Most marketing agencies promote themselves as "being different" but all seem to be selling the same web solution, wordpress. Why Wordpress? Well, Wordpress is a readily available, open-source blogging software that has a low barrier for entry... long story short, it's free and not hard to set up which is attractive for a lot of people. Unfortunately, this includes inexperienced web developers and Marketing Agencies. Don't get me wrong, in the right situation, Wordpress can be a power tool but ONLY in the right situation.
Long story short, it's free and not hard to set up which is attractive for a lot of people. Unfortunately, this includes inexperienced web developers and Marketing Agencies.
Wordpress was originally designed as a platform for bloggers to post simple articles and updates while being easy to manage. Over the years though, as the industry has moved away from blogging, Wordpress has been hacked into shopping carts and content management systems even though the underlying database structure and foundation is still the same. This weakness makes it difficult to scale and build any REAL functionality for your business website.
Should you want to add any special functionality to a Wordpress, you're basically limited to third-party plugins created by unknown developers and published without warranty or an approval process. You don't know the reputation of the plug-in developer or the full extent of their code. If that sounds scary, it should be; you're essentially giving access to a person that you've never met to run code that you can't verify.
Most websites using WordPress use dozens of these plugins all written from different developers to try and duct tape together a website. Each plugin has its own redundant code adding to the overall weight of a website making it extremely inefficient and slow; especially on mobile devices. This hurts not only your website performance but organic search results as well. Plugins can also require additional fees and subscriptions that you might not have considered that can dramatically affect your budget.
Where Wordpress really starts to fall apart is with maintenance and support. WordPress updates are published on a regular basis and applied to your live website. When WordPress is updated, all your themes and plugins also require an update to maintain functionality. As a result, there's always a chance updating wordpress will break your website. Hopefully, you have a tested backup to restore from?
One of the biggest issues with WordPress is with security. While it's great that WordPress publishes updates and has an active community, the real security issue lies with the developers and Marketing agencies setting them up. It's very likely they've recommended WordPress because it's the cheapest and easiest route for them to take. They're inexperienced and not considering security, support, and scale beyond the launch of your website. Most hackers know this which is why WordPress sites are some of the most highly targeted and easily exploited.
After fixing several wordpress sites from other companies, we started asking ourselves there has to be a better way. There are several other platforms and cloud based options for your website but many have a similar model to Wordpress and are just as problematic.
The best option is to work with a trusted local web developer to recommend a solution for your business. They're going to better understand the specific problem your business is facing and help engineer a solution around it. This could be getting you setup with industry specific software but experienced web developers can build you an entirely custom solution. Either way, you have more control and are more likely to get results than simply with WordPress.
• • •
One of the best ways to secure yourself online is to use a unique password for each online account but how can you be expected to remember these? We've got just the thing...
Add and extra layer of security to your online accounts by leveraging a time based one-time pin generated from a secondary device like your smartphone.
There are a lot of factors to consider when building your next website. With a lot of buzz around WordPress, you need to know what you're getting yourself into.
No matter the issue you're facing, we have the technique and tools to get you quickly back on your feet. Whether we're talking about your PC hardware, network, website, or anything else with a power button we're just a few questions away.