WordPress

WordPress is an open-source editorial publishing system written in PHP and MySQL. It is available under the GNU GPL licence. It has a wide user and development community.

Typical properties of WordPress

• Open source code. The system has an open source code, is available free of charge and anyone can participate in its development.
• WordPress follows XML, CSS and XHTML standards.
• It has an integrated link manager. It has an integrated media gallery which means that both image management and their basic editing are located directly in the editorial system. At the same time, the system automatically creates thumbnails of images in defined dimensions.
• The structure of permanent links is very friendly to Internet search engines and can be user-adjusted.
• It is possible to use plugins to expand functions, there are 50,000 of them available only in the official repository.
• It supports the themes of appearance.
• It supports functional blocks, the so-called widgets, such as custom text, RSS listing or last posts.
• It allows sorting contributions into categories, one contribution can be sorted into multiple categories.
• It supports adding labels (tags) to simplify navigation.
• WordPress supports trackback and pingback, so it is possible to automatically send information about new content to external services and to receive similar updates.
• Text formatting and its style is simplified by the topographical filter.
• The external content can be inserted using oEmbed format.
• WordPress supports multiple user accounts with different types of permissions.

The advantages of using WordPress

• Open source. WordPress is an open-source platform which means that developers can use the written code and they don’t have to start from the beginning. At the same time, there is a wide WordPress community of developers who share their codes and advices.
• Simplicity and applicability. With other frameworks or CMS systems, it is often necessary to have the knowledge of technical jargon. But users without a technical basis often decide to use WordPress and yet, they don’t have a problem.
• The running of WordPress is easy. As the time flows, things need to change, pages are added or gone, styles are changing to better match their times. WordPress allows you to make these changes as simply as possible, without having to write a single line of code.
• The availability of plugins. WordPress has about 50,000 official plugins that implement almost every functionality you may need. If you need to run analyses on the pages, there is a plugin for it. There is another one for optimizing SEO. There is no need to write a single line of code for more complex operations.
• Rapid development. WordPress allows maximum speed of web page creation.

The disadvantages of using WordPress

• Security. The popularity of WordPress among users also leads to its popularity for hackers. Pages are vulnerable, because the code you use is written by someone else and may contain dangerous passages or mistakes.
• Response rate. Regarding the fact that WordPress uses many generic code and plugins that implement different functionalities of pages, the page may be responding relatively slowly.
• Performance. Plugins can greatly enhance the functionality of the web, but, at the same time, their exaggerated amount can have a drastic impact on the application performance and prolong the response time. It is necessary to consider the number of used plugins and, during every update, to uninstall not-working or redundant plugins.
• Updates. Frequent updates can lead to functionality being discarded. Some plugins may stop working, so it is important to back up your pages before you start updating, so that you have a functional option that can be reused safely in case of problems.
• MySQL. WordPress uses MySQL as its backend, which is less safe and can increase the risk of cyber attacks and data theft.
• SEO optimization. SEO for WordPress is not optimal. This can be dealt with using specialized plugins.