WordPress.org Review: Is it the Right Platform for Your Site?

WordPress is one of the powerful blogging platforms available for anyone who wants to create a website. It comes with two flavors – one is with free hosting plans offered by wordpress.com and other is with premium hosting plans needed for wordpress.org. Self-hosted WordPress refers to the premium hosting version, as the package needs inclusive hosting to launch your website. We started this website on Blogger then moved to Weebly and finally settled with WordPress from 2015 onward. Here is our review based on 10+ years of using self-hosted WordPress.org platform.

Prerequisites for Running a WordPress Site

Generally, you do not need to have any prerequisites when buying a premium plan from website builders like Weebly or Wix. They offer a complete package with free hosting, a free domain for one year, SSL and emails (generally from Google Workspace) making it easier to manage. However, in order to use WordPress, you need the following requirements.

• Premium hosting server
• Valid domain name
• Minimum experience on the setup
• Understanding FTP
• Knowledge about basic site maintenance activities.

Good thing is that most hosting companies offer a free one-year domain with complete tutorial to learn WordPress. So, you do not need to worry much when starting a new blog, however, you need to invest time for learning.

Downloading and Installing WordPress

The installation process depends on how you want to start your website. The official WordPress website allows you to download the installation package. You can either install and play around on the testing setup on your local computer or directly purchase a hosting plan to launch your site. There are desktop apps allow you to use your PC or Mac as a local server and install applications like WordPress on it. You can setup a local server on your PC using WAMP and on Mac using MAMP. It works like any other applications and you can continue to use the computer for all other purposes. The idea is not only learning but also you can start building your site locally and later move the same content to live server if needed.

If you plan to launch a smaller blog, then it is not necessary to spend much time on local setup. You can directly buy a hosting plan with free domain from one of the popular shared hosting companies. Most of these companies offer cPanel (Control Panel) setup for the configurations and install WordPress using a one-click installer like Softaculous. However, popular companies like SiteGround, Kinsta and WP Engine use a custom hosting panel. Regardless of the setup, the WordPress installation process on a live server will take less than five minutes. After installation, you can start creating and publishing the content like any other platforms.

When comparing to the free hosting providers like Squarespace or Wix, installation is a complete redundant process in WordPress. You also need to access the WordPress installation location frequently through a FTP account (for remote access) or through the hosting account (using File Manager app). Accessing the root WordPress installation is necessary in many cases like verifying your Analytics / Search Console account with HTML file upload, editing configuration files like wp-config.php or .htaccess and uploading ads.txt or robots.txt files.

Admin Control Panel

WordPress is a complete content management system that allows you to manage thousands of posts and pages on the go from the administrator panel. Remember that the admin panel is a web based interface you can access with a separate username and password. This is separate from your hosting server and you cannot access server directories from admin panel. Here are some of the things you can do from the admin panel:

• You can create blog posts and standalone pages.
• Assign tags and categorize blog posts.
• Customize layouts and typography.
• Have custom content type like gallery, FAQ, portfolio, etc.
• Manage media like uploading files, images and videos.
• Install and update themes and plugins.
• Update core WordPress.
• Manage users and comments.

In our experience, it is impossible to manage larger sites with Bloggers or Weebly. So, if you are planning for a larger blog, news or content website, WordPress is the best option for you.

Editor Interface

You will be surprised with the WordPress editor interface if you are migrating from the drag-and-drop platforms like Weebly. The old Classic Editor was like a Word document where you can start typing and formatting the content. WordPress introduced Gutenberg block editor with version 5.0 and tried to catch up with the drag-and-drop website builders. However, even with Gutenberg you will not get the real drag-and-drop experience of Weebly or Wix site builders.

Many users make a wrong decision and drop out of WordPress after seeing the editor. However, WordPress has many other pros and the editor is also evolving to the modern design.

Themes and Plugins

WordPress offers free theme repository and supplies few official themes supplied along with the installation package to start with. In most cases, you may need to purchase a custom theme like Astra or GeneratePress from third-party developers to match your requirements. There are thousands of free and premium themes available. In such situation, if you are not able to find a theme in WordPress, you will not be able to get a theme on any other platforms.

Plugins allow you to enhance the theme’s features like adding social sharing, improving search engine optimization, caching, image compression, etc. There are more than 70K items available in the official free WordPress plugin repository. You can get free plugins and upgrade to premium versions to get additional features.

