13 Advantages of Wordpress CMS
WordPress is a great choice for fairly small (a few hundred pages or less), simply arranged websites. It’s the easiest system to install and understand, and is easy to maintain and update, putting site setup within reach of anyone with a sense of technical adventure.
There are many predefined graphic themes available; adapting them to your particular needs can range from trivial—if the theme allows you to select your own color and add your own logo, for instance—to a relatively straightforward process for someone familiar with HTML and CSS. Updating and editing images and text is also quite straightforward, and multiple add-on modules are available. However, WordPress doesn’t scale as intuitively as the other CMS systems like joomla, drupal, plone to support complex sites. For custom content types or article listings displayed based on automatic rules, you’ll need to try to find a contributed add-on or theme that provides that functionality. There is only limited support for differentiation of user roles, although add-ons are available to support permissions based on section or type of content.
Here are some advantages or features of wordpress as a content management system. You can find some of the features only in version after 3.0.
1. Ease of Hosting
• Hosting Environment: The CMS can be hosted on a standard (and inexpensive) shared Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP environment.
• Hosting Requirements: The platform can run on a Linux, Windows or Macintosh OS; it requires MySQLas a database and PHP as a scripting language.
• Time to Install: A user with experience installing other systems (but not this one) can install the core packagein less than 15 minutes.
• Skills to Install: Installation does not require technical knowledge beyond how to FTP and how to set up a database on your Web host. Those using a common shared hosting tool like Fantastico can easily install the software with a one-click process.
2. Ease of Setup: Simple Site
• Default Setup on Installation: Upon installation, the platform includes one blog post, one page, one comment, some default widgets that would commonly be used on a blog, and one theme.
• Availability of Pre-packaged Themes: Many pre-packaged graphical themes appropriate for a small nonprofit website are available for download
• Ease of Theme Installation: Installing an existing graphical theme is quick and easy from within the administrative interface. You can search for, preview and install the selected theme. Once it is installed you can preview the theme with your own site content.
• Updating Themes without Tech Skills: Many themes, including the default themes, offer parameters that can easily be changed in a non-technical interface. These parameters vary based on what the theme programmer built into the theme template, but often include easy ways to change the logo, banner, font colors, page colors or more.
• Completeness: The core platform includes all typical components to create and administer a basic nonprofit site with a hierarchical page structure.
• Setting Up Users: Setting up administrative users is straightforward. The first user is set up during install; others can be easily added through the administrative tools.
• Structuring a Simple Site: Creating a simple 20-page site divided into four sections is intuitive. As you set each page up, you can define whether it should go into the navigation bar, or otherwise where it should fall in the site hierarchy. You can have pages added automatically to the menu or create custom menus and hierarchies via the new menu administration area.
• Support for News Stories and Events Calendar: The core platform includes the ability to support featured news stories, but you would need to install an events calendar as an add-on module.
• Documentation on Getting Started: Considerable documentation on getting started is available. It’s well organized to allow new users to quickly find the material they are most interested in.
3. Ease of Setup: Complex Site
Ease of Creating a Custom Theme: Creating a custom theme requires HTML/CSS skills and understanding how to work with a set of templates. The theming process in WordPress is a bit more straightforward than in other systems; those with HTML/CSS skills are more likely to be able to tweak existing themes without the need to extensively consult the documentation.
• Ease of Updating Themes via HTML/ CSS: HTML and CSS files are easily accessed via the web administration interface. For someone with the HMTL/ CSS skills required to update the look of a static website, the theming process will look very familiar. The theming files, including HTML, PHP and CSS files, can be easily updated within the web administration interface. Because direct access to site files is readily available, editors must be careful to not inadvertently update the live site in real time.
• Ease of Understanding What’s Possible: A technically savvy user is likely to be able to understand the basics of what the system can do and how to do it in a few hours by looking through the options in the administrative interface. However, complex features and options such as custom content types and taxonomies are available but not shown in the administrative interface; users would need to consult the documentation to realize they
are available.
• Documentation: Substantial documentation on how to use the system, including published books, is available from multiple sources.
