeling thinking about all I learned through the struggles of doing everything from scratch.

Had WordPress been around back then, sure, I might have saved 1,000 hours learning things I didn’t need at the time.  But then I would have been faced with the age-old dilemma of victims of technology everywhere – what to do with all that free time!?

[thrive_custom_box title=”Learn Correct WordPress Maintenance” style=”dark” type=”color” color=”” border=””]If you still want to do it yourself, then at least learn to do it right.  Learn how you can do backups, updates and security on your  WordPress website.

[thrive_optin color=”orange” text=”Learn How Now” optin=”1690″ size=”medium” layout=”horizontal”][/thrive_custom_box]

 

Disclaimer

This article is tongue in cheek and is not meant to constitute advice nor advocate bad website management practices. At WPStrands we love WordPress and treat it very seriously as a critical part of any small business owners set of tools to make a great business that they love.

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