Comments on: The Downside of Using Wordpress

By: Matt Keegan

Matt Keegan — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:29:31 +0000

Typically, when a WordPress update come out, I wait a few days before making the change. That way, if there is a problem with the latest update, I don’t have to go back in again and make a change.

Still, I like WP and find the updates to be a snap.

By: Eric Sornoso

Eric Sornoso — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:15:32 +0000

I use WordPress, and I do admit that I’ve spending hours, and hours on making my site more efficient thru SEO, appearance, links, etc.. . I search the internet like an old John Wayne movie for the newest plug-in widgets, tricks, or blogging techniques. Within the endless amount of hours; I’m very content, because within I gain a great deal of knowledge which sounds very cliche is priceless.

By: zacheos

zacheos — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:44:50 +0000

Could not possibly disagree more. You said, “features like this keep wordpress from being given serious consideration by mainstream publishers.” Then why would CNN (just one of many, many, good examples) use WordPress heavily in their own webspace?

By: Hendry Lee

Hendry Lee — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:06:35 +0000

I have a different point of view though:

1. Security is tricky. As a piece of software becomes popular, it seems to have more security vulnerabilities because more people try to exploit it. I think this is certainly the case with WordPress.

I have an article comparing WordPress, Drupal and Joomla security vulnerabilities over the years.

http://blogbuildingu.com/wordpress/wordpress-security

Whichever platform you use, it is necessary to update regularly for security reason.

2. Based on my experience with Drupal and WordPress, I can say that WP is the easiest to upgrade. It takes a few minutes at most.

I was worried about WP ugrade to 2.7 last year, but after hours of testing, it seems like there’s no real problem at all during the process, at least for my installation.

ProBlogger.net featured my WP 2.7 upgrade article and it helped a lot of people during the transition to the new version of WP.

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/12/28/how-to-upgrade-to-wordpress-27-safely-and-ensure-compatibility

With control always come responsibility. You can use Blogger.com and have them upgrade the code for you, but they are less powerful.

3. I agree. WordPress does lack of enterprise features but remember that it has already been around for a few years.

But for the need of support, which often is required by corporates, there are always Automattic and other companies who offer that kind of services.

It’s a matter of looking for the right tool to build your site. For me, 8 out of 10 times I recommend WordPress, for the rest I consider Drupal.

By: schikowski

schikowski — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:16:53 +0000

@seobro, you can add .html in permalinks, like this: %postname%.html
It works beautifully.
Regarding Google preferring one over the other, you might want to read this: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html

By: schikowski

schikowski — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:08:24 +0000

After using WP for clients’ sites for 3 years, I have also come to understand its limitations. I still love it dearly, but maintenance takes so much time… Plugins may not support the latest version, even though this is an exception from my experience. So what to do? I’m not going to install Typo3 for every little site I build… I’m going to stick to WordPress for the time being while looking for other solutions at the same time.

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Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:07:10 +0000

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By: Jeffrey Henderson

Jeffrey Henderson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:11:41 +0000

That’s fairly true if you’re using an out of the box solution.

I’ve dumped some cash into customizing the WPMU version to add a lot of what you’re talking about in enterprise features as well as a few tools for publishing new sites much faster.

I think the best bet with WP, especially in the Enterprise is using it as a great tool to build upon rather than an out of the box solution.

By: seobro

seobro — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:16:13 +0000

I love wordpress, but I prefer to use HTML web pages because Google likes them more. For some reason, it prefers to see a .HTML page to a blog post. Google used to love blogs, and later social media, but lately it is focusing more on “mature” web pages from “authority” sites.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:34:14 +0000

I agree with you completely on the downsides of WP. Most don’t understand that it’s like a toddler - can’t take your eyes off of it for a second! I actually just launched a WP blog and my first official post was how to secure much of it. A bit of a misnomer with any software, but it certainly helps especially against automated attacks! I found your link to the firewall/injection plugin and added it to my post. Thank you!

@JopaFan I haven’t experienced any hoggyness with WP installs that stick close to the basic use of the software. I’ve run into many issues with exotic and/or poorly-written plugins.