WordPress Misuse and Abuse in Development

You could use a reciprocating saw (Sawsall) as a manual saw, but why would you? Turn the thing on and let it do all the work. There is no need to go to the expense of buying an electric saw, only to expend energy sawing the thing back and forth, in a manual fashion, off. You are penalized because you have spent money on the saw, the blade is too short for long cuts, and the thing is heavy and unwieldly. This same experience can, and does happen with WordPress, my favorite CMS development tool.

Do not use a reciprocating saw for manual sawing, power off. It is not the right tool for manual cuts. Besides being expensive, heavy and unwiedly, the blade will move, increasing your effort. Similarly, please use WordPress as the CMS it was designed as. There is so much to WordPress, but people can still mess it up.

Wordrpess is really a nifty web site development tool. Not only is it easy to use, it has a very large following throughout the world, so that technical support is close at hand. WordPress powers 60% of all CMS web sites, and over 20% of all web sites in the world. That is a lot of sites, and a lot of people using WordPress, no doubt.

All tools, virtual or real, can be misused. The results are ugly and possibly dangerous, as my reciprocal saw example shows. in general, results will be sub-optimal if you use a tool in an unintended way. WordPress is no different.

As is easily researched, WordPress is a CMS, or content management system. Like other CMS, WordPress splits site content from presentation. This seems innocent enough, but if you are coming from coding html files and loading them up to your server, this is truly different.

Misuse of WordPress includes:

• Using WordPress to store HTML pages: WordPress is much more than a directory, a platform used as a repository to store straight HTML pages. Though it can do this, you should look beyond the basics. Relative to straight HTML pages on a server, WordPress does require maintenance and training. expensive and time consuming when compared to an HTML site.
• No Interactivity on your WordPress site: WordPress is built to interact with your readers as well as the rest of the internet world. If you do want to entertain comments, do not want any input from your readers, do not care about your Google standings, do not want interaction with other sites, then WordPress might not be for you. The world of the internet is connected today, and so is WordPress. If you wish to live in an internet cave, shut off from the world, then code a straight HTML site and happy uploading.
• Use WordPress, but use a waterfall software development methodology: What a waste it is when I see WordPress used with this methodology. WordPress allows the builder to have so much more flexibility. If you do a long requirements gathering phase you are missing so much of the fun. WordPress sites can change so quickly, with not much work. I am not saying you should do no requirements gathering, but not anywhere near as much as in the Waterfall development methodology.
• Allow site owners to play with the site and enter content as you are developing the site: Chart a new relationship with your customers by allowing them unprecedented access to their site, while it i being built. They will see more, ask more questions and be a more involved partner to the site build. WordPress can do this without difficulty. As a developer you will be able to catch problems much earlier in the development cycle, giving you more time to change your design or address the issues with your customer.
• Google will index me regardless, so SEO design does not matter: Sure Google will eventually index you, as Google and other search engines will index everyone, but do you want to wait this long, and are you satisfied with your page ranking? Google really likes WordPress sites and indexes them well. This includes categories, tags, and RSS. Add an SEO plugin. I fail to see why some sites are so uninterested about their Google search results.

As with all software, there is a cost to developing and running a WordPress site. WordPress requires maintenance updates, particularly for plugins and more specifically for themes. Ignore these and your site will get old, vulnerabilities will be discovered and your site will be hacked and defaced. Because WordPress powers 20% of all web sites, there is a large target on its back: Crack a vulnerability and you get to hack 20% of the Internet’s sites. Maintenance needs to be done my knowledgeable people, usually developers, and this costs money. Sure you can learn to do this, but do you want to devote time to learn how to harden your WordPress site?

WordPress is a really flexible development tool, and worthy of running 20% of the world’s internet sites. There is a great community out there to help developers and novice coders. WordPress allows you do easily offer new functionality for your site that was unimaginable 10 years ago. Please do not use it as a straight HTML site. It is much more.