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Do you build with WordPress?
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Do you build with WordPress?

verovero Member, Host Rep

I know it's the most popular CMS, but LET members do not necessarily reflect habits of an average user. So, the question is below.

To be or not to be - WP.
  1. Do you consider using WordPress when you need to build a website?108 votes
    1. Yes, that's my first choice.
      55.56%
    2. I consider it along with other options available.
      23.15%
    3. I prefer not to touch it.
      21.30%
«1

Comments

  • I used to work on WordPress , but now I find it slow and too much resource hungry

  • HxxxHxxx Member
    edited November 2022

    Yes of course. WordPress has one of the best eCommerce systems that is very easy to use. It is also one of the best blogging systems.

    Before that many years ago I used to use Joomla a lot. I still like Joomla.

    My response is only in related to websites and standard eCommerce.

    Give your WP instance a healthy hosting environment and it will fly.

  • Been thinking of converting the front end of one of my projects to wordpress since its currently just twig templates and part of the actual app.

  • I prefer Hugo for personal blog/documentation as it is quite fast and hosting cost is virtually 0$.

    Thanked by 1Lee
  • If you build websites for clients WordPress is a must.

    1) Good out of the box SEO
    2) Ability to improve SEO because its Opensource. Compare this with something like wix which is harder to do.
    3) Huge market place of plugins. Probably the largest in the world.
    4) Not to difficult to use back-end and front end.
    5) Easy to maintain
    6) Its not secure by design but as far as PHP CMS goes its pretty good once you monitor what plugins you install.

    Basically best choice for small to medium websites. For larger sites you need developers.

  • I have tried Hugo and other SSGs, but I learnt quickly that I would want to build a website or write blog posts or provide value more than I want to spend days engineering my build system or keep re-writing my blog/website in the latest/hotest system out there.

    As an experienced engineer, I can say Wordpress is a very good choice to begin with, I was too stupid to not realize this back then.

    Thanked by 2nick_ DataRecovery
  • YmpkerYmpker Member
    edited November 2022

    Most of my client projects are WordPress related and I also use(d) it for my website for years now.

    WordPress, once heavily overloaded with plugins, can be rather slow. But this doesn't have to be the case. Try to limit the plugins, use lightweigth themes and you can have fast websites, no problem.

    I used to use Divi a lot for client pages, but albeit it had lots of cool features it was also a bit on the slow side of things (although they published a performance update a while ago that improved the situation; apparently they are also working on Divi 5.0 which will be more light-weigth and somewhat a remake from scratch). However, over time I have also found that often less features are "more" and used more lightweight themes (like Blocksy).

    My own site (although under construction atm) is powered by PicoStrap WordPress Theme (leveraging Bootstrap):

    Mobile:

    Now, it obviously comes down to how complex the site you are trying to build is. On how many plugins it depends etc.. But speed alone is no reason to skip WordPress (as can be seen above; that said, vanilla WP without any plugins and with default theme is also quite fast).

  • verovero Member, Host Rep

    @evnix said:
    I have tried Hugo and other SSGs, but I learnt quickly that I would want to build a website or write blog posts or provide value more than I want to spend days engineering my build system or keep re-writing my blog/website in the latest/hotest system out there.

    Agree, learn something meaningless just for sake of using it once doesn't make any sense. Be it SSG or another framework, or whatever. There are so many things to learn, that are actually important.

    There are still people, who make well organized HTML templates with source files. But serious projects require serious devs.

  • verovero Member, Host Rep

    @Ympker said:

    I used to use Divi a lot for client pages, but albeit it had lots of cool features it was also a bit on the slow side of things (although they published a performance update a while ago that improved the situation; apparently they are also working on Divi 5.0 which will be more light-weigth and somewhat a remake from scratch). However, over time I have also found that often less features are "more" and used more lightweight themes (like Blocksy).

    Very long time ago I bought one theme from current Divi developers, which was rather trash, so I have no problem considering them anymore.

    Blocksy is one of fastest WP themes, I tried it once and liked it.

    Thanked by 1Ympker
  • YmpkerYmpker Member
    edited November 2022

    @vero said:

    @Ympker said:

    I used to use Divi a lot for client pages, but albeit it had lots of cool features it was also a bit on the slow side of things (although they published a performance update a while ago that improved the situation; apparently they are also working on Divi 5.0 which will be more light-weigth and somewhat a remake from scratch). However, over time I have also found that often less features are "more" and used more lightweight themes (like Blocksy).

    Very long time ago I bought one theme from current Divi developers, which was rather trash, so I have no problem considering them anymore.

    Blocksy is one of fastest WP themes, I tried it once and liked it.

