Is WordPress a Good Platform to Build a Web Site On?

When a business owner or marketing department makes the decision to either redesign or build a new Web site the question of what platform to build on sometimes comes up. WordPress has great name recognition and the price is right (free). However a recent Q&A of WordPress experts and security pros has led me to believe it may not be the best choice. Since we don't use WordPress (we've got our own platform we've built specifically to serve our client's needs and we have the ability to add or change any feature in it to meet a client's every desire) I can only look to the answers to the question "What do WordPress Professionals Want to See in 2014?" to develop an opinion. Here's one of their (surprising) requests.

"Security is a big issue for WordPress. Lot of plugins are vulnerable and this causes injections to happen on website. WordPress should add security codes where if user tries to add a plugin which is vulnerable, then user should get a notification from System."

Our thoughts... An unknowing client (and why would they be knowledgeable about this stuff) should never be able to create a security hole in their Web site or become "un-PCI compliant" (Payment Card Industry scanning which protects credit card data) through their CMS (Content Management System). Yet that appears to be what this post is addressing. "Injections", meaning SQL Injection Attacks allow hackers to place their content on your Web site, infect others who visit your Web site (your prospective clients), and in extreme cases provide hackers the ability to extract data from back end systems (Target Credit Card breach anyone???) Not good. Our system in comparison is thoroughly tested and is PCI compliant and it would take an intentional effort on behalf of our client's to ever make it so unsafe.

A recent blog post by ZDNet titled  "WordPress tops for blogging and malware distribution" revealed that Internet security research and services company Netcraft has determined that WordPress installations are a major source of security threats. A perfect example is the botnet of over one hundred sixty two thousand WordPress blogs was used in a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack against a Web site.

It's important to remember too that WordPress was built as a blogging platform, not a Web site development platform. It's been added to and hundreds or even thousands of plug-ins are available to extend that functionality, but at the risk of numerous security holes in the process.

Bottom line, before you assume that the most popular and least expensive choice for your Web site CMS (Content Management System) is the right one, you owe it to yourself to explore other options. Just shout and we'd be happy to show you how clean and simple an Admin interface we provide our clients. Sometimes "free" isn't such a good value!

P.S. Just saw this as a title tag on a WordPress site... "Just another WordPress site"... Yep, thanks for proving my point!

P.S.S. Just read an article that said "Be sure to install an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Plugin on your WordPress site". Plugin? Why not just start with a CMS (Content Management System) that was built from the ground up for search ranking results! (Hint, the CMS built by BANG! IS SEO friendly right out of the box!)