One of my friends approached me asking whether we can fix an issue with one of his websites. That website was developed in WordPress. Initial development was done by a midrange application development company. His website was intended to have regular ongoing developments and modifications. So he added a full-time developer who claimed to be a WordPress expert to his team. During the time of this developer, he experimented with lots of plugins on the website. Gradually page loading speed decreased drastically and that initiated degradation of Google page rankings. At last, the inevitable happened, my friend’s website is not loading because of heavy CPU usage. THE monthly CPU usage quota of the website is chewed up within hours of its allocation. By this time his developer has escaped from the firm. The drop was drastic from an average of 5000 to 0 users per day. My friend approached several so-called WordPress experts to fix this issue. Nobody was able to fix the issue. In other words, some of them even if they are capable of fixing the issue still they were not interested to get into the mess which someone else is created.
Webixels supported this project along with our ongoing web application developments. Our project head was not that keen to take over this project as I mentioned earlier he was not interested in getting into someone else’s mess. Somehow, I managed to convince him. As a client, my friend requested to address two issues urgently.
High CPU Usage
Facebook and Google logins were not working
CPU Time Usage
The CPU Time Usage issue was caused by inappropriate usage of a Plugin called The Event Calendar. This plugin internally calls a function called flush_rewrite_rules every time the site loads. This function is useful when used with custom posts types as it allows for automatic flushing of the WordPress rewrite rules. But this function call will cost high CPU usage. Webixels is so proud to state that we fixed that in a day.
Google and Facebook Login issue
Google API was not working because it was using Google Plus which was old API and it is not supported anymore. In Facebook login for some reason the developer coded in a way where the API was trying to access restricted details like their friends etc. of a user who logins with his/her Facebook credentials. We fixed both.
I explained the above scenario here in simple terms to shed an idea when and why not to use WordPress on your website.
WordPress - Advantages
WordPress was launched in 2003 and originally created for blogging. WordPress support to create, edit, and store all types of media. Around 30% of the top sites in the world are created in WordPress. It has more than 50,000 plugins available in the market. This means more than 8 new plugins are created every day since its launch. This is enough to show the popularity of WordPress. WordPress is a theme-based system run on a plugin architecture.
Over the years, WordPress has evolved from the status of a blogging platform to a fully-fledged CMS for developers and even for those with little to no prior programming experience. WordPress now possesses an ecosystem capable of building and powering an E-commerce site. So as with any such offerings, we naturally start comparing it to traditional web application frameworks so see how well it stands up to those. Below given are some of the generalized advantages WordPress brings us to developing a website:
QUICK AND EASY: It’s relatively easy to get your website up and running with WordPress within minutes. That’s one of the differentiating features of WordPress. You do not have to know about web development yet you can build your own site and get it up running before you know.
PLENTY OF THEMES: You do not have to ask anyone to build a website design for your website, there are many resources even from within WordPress that offers high-quality themes (some paid, some free) that you can install on your website in a single click.
EASY TO CUSTOMIZE: You can manage and customize any aspect of your website by the use of plugins and theme editors. There is a wide range of plugins that you can use to accomplish things you want people to be able to do on your website.
When and Why not to use WordPress to design your Website
WordPress has its limitations on web applications which we use for heavy user interactions like user registrations, calculation tools, content uploads, etc. Our advice is not to use WordPress if you are planning to progress to a complex web application in the near future. Since WordPress runs on a Plugin architecture, each functionality needs a plugin to run. So you will end up with a number of plugins on your website and it will gradually slow down your website.
Also, most of the plugins will issue updates regularly, and will be difficult to manage plugins up-to-date. Some of the updated plugins will not work as your application requirements so you will be in need to hire the developer to fix that issue.
Why Webixels?
9 out of 10 Web Designers and Developers in Perth use WordPress as their only tool to design a simple website to a complex one. Most of them are not capable of offering clients with custom code frameworks like Laravel, CodeIgniter. Symfony. Yii. CakePHP. Zend, Phalcon. Modx. Angular etc.
Webixels stands out here for its capability to offer popular custom code framework designs like Laravel, CodeIgnator, CakePHP, Angular etc. If you are after an expert advice on anything related to Website, Web application, Mobile Application etc. contact me on 0488 460 800 or mathew@webixels.com.au
