WordPress is used by many people and is generally easy to use, however we hear complaints about WordPress from clients everyday.
Some of the issues with WordPress include the following …
WordPress Vulnerability:
Most WordPress users don’t realize just how vulnerable WordPress actually is. There are currently massive distributed brute force attack campaigns targeting WordPress sites. As many as 190,000 WordPress sites targeted per hour.
Every day of the week there are script kiddies trying to get access to Wordpress websites. Yes, every day!
If they do get access to your Wordpress website you might wake up one morning to find that your website has been replaced with another one or used to distribute malicious code to unsuspecting visitors, which could do significant damage to your brand and customer’s trust. Not to mention the liability involved in exposing any personal customer data.
WordPress Performance:
As you can imagine, the speed of your website is incredibly important: it is one of the factors that Google considers when ranking your site, but just as important, it impacts your visitors experience, if your website is slow your visitors won’t come back.
This problem is now worse than ever before, because of the number of people browsing your website on a mobile device.
- Wordpress is written in PHP, which itself is inherently slow and requires a lot of server resources.
- WordPress does not scale well without some sort of caching plugin.
- Without creating static pages to be cached, just to display a simple webpage, Wordpress needs to connect to MySQL and make as many as 50 queries, then output the results as HTML.
Wordpress Updates and plug-ins:
When logged in as WordPress admin, you will constantly be reminded to update your plug-ins, your framework, your theme and WordPress itself. Most people proceed with the installation without a thought, then oops, your header image is broken, your website is blank, or your website looks different than you expected, requiring extra work.
Maybe it is due to the “duct tape,” DIY nature of PHP coding but the WordPress plug-ins repository is a labyrinth of discontinued versions, half-patched improvements and in some cases malicious software.
Then, you have to go through the hassle of trying to figure out which add-ons are either incompatible with your theme, or incompatible with other plug-ins.
Finally, even if you manage to fill all of the holes in the functionality that you are after, eventually you realize that the more plug-ins you add, the more you site is going to slow to a pathetic crawl.
It is unfortunate because so many websites and people are affected unnecessarily. Especially considering how easy it is to have a static website with all of the dynamic functionality handled by microservices, which would enhance your web presence dramatically. Saving you time, money and aggravation.
The Solution:
Why use WordPress or any other CMS for that matter?
Just imagine saving money on hosting, and being able to enhance your site’s search engine position as well as the experience of anyone visiting your site.
No more worrying about WordPress updates or your website being hacked.
Converting your site into a static one, is a simple and easy process.
New content for your site would be built using a local tool like Hugo. This is what many developers and people that care about the performance and security of their website have done.
This site was built using Hugo. We have also converted many of our own and client’s sites years ago. The benefits were realized immediately. Better performance search engine ranking, user experience and security.
All of the above while being less expensive to host and much more flexible in terms of design and functionality.
There are free and open source WYSIWYG editors, like Ckeditor, that would enable you to create and edit content just as easily as if you were using the WordPress admin.
You can also create content in MarkDown directly, which is very easy to use, easier than HTML.
Markdown enables you to compose posts and comments with links, lists, and other styles using regular characters and punctuation marks.
Markdown is used by writers and bloggers who want a quick and easy way to style their text, without having to take their hands off the keyboard, and without learning a lot of complicated codes and shortcuts. See the [MarkDown Quick Reference] (https://en.support.wordpress.com/markdown-quick-reference/) at WordPress.com
Writing in MarkDown can be hugely productive for writers or anyone who would like to create content and have the best performance possible.
Many web developers and others are switching to static based sites for the reasons mentioned among others. There is even a WordPress plug-in for easily exporting your WordPress content into Hugo’s format.
There are many free high quality templates that can be used for static sites and modifying them is easy.
Hugo Themes is a listing of some of the many free themes. Just about any theme, WordPress or other can easily be made into a static site template.
A static site can be zipped up and hosted anywhere, no database connection or PHP necessary. Also you can work on your site locally without even being connected to the Internet and upload you pages when you are ready.
For dynamic content and functionality, like a contact form, its much better to use secure and safe microservices.
Then you would have bypassed all of the issues related to WordPress, like performance, security, updates, poorly written plug-ins or hosting expense and have complete control of your website’s layout by using a free static site generator like Hugo.
Contact us today, for help getting started with your own static site.
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