• Likelihood that Add-ons will be Necessary: Basic functionality is provided by the core system, but to meet more advanced or specialized requirements you will likely need to find and install additional add-on modules.
• Where to Find Info on Add-on Modules: WordPress.org has a listing of add-on modules that includes community ratings and reviews.
• Available Add-ons: WordPress.org lists thousands of community-contributed add-ons available for download.
• Installing an Add-on: To install an add-on module, a site administrator simply locates the module in the admin interface and installs it in a one-click process.
• Importing From a Data File: The standard install comes with several importing tools and many more are available as community contributed add-ons.
4. Ease of Use: Content Editors
• Look of Admin Interface: The interface for adding or editing content is polished and friendly-looking, with a useful “dashboard” of recent drafts and comments. Administration screen views are customizable by the user and include contextual help.
• Ease of Finding What You Want to Edit: An administrator can easily find the particular page or article they want to edit within the visitor view of the website, and then click a button to edit it, or they can browse or search through a list of all pages in the administrative interface. Through the administration menu you can also edit settings for a number of content items at once, or “quick edit” things such as title, author and published state.
• Ease of Text Editing: Editing the text of an existing page is straightforward. Text can be formatted using a standard, Word-style WYSIWYG formatting toolbar.
• Integration of Advanced Options: When editing a page advanced options are readily available, but can be selectively removed to simplify the screen for efficient work flow.
• Pasting from Word: The core system does not handle text pasted in from Microsoft Word well. Garbage tags appear on the final web page unless they are deleted by hand, and the original font styles from Word (which are unlikely to match the style of the website) are preserved.
• Adding an Image or Document: An image or document can be uploaded and added directly from the pageediting form, without the need to add the image first through a different form.
• Advanced Image Manipulation: Images can be scaled, cropped and otherwise manipulated when uploaded. Four versions of the file, of different sizes, are saved based on the site settings which can then be placed in page content.
• YouTube Videos: YouTube videos can be embedded in a page by pasting the YouTube URL into the WYSIWYG editor where the system will automatically convert it to an embedded video. However, there is also an “Insert Video” button that does not reliably work when a YouTube URL is entered, which is likely to be confusing to many users.
• Adding a New Page: The option to add a new article is prominent and obvious. New pages are edited the same way as any other content, and can be published into sections on the site by picking a parent page.
• Admin Languages: The administrative interface is available in 61 languages.
• Reverting to Previous Page Versions: If content is published to a page by accident, a content editor can easily access old versions, compare them and revert back to one.
• Previewing Before Publishing: A content editor can easily preview how pages and posts will look within the context of the full page. However, sidebar items cannot be previewed before making them live.
• Editor documentation: It’s difficult to find a manual specifically targeted at content editors. Considerable documentation is available on how to use the editing systems, but it’s not presented separately from other documentation and editor-specific material must be sought out.
5. Ease of Use: Site Administrator
• Adding a Section to the Navigation Bar: As you set each page up, you can define whether it should go into the navigation bar, or otherwise where it should fall in the site hierarchy. Alternatively, you can create custom menus and hierarchies via the new menu administration area.
• Editing footers or sidebars: Sidebars can be updated through the widget menu. The manner of updating page headers and footers is dictated by the theme: some are controlled by widgets and can be updated through the widget menu; other themes have optional admin menus for the header and footer; or the site administrator may need to edit the theme files via HTML.
• Managing site users: A non-technical administrator can easily add, delete or change the security levels of users through a polished interface.
• Managing images and documents: A non-technical administrator can view the images and documents used on the site through a “Media Manager.” Using this interface, they can find all images and uploaded files, see where they are used on the site and perform bulk actions on your files, including deleting all files that are not currently attached to the website.
• Site Backup: To back up the website, a site administrator downloads all the site assets (HTML pages, documents, images, etc.) from a single directory on the web server, and then backs up the database either in PHPMyAdmin (provided by most web hosts) or using simple commands on the command-line. Third party add-ons can help with this process.
• Upgrade Frequency: There have been nine feature upgrades and 29 bug-fix and security releases between January 2007 and October 2010
• Upgrades Which Affect Themes and Add-ons: Major upgrades may break existing add-on components but correctly coded themes should not be adversely affected by most system upgrades. Since January 2007, three major updates have affected add-ons.