    Check out Divi 5.0 preview. It actually does look promising: https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/general-news/the-future-of-divi

    Using Divi less these days, but still probably one of my best lifetime deal investments to date :)

    Also:

    Thanked by 1vero
  • verovero Member, Host Rep

    @Ympker said:

    Using Divi less these days, but still probably one of my best lifetime deal investments to date :)

    Divi creators clearly don't think WordPress is the best choice for their website :D

    But getting lifetime support for $187 isn't that bad.

    Thanked by 1Ympker
  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @Ympker said: Check out Divi 5.0 preview. It actually does look promising: https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/general-news/the-future-of-divi

    I used ET theme before Divi, and I've used Divi.

    It's nice stuff but of course you're signing a deal with the devil. "Let me build this cool site with Divi and use all of its power...and agree to pay ET a fee for the rest of the site's life so we can get updates."

  • @vero said:

    @Ympker said:

    Using Divi less these days, but still probably one of my best lifetime deal investments to date :)

    Divi creators clearly don't think WordPress is the best choice for their website :D

    But getting lifetime support for $187 isn't that bad.

    It really isn't. Divi support has often even fixed client sites remotely when I described thoroughly what the issue was.

    @raindog308 said:

    @Ympker said: Check out Divi 5.0 preview. It actually does look promising: https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/general-news/the-future-of-divi

    I used ET theme before Divi, and I've used Divi.

    It's nice stuff but of course you're signing a deal with the devil. "Let me build this cool site with Divi and use all of its power...and agree to pay ET a fee for the rest of the site's life so we can get updates."

    >

    That's why I got the lifetime license years ago. Once bought all sites will get updates. Was very well worth it imho. Even if there are some great alternatives these days.

  • :) my blog is also built via WordPress - and it is working fine!

  • @raindog308 i think they have lifetime licenses since many years ago.
    Divi is up there with the top templates. When drag and drop wasn't common in WP, they implemented it. v5 is going to bring developer API.

  • @Ympker said:
    That's why I got the lifetime license years ago. Once bought all sites will get updates. Was very well worth it imho. Even if there are some great alternatives these days.

    What is the best alternative to lifetime divi?
    In the wild I mostly see elementor and that does not have a lifetime deal.

  • @Ympker said:

    What are you doing to get performance at 100%? No javascript on that page? No google analytics?

  • @trycatchthis said:

    @Ympker said:
    That's why I got the lifetime license years ago. Once bought all sites will get updates. Was very well worth it imho. Even if there are some great alternatives these days.

    What is the best alternative to lifetime divi?
    In the wild I mostly see elementor and that does not have a lifetime deal.

    Many people are really enjoying Elementor. I'm sure it's a great tool, from what I have seen. GeneratorPress Theme + Blocks can also be a good choice, others swear on Oxygen.
    In the end, you need a tool that works for you (or your clients). I settled on Divi. If I build a WordPress site that's not based on Divi I hand-pick a theme/pagebuilder every time anew.

    @trycatchthis said:

    @Ympker said:

    >

    What are you doing to get performance at 100%? No javascript on that page? No google analytics?

    So far, the page is held very simple. Only thing is a cookie banner from Iubenda. Basically a static page. Not much that could slow it down. PicoStrap is super lightweight.

  • satoshiscavesatoshiscave Member
    edited November 2022

    I wish I never started using Wordpress because when you want to change it makes it hard hard.. I love the Jekyll blog engine and using some build alongside like Gulp or Grunt, there is a app called Codekit that pretty much offloads all the need to be a coder and making the configurations much easier and no need to be a coder as such. its for MAC but why in the world would anyone use anything else?

    There is also React, even worse! lots of javascript javascript and many hours of surfing the how to do pages and mocking around. Been through some projects using React :) some cool features like styled components, basically CSS with Javascript! etc etc

    here is a taste of a styled component for you:

    https://styled-components.com/docs/basics#motivation

    Knowing CSS skills and using for example Sass tool set like Bourbon or Sassy Sass, some coding or how to use NPM, VSO and also photoshop are also essential to really make it look good like a pro. Prepare to become a coder, engineer, network man, designer and artist all at the same time :)

    I think most people rely on Wordpress or some engine similar, its shit and it really sucks but it works. but like I said once you start getting lots of users readers, and its becoming bigger you have built your own nightmare, looking for addons and easy ways out of problems your headache is real.

    Time to migrate away from Wordpress? time to learn the whole suite of web hosting, apache, mysql and beyond, migrating a Wordpress takes a man not a mouse, a lot of people claim to be able but very few will master it. took me quite some time. :) there is 10's of add-ons you can pay for to migrate, very few will actual work and very many will break your shit guaranteed.

  • I feel like I must be missing out!? I haven't touched WordPress in many years, but I always had issues with plugins, loading times and it just crashing...moved to just building stuff with JavaScript frameworks and much prefer that. Might have to spin up a new WordPress instance and see what's changed.

