Well, it is not always the answer. It is the darling of designers who code. Why? It is easy to use across the board. The install is easy. The updating is easy. Once you learn the lingo the templating is almost as easy as HTML and CSS. WordPress can do amazing things. I have used it as a mini-content management system for someone who needed a simple membership directory. I have used it as a member directory (I built it but did not design it) and as a menu for a restaurant that changes their menu frequently). But, I am building an e-commerce site right now, and WordPress is not going to be the answer. I am building a site for a trade show display company, and WordPress is not the answer.
Why not? Because at a certain point the amount of extra plugins and customizations outweighs the ease of use. For the trade show display company, I am going to use SilverStripe because of its similar ease of use. That particular CMS has a simple to administer back-end that was designed for the type of site I am building.
When is WordPress the answer?
- When you are building a site whose main function is to be a blog (like this one).
- When you are building a site who has a manageable number of pages.
- When you are adding e-commerce functionality to a small site (whether it is WordPress or just static)
When should you consider other options?
- When you are building a complex site where page relationships are less straight forward.
- When the main purpose of your site is to sell retail items.
- When you need to have modules repeat on different pages.
- When you need some of the functionality that you can build into WordPress be native.
I would say 80% of our projects use WordPress over at Purple Crayon Web Studio, but it doesn’t work for everything. The moral of the story? Look at all the options before you make the decision to avoid getting halfway through a project and realize just how much customization it is going to take.
(image credit Marjan Krebelj)
