Pros and Cons of WordPress

Introduction

WordPress is a content management system for the web written largely in PHP. The initial release of WordPress was in 2003. Once installed it is, and always has been a tool to publish blogs, but its use can be altered by using plugins and themes. According to Wikipedia, WordPress was used by 22.52% of websites in December 2024, from Wikipedia, although historically the percentage of WordPress websites has tended to be quoted even higher than that. These websites can be anything from blogs to any number of different applications such as e-commerce websites, mailing lists and portfolios.

You could make a case for WordPress being low-code. A WordPress website can often be created with a couple of clicks, and once built plugins and themes can be added easily in the dashboard. Many site owners never touch code at all, especially with hosted solutions like WordPress.com.

So, WordPress is powerful, versatile and fashionably low-code. But as with any off-the-shelf framework, it comes with trade-offs.

The History of WordPress

WordPress began as a fairly simple publishing tool. It was written in PHP, a back-end templating language. As time passed, as with most software, the codebase grew, became more complex. More front-end was integrated with the back-end PHP. Official plugin and theme libraries were created.

PHP is perfect for publishing text to a page and saving it to a database. Twenty or so years ago PHP was a different beast to what it is today. Perhaps, that is the reason it was originally installed by copying all the files into the web root, the publicly accessible part of the web server. Subsequent frameworks tend to put the majority of PHP files outside the web root so they cannot be accessed as easily. However, WordPress continues in a similar way to how it was originally. A big reason for this will be so that anyone can just upgrade their website. Making big changes now would be problematic, especially if it’s marketed as a low-code solution.

The downside of having all the files in public is that the website as a whole is less secure. Updating the software is even more important as new versions are released because new releases often fix security issues. And updating the main WordPress software can cause problems with themes and plugins which may not work with a later version, or may not have been updated yet, or may have ceased to get updates. All of which means that a website that is stuffed full of plugins can be very brittle and tricky to upgrade in the future.

WordPress for Different Website Types

WordPress straight out of the box is a blog, or weblog, i.e. a place to write about things. The roots of WordPress are in blogging, but it has become more of a framework to build other types of websites. Websites as diverse as e-commerce, portfolio/marketing websites, and forums can all be created with WordPress.

WooCommerce can turn a blog into an e-commerce website, and page builders such as Elementor, Divi, and WPBakery can help carve up the different pages into a modern looking website. Whatever your use case there probably already exists multiple plugins to do whatever it is.

Not only that, you can use WordPress as an admin panel to create posts, but then export the posts in any number of formats to be used elsewhere.

The huge number of plugins means that a lot of the functionality you might require already exists, and might exist for free.

Built-In Content Management

Gutenberg editor comes as standard, and I’d say is one of the main attractions of using WordPress. There is also a plugin if you’d rather use the older Classic Editor that was once the standard editor. The original editor had some javascript elements but this has increased much more with Gutenberg being javascript-based.

These editors make it easy for non-tech users to update content. Gutenberg uses different kinds of content blocks that can be moved around, and the text can be formatted however you want it. And, from a developer’s perspective, having a complex editor pre-built reduces the amount of work I have to do greatly - the content editor is already taken care of. Easy and quick.

The downside would be that you get what you’re given. Plugins can modify the editor but you often have less control over the layout and functionality of the editor compared to modern page builders or CMSs.

Consultancies, Agencies and the WordPress Ecosystem

There are entire businesses are built around WordPress services. In fact, there are many, many different agencies and consultancies that specialize in WordPress.

This is great because there are a large number of people who can help you out with whatever WordPress issues you might have.

But also, customers of these companies often get given WordPress websites even when it might not be the best thing for that project. The guy with the hammer sees every problem as a nail. There’s also the potential for bloated or cookie-cutter solutions.

Plugins and Themes: Power and Fragility

Almost every non-blog use case requires plugins. To make the website look different you’ll probably need a theme.

There is a massive plugin library, but also for each individual use case using an off-the-shelf plugin can be suboptimal. Your project must behave exactly like all the other websites that use the same plugins. Developers can also make their own custom plugins, but depending on the type of plugin, this may not be a small undertaking.

Regarding the look of a website, there is a very large theme library. While many themes are free, and paid for themes exist too, you’re not buying a unique design unless you get a designer to make you a custom theme. Downloading an off-the-shelf theme may have complex setup requirements, may not work with your plugins, and you have no way of knowing if the theme will be maintained over time.

Plugins and themes give you flexibility to add different functionality and make the website look a certain way.

