Reasons why a WordPress website may not be right for your business

WordPress is a popular go-to option for companies on a budget who wish to quickly set up an online presence and get where the action is. Since most routes to corporate success involve differentiating yourself from your rivals, for example by defining the unique attributes of your brand, product or service, many would argue that WordPress actually makes this much harder to achieve. So without denying WordPress's merits as a business content management system, let's look at five reasons why it may not be for you:

Security

Online hackers tend to follow the crowd – because that's where the rich pickings are. Many WP-driven sites are more vulnerable because security measures are generic rather than tailored to your type of business traffic. In addition, a complex matrix of upgrades, third-party applications and more means that this platform is difficult for businesses to police effectively without professional help. To take just two instances: comment spam with spurious links is a real back-door threat, and the rather basic log-in arrangements common on many WP sites are often easily overcome.

Customisation

WP templates are mostly very useable straight from the box, but many are not easy to customise to closely match your corporate identity and reflect your business needs. Once again, professional help can make a difference and web developers are well-placed to introduce you to a much broader range of styles and options. One particular drawback of WP functionality occurs if your chosen template has a lot of redundant functions. This tends to reduce your site performance to a slow crawl.

Plugins

WP-optimised plugins do much to enhance a site's functioning, but as third-party applications developed to extend the platform's possibilities they can also cause a site to perform very slowly. Getting the balance right between must-have plugin features and optimum overall site performance can be very tricky indeed. Likewise, throwing WP upgrades into this mix just adds further complexity, and it's very common to find that the downside of a new theme or update is that you will have to embark on a round of tweaking and modification to get back on track.

Updating site content

WP is notorious for its quirky interpretation of your uploaded content. Pasted material tends to have extra helpings of code inserted which alter fonts, layout and more. Those who work 'under the bonnet' at text/source level will find that WP is forever 'improving' your coding work the moment your back is turned. Too often, this can mean lots of time spent troubleshooting and finding workarounds to get WP to do your bidding.

WP upgrades

The arrival of WordPress upgrades promise new features and a revamped appearance. However, the complexity of the WP universe often means a new release also heralds the appearance of fresh incompatibilities calling for a new round of fine-tuning. Seasoned WP users tend to anticipate all this by backing up everything possible and, wherever possible, updating in phases. This can help to mitigate the worst effects but is yet another example of the costly, time-consuming problems which users of this everyday platform must endure.

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