Search Engine Optimization

It is a common belief among website owners that Google favors WordPress sites in search results. The reason is simple that you can easily optimize WordPress site for search engines unlike other platforms. You can use popular free plugins like Yoast SEO to add meta description, title, Open Graph meta tags, Twitter card meta tags and preview the page before publishing. It is also possible to create XML Sitemap and exclude pages from search engine visibility.

User Management

Here comes the power of WordPress. It offers unmatchable capabilities for handling users on your site. You can easily build a membership website or a community forum using free plugins. Here are some of the features you can manage:

• Hide your content behind paywall and membership plans.
• Lock content and unlock it with email subscription.
• Collaborative working with multiple editors and authors.
• Manage functions of each user role.

In addition, you can convert the blog to a forum and allow users to post and comment based on their role’s permissions.

Ecommerce Features

WooCommerce is a free plugin developed by the same developers of WordPress. It is a full-fledged online store plugin to setup virtual, downloadable and physical products. You may need to upgrade the plugin to use additional features like monitoring abandoned cart and limiting cart items. You can also use other plugins like Easy Digital Downloads to setup your online store.

• Product Listings: Create detailed product pages with images, descriptions, pricing, and custom options.
• Payment Gateways: WooCommerce supports multiple payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Square, allowing you to accept payments securely.
• Shipping and Tax Calculations: WooCommerce automatically calculates shipping rates and taxes based on the customer’s location.
• Inventory Management: Track stock levels and receive notifications when inventory is low.

Site Security and Backup

Due to the popularity, security is the biggest threat for WordPress websites. You have to keep the site clean and up to date to prevent from hacking. There are free plugins to add additional security features like spam blocking, IP blocking and malware scanning. However, core of security lies with your hosting server’s infrastructure. Therefore, it is essential to choose a solid and secure hosting company to safeguard your site. Security is one of the major reasons many users do not want to use WordPress. This is true that you need to spend considerable time in protecting the site besides building content or selling products.

You cannot backup and restore the entire site with many free hosting platforms. However, WordPress allows you to backup the content and restore whenever needed. You can use plugins or hosting service to backup full or partial folders on your server. The advantage of WordPress is that you can use the backup content to migrate to another hosting company or platform. It is also possible that you can import and export specific posts from your site to another WordPress site with comments and user data.

Pricing – How Much It Costs?

There is no free lunch in this world. However, running a decent self-hosted WordPress site needs less than $10 per month. This is in sharp contrast to the pricing plans of Squarespace or Wix that needs $30+ for having a decent set of features. Below are some of the cost incurred when running a WordPress site:

• Cost of premium plugins.
• Price for commercial themes with the feature you need.
• Hosting, emails and other services.
• Custom development, content writing and error fixing.
• AI credits if you want to integrate AI agents to automate tasks.

Maintenance and Support

The maintenance of WordPress is a continuous task and has the following components:

• Update PHP version.
• Follow and update WordPress core.
• Check and update new releases for your theme and plugins.

You can manage all updates from admin panel except PHP version. You have to contact hosting company in order to update the PHP version on your installation. Remember that you have to test thoroughly before upgrading any of these things to ensure the site’s layout is not broken.

From the support perspective, WordPress is an open source platform that anyone can freely check and modify the source code. However, we recommend not to play around with live site and look for online resources to resolve your problems. You can get solutions to your problem in one of the following ways:

• Post your query on official WordPress support forums.
• Get in touch with your theme or plugin developer.
• Read online documentation from WordPress and other websites. We also offer more than 700 articles on WordPress tutorials, which you can read and benefit.
• Contact your hosting company for server related issues like 503 server error.

Most users get frustrated about not getting proper support. Unfortunately, expecting super-fast support from developers of free themes and plugins is unrealistic expectation. You have to pay for premium versions to get quick support and avoid frustration.

Final Words

Now that you know the overview of using WordPress platform. If you are new to blogging world, we strongly recommend starting with WordPress. Though the initial learning curve is long, you will be happy for that decision later. However, you should have an objective of building a larger website before choosing WordPress as your content management system. On other hand, there are many business owners manage business and website single handedly. In such a case, it is better strict to free hosting platforms like Squarespace, Weebly or Wix as you do not need to worry about security or backup.