Why I switched to WordPress

Recently I read a post which said that the White House official website will be now powered by WordPress.

I was playing with a static site generator called Hexo, I even created my own theme for it, before I switched to WordPress.

Static site generators are hard

Yes, playing with a static site generator is fun. You can learn to create something, you can customize and build your own theme.

But for an average user it’s a pain. Writing content is pain, you have to use markdown, you have to use some YAML syntax. An average user does not want to learn another language to write content. They just want to write and publish.

As much as I love making new things, I just want to write and focus on what’s important to me. Not meddling with MD and YAML, especially when I write a long post.

Can WordPress handle traffic?

When my blog first hit the front page of hacker news, I got bit afraid. I thought it will crash.

I’m using a shared hosting for this blog after all. However, it stood very well. I’m passing my WordPress though CloudFlare and using a caching plugin and it stood well against the traffic of hacker news.

Is WordPress safe?

No software can be 100% safe, even the modules you are using for your JavaScript projects can have security vulnerabilities.

So even though WordPress can too have vulnerabilities, the WordPress core is pretty stable. You have to worry about the plug-ins that you chose to install.

Make sure you avoid installing unnecessary plugins, the less the better.

Also install plugins that are well maintained, and has a good community behind it.

Uninstall the plugins as soon as you don’t need them.

Use Git

Shared hosting providers allow one click install of WordPress via the cPanel, but it’s aways better to install your copy of WordPress locally and version control it via Git.

And since most shared hosting providers give you a terminal, or SSH ability, you will be able to push the changes to your shared hosting with Git.

Final thoughts

I guess WordPress ticks all the boxes of a good software.

• Maintainability ✅
• Dependability ✅ – The WordPress team maintain WordPress and it’s very much dependable than before.
• Efficiency ✅ – With the right plugins it can be made efficient to handle a good amount of traffic.
• Acceptability ✅ WordPress is accepted by many developers and the their is a community behind it.
• Security ✅ The core of WordPress is pretty safe, it’s the third party plugins that you need to worry.

At the end of the day, I just need to write my thoughts in my own place, and WordPress is the best solution currently available. Write, publish, repeat.