WordPress is the most popular CMS on the Internet. Almost 40% of webpages are based on WordPress. Why it is so popular, and what even more important: will WordPress die soon? Or event worst question: will WordPress kill web development? These questions circulation over the internet, community wondering, and I suggest facing this question.
Why WordPress is so popular?
When you look at how a dynamic webpage is working behind the scene, you discover that there are five components that allow a web developer to build a dynamic web page.
First of all HTML Markup Language. This language allows you to build a web page skeleton and fill it with content (text, images, video, audio, hyperlinks).
When you want to style this website, you need to use CSS, which allows you to build a beautiful design.
In the end, when you need to build some interaction with visitors, you need to use JavaScript or some JavaScript Framework. But still, you are able to build static pages only. If this is a landing page, or some page to show simple information to your clients that’s enough.
But, what if you want to build a blog, or webpage with multiple information, or a virtual shop? You need to store all information on the Database and use PHP to fill the webpage with the necessary content.
Now you can build all services from scratch using these technologies, or use WordPress. WordPress is written in PHP and using a database to store information. Of course, WordPress has its own functions, but these functions are written in PHP.
What’s more, WordPress gives you easy to use dashboard when you can put content, and the WordPress engine will switch this content to a website based on the themes, that you choose.
So why it is so popular?
Because it’s easy to use, you don’t need to know anything about programming. There is a huge community around WordPress that produces a lot of free templates, and plugins so after several hours you are able to build your website for free, and it’s a huge possibility that this website will look nice and work properly.
Will WordPress die?
Sooner or later sure. But in the middle range of time, I don’t expect this. Of course, there are voices whispering, that WordPress is old, heavy, easy to attack by hackers. That’s all true, but only on the surfaces. Let’s dive deeper.
WordPress as a CMS first appeared in 2003, HTML first appeared in 1993, CSS first appeared in 1994, JavaScript first appeared in 1995, PHP first appeared in 1994. These data show us, that WordPress is pretty young ? On the other hand, in the IT world, ten years is like an era.
So we speak now of two huge eras of WordPress. But we need to keep back in our heads that WordPress is still developing. It has changed a lot until today. So I don’t agree that this is an old system and should be gone.
What about lazy loading?
In this case, the main part of dirty work is made by unoptimized templates. If you check several templates available in an online store you discover, that some of them get good speed test scores, and some not.
These same situations, when you will use some theme builder plugin. So this is no WordPress system problem, but the quality of code that is implemented into templates.
Of course, tiny images, cache on server site, lazy loading heavy assets, asynchronous JavaScript code, that all matters. Finally, you are able to see a quick web page build on WordPress, but you need to choose deliberately.
Last word about hackers attack. That’s nothing new, that popular solutions experiencing more hackers attack. But is WordPress less protected? I don’t think so. All you need to do is follow some simple roles.
First of all, don’t use default setup settings. Because these setups are default, they are available for everybody including hackers. So they know how to crack your system.
Secondly, use a strong password to log in to your dashboard panel. I don’t understand why people still use a simple password, to authorized web services? To crack a simple password takes less than one minute. So why so many people think, that there is no problem?
Lastly, use auto-update options in your template and what’s even more important in your plugins and all CMS system. Is this enough? No, but your site will be more protected than the majority of WordPress site, so it’s a low possibility that your site will be cracked.
Will wordpress kill web development?
This is my favorite question ? Building a page in WordPress is super easy. You don’t need to be a web developer, to build your website. This is a theory, and practice is slightly different. You need to know mostly everything about HTML, CSS, sometimes JavaScript, and obviously about WordPress mechanisms.
Why is that?
WordPress is CMS what means, that it is a Content management system. This isn’t a web build system.
Of course, there are tons of ready-to-use templates, but at the end of the day, there is a high possibility that you will need to customize some part of these themes to build a website as you want to.
Even if we agree that the template that you will use will be 100% ready to use, and you will build your website just using these templates and instructions added to these themes, one question left: who build these templates? Who writes all this code, that allows you to make your perfect website?
So, as you see, as long as WordPress will live, as long web developers will be needed ?