While we do have plenty of experience maintaining WordPress sites for our clients, there are a few reasons why we don’t use the world’s most popular CMS.

1. Security

   Because WordPress is the most popular CMS, it’s also the biggest target. In 2020, WordPress reported over 90 billion malicious login attempts—that’s 2800 attacks per second. And these are just the ones that got caught.

   The biggest gap in WordPress’ security is its third-party themes and plugins, with:

   • ~90% of WordPress’ vulnerabilities plugin related;
   • 6% theme vulnerabilities; and
   • 4% core software vulnerabilities

   To combat these vulnerabilities, WordPress recommends ensuring your plugins, theme, and core structure are always up-to-date, but that leads us to the next issue:

2. Plugins

   Much of WordPress’ functionality isn’t ‘built-in’, meaning users must rely on third-party applications and plugins to fill the gaps. That means having numerous plugins from different developers that all require maintenance at various times.

   As per issue 1, WordPress being a target for malicious attacks means that there are regular security updates that you should install. The Russian roulette starts when each of your installed plugins needs to play nicely with the version update.

   We often have companies come to us after their website breaks and, after what can be a lengthy diagnosis process, we find the cause is either an out-of-date plugin or a plug-in that has automatically updated and resulted in a break in the site. 

   Running numerous plugins also can have a serious impact on your page load speed and performance which, in turn, impacts your SEO.

3. Support

   Ok, let’s say your WordPress site has an issue. Is it a problem with WordPress or a third-party plugin issue?

   You now have to pay your web developer to identify and troubleshoot the problem, which isn’t no quick feat. The average WordPress website has around 20-30 plugins installed. Your dev now has to go through and test each one for faults, ensure they’re all compatible and maintained, plus test your WordPress theme and PHP. 

   If it is a plugin issue—do you pay the plugin dev for their optional support? Probably not. Now your web developer has to work around the plugin, either finding a way to avoid the problem or how to make your site function without it.

   If it’s a WordPress issue—your web developer now has research ahead of them. The benefit of WordPress being so widely used, is that the community is huge and often you can research the answer to your problems. If not, you’ve got to hope that the WordPress live chat support can help. 

4. Ease of use

   We build our websites with functionality at the core, ensuring your site can grow with you. While WordPress may be easy to use for basic requirements, it’s reliance on rigid plugins means problems arise as soon something custom is required.

   Often people say: can you develop in WordPress because we are familiar with it and it’s easy to use?

   In our experience, no two wordpress sites are the same as they each use a different set of plugins to build out the functionality of the site. So, whilst you may be familiar with how your WordPress site works, jump into another site and what you thought you knew no longer applies.