What is our primary use case?
I work with WordPress as a developer and build a wide range of websites for my clients. Some of them are beauty clinics, online stores, portfolio sites, and company profiles. Recently, there was an agriculture website where they provide services and sell many agricultural products. We use WordPress and WooCommerce for that.
How has it helped my organization?
We use WordPress to showcase our services, where we offer WordPress website design and development, WordPress plugin development and maintenance. Basically, it's the core of my organization. It helps me deliver the website with high efficiency and speed; it offers great scalability & customization.
WordPress's user-friendly content management system makes it simple for our clients to update and manage their websites independently, reducing their reliance on us for routine tasks and updates.
It has great community support and WordPress's regular updates and a wide array of security plugins help us maintain the integrity and security of our clients' websites.
What is most valuable?
I appreciate the flexibility of WordPress, particularly its filter and action hooks, which allow for the development of additional features. We can build our own plugins into this. We can be creative while following our clients' requirements. For example, I recently built a custom plugin where the client wanted extra functionalities about membership, special profile pages, and a subscription system. And WordPress has helped a lot, thanks to its flexibility. I could use current plugins on the market and then modify them with my own plugin and collaborate with other existing plugins. So, WordPress has reduced a lot of work for me as a developer. With WordPress, I can achieve the functionality that I want. I don't have to do everything from scratch because a few solutions exist in the market, and I can enhance that.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see a new UI. It's pretty boring to see the same interface for so many years. Since 2003 there hasn't been much difference in the backend panel of the administrator area. It needs to be updated visually in the admin area.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for over a decade. But for the past eight years, I've used it more intensely, focusing more on development.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
WordPress is stable. The most important thing to do is to just keep updating the plugins. Most of my clients, for whom I also do maintenance, have faced no problems with their websites. However, I sometimes have clients who face problems and come to me because they are too late to update the plugins.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
WordPress offers impressive scalability, making it possible to begin with a basic website and continually expand its capabilities.
In the context of client projects, the scalability of WordPress becomes particularly evident. For instance, if I create an e-commerce website for a client, the user base can easily surpass 100 users, especially when the client is actively selling products and consistently adding new customers to their site. In my portfolio, I manage more than 30 clients, each with unique websites.
If the website is just to showcase products and services, then the user probably only has three or five working on that website as an administrator or editor where they write a blog. But when the website is an e-commerce solution, users will grow as much as possible because they are selling products. And as they are selling products, new users are always signing in as customers and buying their products. That number could grow, even from zero to 500, and even more.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
A long time ago, I used Joomla, which is also a CMS. Since I knew WordPress, I started to switch from Joomla to WordPress.
I combined WordPress with the WooCommerce plugin for e-commerce solutions since that plugin is very popular for e-commerce. I've used PrestaShop in the past. It was really good as an e-commerce solution. However, in terms of flexibility, PrestaShop is not that flexible because it's mostly built for e-commerce. Because of that, I focused more on WordPress because the level of scalability is higher for WordPress. You could start with a basic website or blog, add in membership, and start selling products. The business grows and changes, and you still can use the same platform, WordPress.
I recently had a client that switched from Wix to WordPress.
How was the initial setup?
I usually built the website from scratch and followed the design that was provided by the client or by our designer, then enhanced them with additional features. I added extra code there to tailor the website's functionality to the specific needs of the client.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is very reasonable because WordPress is an open-source platform. Likewise, there are so many free plugins, so it's already a good starting point for me and my clients. But if we need extra solutions to have a good layout, for example, we can either do custom code or use Elementor to style the website. Elementor is not expensive. It's about $50 per year. In general, it's a pretty cheap solution to build a website using WordPress.
What other advice do I have?
Because WordPress is so popular, most of the time, my clients already have previous knowledge about using it, such as how to write a new blog. Suppose they want to make some changes to their page, such as how to put a new image or video media. In that case, they already know about it because it's a big market, and there is a strong possibility they've had previous experience using WordPress. In the back end, WordPress is user-friendly because it's pretty familiar. If you have ever used a WordPress website and then checked another WordPress website in the back end, most of the time it has a similar interface. Moreover, many plugins add new features and suit websites with different functionalities. There has been a recent development for WordPress where they are going with a block system in Gutenberg, and that could be the future, so in general, I think it will be better and more modern.
I have never asked for any technical support because, most of the time, if I really need technical support, I can simply Google it, and some other developers or users would have already answered the question I have.
My advice to general users is to just use it. WordPress is pretty easy, and there are several free YouTube tutorials on how to use it. And if they have made a new website in WordPress, they can ask developers to give them a short tutorial on how to use it. In general, they can always go back to the Internet and find information on how to use it. Many users can install new plugins if needed because it's so easy. But when it comes to more specific functionalities, a general user needs to go back to the developer. I rate WordPress a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
