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Reluctant to go with wordpress

by easy does it
13 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
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I'm about to build a content site. Adding about 300 pages this year.

I'm familiar with the EASE OF USE of wordpress. Have built a couple of successful WP sites.

Wordpress
I don't like the bloated code (slow loading), the hacking risk, relying on plugins etc.

I'd rather a site coded in HTML with some custom cms solution.

Or something with php includes.

BUT
i just don't see me doing it as easily as I would with wordpress.

That's my dilemma.

Tom
#reluctant #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author Andrew H
    Putting together a simple CMS is very easy with a little PHP and MySQL. I used to provide my clients with wordpress so they could edit the content themselves, now I just have a simple CMS that I modify to suit the needs of each client.

    I agree that wordpress is often overkill for most uses, however it lets people with no programming experience deploy websites fast.
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    • Profile picture of the author easy does it
      Hi Andrew,
      Thanks for your reply.
      Sounds attractive.

      Are you able to point me to a site to look at?
      How can I check it out before committing, if you know what I mean?
      PM me if you like.

      Tom
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  • Profile picture of the author Andrew H
    Hey, If you are referring to the custom CMS that I use - sorry it's not for sale.

    However, if you check out codecanyon they have some simple CMS systems that you might want to look at. Cms | CodeCanyon
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  • Profile picture of the author David V
    As Andrew H mentioned, a custom CMS may very well be what you need, but I wanted to clarify your statement regarding WordPress.

    Originally Posted by easy does it View Post

    I don't like the bloated code (slow loading), the hacking risk, relying on plugins etc....
    Tom
    WordPress is not slow loading.
    WordPress is hacker prone due to it's popularity, but the majority of issues happen from poor user practices and ignorance of security.

    What can make it slow is a poor choice for hosting, poor theme/plugin choices, and the user habits.
    Themes and plugins that do not have a little thought put into them can slow you down.
    Uploading photo's at ridiculous sizes using the media uploader will slow you down.
    Using poorly coded plugins and too many of them could slow you down.

    As far as not wanting to use plugins....plugins are not really the issue, it's the quality of them, and the decision to use too many.
    There is only a small difference between coding a feature/function into a theme or separating it into a plugin as far as speed.
    This thinking regarding plugins is actually off somewhat, and this has been perpetuated by bogus blog post tutorials telling you how to "do it without a plugin".
    There are times that it can be appropriate, but WAY TOO MANY theme developers build functions into a theme that should be in a plugin. (when you switch themes you lose the themes functionality). Sliders, seo, custom post types, and more should not be in a theme, this is a poor development practice with a lot of downsides.

    You want WordPress speed?
    • Use a good host. (Cloud VPS or dedicated is the way to go)
    • Only upload/use images at the max dimensions you will display them (except retina) and at the smallest possible size without sacrificing quality. (do not upload a 1000px by 1000px image to display it at 200px by 200px). Optimize images before uploading.
    • Use a caching plugin like W3 Total cache.
    • Minify all css and javascript.
    • Use amazon S3 for assets storage and cloudfront would be even better.
    • Test your speeds and narrow down the offending assets/issues.

    Doing these things in combination with good user habits will give you ripping speed.
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  • Profile picture of the author kpmedia
    It's nice to see good advice on WF, David V.

    My only change would be CDNs. You merely need to put the assets on a different FQDN in order for the browser to load them in parallel. The same server can be used. Unless you've got video downloads, or some kind of large file (ISOs, etc), that works fine.
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    • Profile picture of the author David V
      Originally Posted by kpmedia View Post

      It's nice to see good advice on WF, David V...
      My only change would be CDNs.....
      Thanks.

      I guess the CDN you use is not as important as the fact that it's being used to facilitate a more robust site.

      If you are on shared hosting (even the best one's), it's not usually a good idea to keep all assets on the main domain, primarily (like you said) to increase parallel loading. Sub domains are fine, but your still on the same server.
      And your right.....if you have videos on your site (not talking about youtube), then you should never host them on the same site.
      RTMP streaming with HTML5 fallback is the way to go, seamless and fast.