The downsides are…

• There can be conflicts between plugins, and even between plugins and themes.
• Version compatibility issues between plugins and WordPress.
• Security risks with poorly maintained plugins, sometimes rogue plugins can be injected with viruses that can either affect the website or the viewers of the website.
• Technical debt over time.

Flexibility as a Fault

While WordPress is clearly a very popular framework, can help make a website cheaply, and is general enough to be used for many different types of websites. While all that is true, I’d suggest that forcing it into many of the websites it’s used for is almost the worst possible solution to the problem. Even using WordPress as a plain old blog might not be the best choice in 2025.

The reason WordPress is used is because of the ecosystem and the content editor. I can make a WordPress website quickly, give it to you, now you can easily add new pages and update it day-to-day. Want a new theme? 1000s exist already or there are 1000s of people who can help you get a custom design.

I can understand why many developers always think WordPress first. Having a pre-built admin area that non-technical people can use takes a lot of the work out of developing a website. And, what’s more, I don’t even need to be a developer to make you a website that looks good, I can be a SEO/copyrighter or designer who is comfortable with low-code.

However, when starting off a project you wouldn’t tend to think of a downloadable open-source code that sits in the root of your project as the best way to go about it. Being open source, means that anyone and everyone can have access to the code of your website, and having that code sitting in the root of your website means that those files can be accessed by anyone. While there are security plugins, the vulnerabilities that are found are often fixed in updates to the WordPress software. So, it’s important to keep the WordPress software as up-to-date as possible. But, updating WordPress and all the different plugins can be difficult, and all the while, everything is sitting in the publicly accessible part of your web server.

Many WordPress websites suffer from slow load times due to plugin bloat or heavy themes. Performance is one of the things that Google uses when ranking websites, so load times are important for SEO.

If you want an e-commerce website, for example, a better way would probably be to look at your specific requirements and look at what languages or frameworks can get you to where you want to get to. If you need to have a content editor, they exist elsewhere.

Alternatives to WordPress

There are many alternatives, each with their own pros and cons. Most will probably be less widely used than WordPress. And, there might not be one solution that does everything WordPress does but better.

• Instead of a marketing or portfolio website in WordPress, maybe a static site generator (SSG) would be better.
• Instead of making an e-commerce website with WooCommerce, maybe a website made with a framework that is more suited to e-commerce without a lot of third-party plugins would be better.
• A website such as Wix is a no-code alternative to WordPress, or other no/low-code page builders exist for marketing-type websites.

I’m not going to describe exactly what should be done in every situation. Often there is more than one correct answer to any problem. Some of the alternatives will be arguably worse than using WordPress. But, using WordPress is a choice, and you should understand why you are using it and what the alternatives are.

Conclusion

WordPress is a versatile open-source software, with a large community of developers, a big and growing ecosystem of plugins and a very useful content editor. People use it to create websites, quickly and cheaply, with minimal knowledge of coding.

One of the things you can say over and over with WordPress is it’s versatility. There is a plugin for everything.

Something else you can say about WordPress is that the more plugins you use and the more you alter how WordPress works the more fragile your website becomes. Website bloat, difficulties with maintenance, and poor performance are all real issues.

My Opinion

I am just one person with one set of opinions but these are my thoughts about WordPress in 2025. These opinions may not have been the same in the past, and they may change in the future.

I started using WordPress in 2005, I have used it for many years until recently, and have created plugins for it. It’s partly having used it for so long that has coloured my judgement in recent times. When you create a new website, it’s always fine on day one, but it’s how it behaves after a year or ten years that also counts.

To be fair to the WordPress installations I have known, they are often fine when untouched on zombie hosting after many years. The issues arise if you actually want to work on them and upgrade the software and all the plugins. Also, has the hosting been upgraded? If not, that can also lead to problems.

That being said, I have had WordPress blogs running for over 10 years, they’ve been moved and upgraded successfully over that time. Alternatives may not have been tested over such a long time-frame, especially if they are newer. We don’t know how different frameworks will change in the future, or if they will become deprecated.

Upgrading any website that has been left un-touched for a long time can be awkward. Needing to update is the same with everything, I guess my issues with WordPress in particular are that all the files are public and in order to make it the way you want it you must often use an array of plugins without really knowing anything about them. Will they always work with every WordPress version? Will they work with all the other plugins I want to use?

Another way to look at my view, is I’m generally ok with third party software. But third party software on top of third party software starts to feel a bit precarious. WordPress Plugins are technically third party software. But then, you can say the same thing about PHP composer packages or Node modules. At least some of the main WordPress plugins (WooCommerce and Jetpack) are owned by Automattic, the company that maintains WordPress so there should not be compatibility issues between them.

Pick your poison.