5 myths about WordPress, busted

(Prototype credit: Unsplash)

WordPress competes with the all-time website builders and utilizes the best web hosting services via the all-time WordPress hosting, and is the world's leading content management system (CMS). Used by more sites than any other platform or CMS, more 455 million websites are currently powered past WordPress.

As the most popular CMS, with a market share of over lx%, WordPress's dominance has led to many myths and misconceptions arising nigh it. These include its capabilities, what it can be used for, and more. Here, nosotros look at five of the most common myths and deflate them.

i. WordPress is merely a toy for bloggers

woman working on laptop with WordPress CMS — WordPress began equally a blogging tool, but information technology'south expanded to get much more than (Image credit: Unsplash)

It's true that WordPress began life in 2003 as a blogging tool, beingness built on elevation of an existing platform called b2/cafelog. Merely it's been a long time since blogs were the only thing for which it was used.

People have been making all sorts of sites with website builders for WordPress for many years, including ecommerce stores, brochure websites for small and medium-sized businesses, membership sites with subscription-based content, and many more than. WordPress has been used to build pretty much any type of website you can think of, across the full spectrum of markets and interests.

While WordPress is simple to set upwardly and employ – which makes it bonny to bloggers and people who take never congenital a website before – in the hands of skilled developers, information technology can be used for complex applications. In fact, due to WordPress' plugin compages, anyone can write their own plugin for information technology to extend its capabilities and provide advanced functionality which doesn't be out of the box.

2. It's not practiced for ecommerce

laptop zoomed in on WordPress site — Leading ecommerce plugins for WordPress mean it accounts for a huge proportion of ecommerce sites online (Prototype credit: Unsplash)

This one is piece of cake to deflate, as the numbers simply tell a different story. WooCommerce, which is but ane of the many ecommerce plugins available for WordPress, accounts for over 4 meg ecommerce sites online, competing with other large names in the ecommerce space, like Shopify and Magento.

The reason WooCommerce is so prevalent is that it's then piece of cake to gear up and utilize, and there are thousands of different themes bachelor for information technology. These factors mean edifice ecommerce sites is within the reach of anyone, not just those with spider web development expertise.

Ecommerce is a complex undertaking, and a lot goes into doing it successfully, but plugins like WooCommerce have been built by experts in the field with many years of combined experience. That experience translates into systems that include all the functionality you need to be able to successfully run an online business organisation.

3. WordPress isn't scalable

laptop open on WordPress — WordPress sites are able to provide high levels of operation due to their customizability (Image credit: Unsplash)

If you lot're unfamiliar with what scalability means in relation to websites, information technology'south the power of a website to handle increased workload – usually in the form of more visitors – without a loss of performance, i.e. it doesn't slow downward, or in some cases, malfunction.

Scalability has as much to do with your hosting environment as information technology does the platform you lot utilize to power your site. Yous could accept the most finely-tuned website possible, only if your hosting setup isn't right, your website could fall over if you lot go a sudden fasten in traffic.

So really, WordPress, or any other CMS, is but 1 side of the equation. And like any other database-driven CMS, in the right hands and with the all-time WordPress hosting, WordPress tin can be configured to produce peak performance and use a minimum of server resources.

4. No support

man working at computer in WordPress shirt — With so many users, in that location'south a large online library of knowledge relating to WordPress, while paid plugins add priority support (Image credit: Photo past Fikret tozak on Unsplash)

Aside from the fact that it's free and easy to prepare, 1 of the things that attracts many people to WordPress is that so many other people already employ it. With such a large user base, no matter what problem y'all're facing or question you accept, you're well-nigh guaranteed that someone else has been in a similar situation before and already asked almost information technology.

The WordPress website has a knowledge base of operations with a large library of articles, simply there are also customs support forums where people have been asking questions and sharing their knowledge for many years. WordPress themes and plugins likewise have their own dedicated forums. And and so there are the thousands of websites dedicated to WordPress topics, many featuring detailed tutorials and videos.

All of this back up is free, but if you lot've purchased plugins, priority support is normally included in the purchase price. And if yous choose to host your website with WordPress.com (as opposed to hosting your own site), all of the plans come with alive chat and email support.

five. Information technology'south non secure, or more likely to be hacked

laptop open on desk with code displayed — The WordPress CMS is very secure: be mindful of plugins with less-than-secure features (Image credit: Unsplash)

This is a tricky discipline because there are many alien claims, some proverb WordPress is insecure and others saying it'due south non. Out of the box, WordPress has a better security record, and a larger security team to focus on these types of problems, than some other CMSs like Joomla.

The WordPress CMS itself is ordinarily non the culprit when it comes to sites beingness hacked, merely rather plugins that take been used on it, particularly ones that accept not been updated for a while. Plugins are often developed by individuals or small teams who don't have the aforementioned resources as the WordPress core development team to put into security checks.

Any site that is not actively maintained, with its software kept up to appointment, is vulnerable to hacking attempts. This is truthful of all sites powered by a CMS. In the hands of experienced professionals, a WordPress site can be made to be very secure.

Developers who take security seriously will besides make sure that the clients they evangelize WordPress sites for know how to actively maintain sites after launch to ensure they remain secure.