      Bandwidth is not so much the issue as CPU usage, this gets a lot of people in trouble.

      Some people get upset with this when their site is deprioritized because of excess CPU usage, but it's not fair to the other sites on the server, so it's legit thing to do.

      This ties in with what I was saying about poorly coded/thought out plugins/themes, they often use excess CPU memory.

      GoDaddy, who I generally despise, does have an excellent plugin for measuring plugin memory usage, the Plugin Performance Profiler.

      I am making the assumption we're talking about a fairly busy site, or a site that's having a busy launch.

      Anyway, I don't want to steer this post off-topic too much, just wanted to clarify (@easy does it) that WordPress is in fact NOT slow and it's usually "the driver behind the wheel" and the decisions made.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    WP isn't as much of a security risk as any other CMS, anything can be hacked. The difference between your own CMS & WP is, with WP (or any popular CMS) you have thousands of people supporting the CMS (your not alone).

    If your building your own themes, you have control over how fast your pages load. It's not like your building a huge site, it's 300 pages, which is no big deal for a MySQL database regardless of which CMS you decide to use.
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    • Profile picture of the author kevintb7
      If you know how to build your own site, dont use wordpress. Plain and simple, if your clients need to make changes, then yeah build your own CMS. No reason to get all the overhead of wordpress and then later down the road run into limitations.
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      • Profile picture of the author easy does it
        Thanks for all the replies, especially David V.

        I do agree with the horse-sense that you're talking. I think that the flexibility and functionality of WP is a double-edged sword, depending on the web-master!!

        I like to do manual installs and my current sites, 10-20 pages each, have been fine. I do use lots of images and sliders on these smaller sites, the niche needs images, without any problem. I have fewer than 4 plugins on these sites.

        But I guess I needed some reassurance before investing time and energy in a 300 page content site on WP.

        On last question, if 300 pages isn't a problem for WP, how about 3,000 pages?

        Thanks all.

        Tom
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        • Profile picture of the author ttkim
          Originally Posted by easy does it View Post

          Thanks for all the replies, especially David V.

          I do agree with the horse-sense that you're talking. I think that the flexibility and functionality of WP is a double-edged sword, depending on the web-master!!

          I like to do manual installs and my current sites, 10-20 pages each, have been fine. I do use lots of images and sliders on these smaller sites, the niche needs images, without any problem. I have fewer than 4 plugins on these sites.

          But I guess I needed some reassurance before investing time and energy in a 300 page content site on WP.

          On last question, if 300 pages isn't a problem for WP, how about 3,000 pages?

          Thanks all.

          Tom
          Google this:

          site:smashingmagazine.com

          7800 pages are indexed. Not a problem.

          Or, take a look at some notable WordPress users: Notable WordPress Users -- WordPress.com
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  • Profile picture of the author sunray
    WordPress is hackers' target number one. If you use anything but WP, in 9 cases out of 10 you simply remain under the radar. I'd recommend Drupal. It has a somewhat longer learning curve, the out of the box version lacks some features that are otherwise taken for granted (like an editor or image upload browser), and it has not that many ready designed themes available. These are the drawbacks. In other respects it's a state of the art CMS, and really reliable.
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  • Profile picture of the author webcosmo
    Use wordpress , it`s fast, it`s easy and has great community support. Keep a backup all the time and you should be fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    last question, if 300 pages isn't a problem for WP, how about 3,000 pages?
    Don't listen to any answer to this question, unless they ask back to clarify whether you are talking about posts or (WP) Pages - always capiotal P if you write about static WordPress Pages.

    Many people are abusing the Page system of WP and that can make your site slower.
    However, 300 posts is nothing. Not even 3,000. Above 10K you may want to look into upgraded server and lots of optimizations...
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