Wordpress A
Patchwork CMS
Word Press is an interesting
phenomenon. It was created as a blogging platform and become so
popular that everyone started using it to build websites, but it
was never intended or designed to build or support websites so
developers created plugins.
Now Wordpress is the go to
program for amateur webmasters that need a simple, free and fast
way to develop websites.
So lets talk about some of the
reasons why using wordpress with a pile of plugins is a bad idea.
WP was never
intended to run websites
WP distributes
content like a blog
Each plugin
was built by different people
Multiple
plugins can cause compatibility issues with the website
and CMS
No focus on
website performance or server resources
eCommerce
plugins with unlimited products
WP was never intended
to run websites
The simple fact is, wordpress
was simple to create a "web log" or daily diary of
events. Or a news type column where you type and save and don't
have to think about much.
But it was never intended to
manage content, or save files in different directories, or
construct a complex website.
Wordpress was intended to
create something simple like a newspaper, but newspapers are
limited, hard to use and bulky because you have to page through
everything to find what you want.
Don't get me wrong, newspapers
have their place, but they have mostly been replaced by websites
which are easier to use, easier to navigate and better for
everyone.
So I am not putting down
wordpress, just stating that there is a right place for
everything and as websites become more than just a log of random
articles wordpress in not the right tool to manage them.
WP distributes content
like a blog
There are so many arguments
between bloggers and webmasters about blogs not being websites,
about wordpress not being a CMS but a blogging platform and so on.
The biggest problem with
wordpress is just that, it is a blog and not a website. So it
manages content much differently than a comprehensive website
needs it. It organizes files by month and topic and not in a
logical way that webmasters would build directory structures, so
it gets confusing for developers.
Each plugin was built
by different people
To compensate for all the
shortfalls of wordpress, developers write programs that they call
plugins to run with wordpress. In fact they are usually just
stand alone programs that seat themselves into wordpress and use
the editor and main management menu as a place to add a link to
their programs.
Each of these thousands of
possible plugins is created by different people.
Multiple plugins can
cause compatibility issues with the website and CMS
When joe's software inc
creates a slideshow plugin, they are not talking to Ed's websites
and more who is developing an ecommerce plugin.
So when a webmaster adds the 2
plugins, they may or may not work well together. In fact, it is
very common for the two to create problems on the website because
of incompatible scripts and css.
Here is the simple run
down. Joe's writes some javascript and calls a function named
"getImage" and Ed uses the same name in a function
in his program. Depending on which file loads last on the
page, that function now takes over as the "getImage"
function for both programs.
Since they both don't
do the exact same thing or call the same files, one of the
programs will not function.
No focus on website
performance or server resources
Another problem is that no
single developer needs to worry about system resources. They may
have designed their plugin to run on a dedicated multi processor
multi core server and you are installing it on a shared hosting
website with a single core single CPU and limited memory.
In these cases, even something
simple can cause a website to go offline for using too much of
the servers CPU.
After all, when you download
free plugins, what can you expect?
eCommerce plugins with
unlimited products
This fact is best shown by the
large number of ecommerce plugins that allow for UNLIMITED
Products. I love these statements, UNLIMITED.
Everything has limits,
everything has a point where it will fail and the fact that
anyone is claiming it supports unlimited products show just how
short sighted they were in developing it.
Look at a pickup truck. Would
a manufacturer ever tell you it holds unlimited weight in the bed?
If you start filling the bed
up with bricks, eventually the springs will collapse, the tires
will pop and the truck will come crashing down to the ground.
Because it has a point where it will fail.
Servers and software are the
same. If you just start loading up products at some point things
just don't work as well. The server gets overloaded, slow and
unresponsive.
Bigger servers have more
capacity, smaller servers less. So how do you gage what is the
right program for your wordpress website?
You really can't without
testing. You have to do load testing, make sure it can handle the
volume of traffic you have and the number of products.
You also have to check every
single function to make sure that one of the other plugins are
not creating conflicts. Something as simple as a menu plugin
could be conflicting with an ecommerce plugin and preventing
anyone from viewing certain pages or products or it could be
catastrophic ad not work at all.
It is a patchwork of
different programs
The problem with wordpres is
it is a patchwork of different programs from different vendors,
so while that makes it desirable for webmasters it becomes a real
headache for site owners trying to figure out what they can and
can't do.
If you decide, hey I want to
add a slideshow and you install the plugin, it could stop
everything else from working.
That is not something unique
to wordpress, it is the same of all operating systems that let
you install software. But wordpress is unique in that it is web
based and so popular. Plugins are usually free and often created
by high school students with little understanding of advanced
software development.
So you end up with
what can be great or can be a great big mess.
Using commercially developed
platforms like Godaddy, pageBuzz. Web.com, Yahoo and others lets
you avoid those issues. Because programs were developed by the
same teams, by he same people looking to make everything
compatible.
Now maintaining full
compatibility is not always possible when offering a full range
of products, but as vendors we can put in blocks and error
messages that prevent using incompatible programs with each other.
So you don't have to do end to end testing every time you make a
change.
There is certainly a huge cost
advantage of using wordpress over commercial solutions, but by
the time you factor in the unknowns it is usually cheaper to pay
for something that was developed in one place.
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