  • @swat4 said: Uploading hot sisters' photos and videos every day!
    @swat4 said:
    :) my blog is also built via WordPress - and it is working fine!

    No, it is not. The sisters are all pixelated :)

  • @gMan33 said: I used to work on WordPress , but now I find it slow and too much resource hungry

    in new version 6.1: Adding caching to database queries in WP_Query WordPress 6.1 includes an improvement to how database queries are performed in the WP_Query class, resulting in database queries will be cached. This means that if the same database query is run more than once, the result will be loaded from cache.

    so it might be bit less resource hungry especially queering databases

    Thanked by 1vero
  • @hampered said:
    I feel like I must be missing out!? I haven't touched WordPress in many years, but I always had issues with plugins, loading times and it just crashing...moved to just building stuff with JavaScript frameworks and much prefer that. Might have to spin up a new WordPress instance and see what's changed.

    In what world would using a JS frame work be better than using wordpress for most small sites?

  • @trycatchthis said:

    @Ympker said:
    That's why I got the lifetime license years ago. Once bought all sites will get updates. Was very well worth it imho. Even if there are some great alternatives these days.

    What is the best alternative to lifetime divi?
    In the wild I mostly see elementor and that does not have a lifetime deal.

    GeneratePress is pretty good.
    And so is OceanWP.

    Both sell lifetimes.
    Unlike Divi, your site's contents will still work normally if you ever switch the theme, so that's a huge plus in my book.

    OT:
    WordPress has a lot of pros. Its biggest downside is that it needs to be taken care of, for as long as the site runs - unlike static HTML which is a set-and-forget thing. Updates, patches - even with a careful choice of plugins, one can always miss some minor bug every now and then.

    Regarding performance and security - they are OK unless you do something really stupid.

  • @bikegremlin said:
    WordPress has a lot of pros. Its biggest downside is that it needs to be taken care of

    Regarding performance and security - they are OK unless you do something really stupid.

    If you have a business website then you will likely need to update it every once in a while as well.
    1. for SEO purposes.
    2. design purposes
    3. rendering purposes (example move from fixed layout to responsive layout)

    While static HTML is less work you can minimize the amount of work you do in wordpress. Start with installing wpcli and setting up cron jobs to run wp update.

  • bikegremlinbikegremlin Member
    edited December 2022

    @trycatchthis said:

    @bikegremlin said:
    WordPress has a lot of pros. Its biggest downside is that it needs to be taken care of

    Regarding performance and security - they are OK unless you do something really stupid.

    If you have a business website then you will likely need to update it every once in a while as well.
    1. for SEO purposes.
    2. design purposes
    3. rendering purposes (example move from fixed layout to responsive layout)

    While static HTML is less work you can minimize the amount of work you do in wordpress. Start with installing wpcli and setting up cron jobs to run wp update.

    Yes, but I'm yet to find a reliable way of automating update tests on staging before pushing it to live.
    That's the tricky part.
    Sometimes problems upon an update aren't easily "caught."

    If it weren't for that, one could just set WordPress to auto-update and forget about it.

    That's different from updating content. Content updates are a breeze with WordPress and that's one of its greatest pros.

    Thanked by 2vero Ympker
  • @bikegremlin said:
    Yes, but I'm yet to find a reliable way of automating update tests on staging before pushing it to live.
    That's the tricky part.
    Sometimes problems upon an update aren't easily "caught."

    True but luckily most sites aren't mission critical, and problems because of updates are few and far between. You're still gonna have to monitor the site anyway.

  • @trycatchthis said:

    @bikegremlin said:
    Yes, but I'm yet to find a reliable way of automating update tests on staging before pushing it to live.
    That's the tricky part.
    Sometimes problems upon an update aren't easily "caught."

    True but luckily most sites aren't mission critical, and problems because of updates are few and far between. You're still gonna have to monitor the site anyway.

    Compared to a static HTML site, it's a huge difference - at least in my opinion and experience.

  • @bikegremlin said:
    Compared to a static HTML site, it's a huge difference - at least in my opinion and experience.

    It is more work. What i;m getting at is if you have just a static HTML page that you're not going to update then that is probably not for business. As you need to do updates for SEO purposes. If its just a hobby project then static HTML might be better.

  • @trycatchthis said:

    @bikegremlin said:
    Compared to a static HTML site, it's a huge difference - at least in my opinion and experience.

    It is more work. What i;m getting at is if you have just a static HTML page that you're not going to update then that is probably not for business. As you need to do updates for SEO purposes. If its just a hobby project then static HTML might be better.

    A surprisingly high number of businesses don't do SEO.
    But have a website with their contact info, basic info, portfolio etc.

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