• Notification of Out-of-Date Version: The CMS includes a notice to the administrator when they are using an out-of-date version of the system.
• Options to Not Upgrade: The CMS maintains legacy branches, one version behind the current, so those who choose not to make a major update (which might break themes and add-ons, for instance) can still get security updates.
• Ease of Installing an Upgrade: To install a new update, the administrator backs up the site, then uses an automatic upgrade utility in the web interface.
6. Graphical Flexibility
• Finding Pre-Packaged Themes: Hundreds of pre-packaged graphical themes are available. The official CMS website includes version compatibility, ratings and download statistics.
• Ease of Updating Themes via HTML/ CSS: HTML and CSS files are easily accessed via the web administration interface. For someone with the HMTL/ CSS skills required to update the look of a static website, the theming process will look very familiar. The theming files, including HTML, PHP and CSS files, can be easily updated within the web administration interface. Because direct access to site files is readily available, editors must be careful to not inadvertently update the live site in real time.
• Creating a Custom Theme From Scratch: Creating a custom theme involves creating several different template files, a style sheet and a screenshot of the theme.
• Creating a Theme from an HTML Page: Adapting an existing HTML page and style sheet to create a theme involves several steps: creating template files from the HTML page; creating a style sheet; including any images; determining where content and functional elements should go in the templates; and adding any additional necessary files.
• Design Flexibility: This theming structure provides a huge amount of flexibility in site look and layout. It supports nearly any web page that can be designed via HTML and CSS.
• Defining multiple templates for one site: An administrator can set up as many page templates for the site as they like and set a default template for new pages. Content editors can further define which page uses which template in the editing screen.
• Defining the look of sidebar elements: Each sidebar element (called a “widget” in WordPress) has a specific ID, which can be used in the CSS file to customize styles just for that particular area.
• Print-friendly version: Plug in options are available to create print-friendly views or the site developer can create a print style sheet and include the code in the theme.
7. Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization
• 508 compliance of core themes: The core theme included with the standard download is not accessible to 508 standards.
• Order of standard nav bar and content items: The standard navigation bar elements and content templates are reasonably ordered within the code, to facilitate someone visually impaired in reading the site with a screen reader. The order can be modified if desired to make it more accessible.
• 508 compliance of admin interface: The administrator interface is not 508-compliant. However, there are specific themes and patches available within the community to bring it into compliance.
• Alt-tags: Users are prompted to include alt text when uploading or editing images but it is not required.
• Standard header tags: The core theme creates standard header tags—like H1 and H2 tags—by default, which is an accessibility and search engine optimization best practice. Some themes allow the administrator more or less control over these settings.
• Page titles and metadata: The HTML page title is generally pulled straight from the user input title of the page. Some themes and plug ins allow you to alter this on a per page basis. Defining other metadata, including a page description, requires a contributed add-on.
• Human readable URLs: The text used for page URLs is pulled by default from menu item and page names— making it quite readable by default. It’s also possible to rename directory or page file names directly.
8. Structural Flexibility
• Number of Pages: There is no practical limit to the number of pages the platform can support.
• Levels of Hierarchy: Pages can be arranged into a hierarchy with as many levels as you like.
• Displaying Content Automatically Based on Category: Site posts, but not pages, can be placed in one or multiple categories. The platform automatically displays the posts in the appropriate sections based on those categories.
• Support for Unusual Content Types: The system is based around the idea of pages and posts. The core system includes the infrastructure to add custom-content types (event listings, a directory of local stores, etc.) but not the administration tools; the administrator must use one of several community contributed add-ons to install an interface with which to create custom content types.
• Related Items: Add-on modules are available to create a “related items” feature on a page. This will automatically display links to site information similar to that shown.
• Changing sidebar elements without changing the template: Editors can choose which widget areas appear on a page by defining which page template should be used. To more-specifically designate exactly which page certain sidebar elements will appear on you will need to install a community contributed add-on.
• Custom Data Collection Forms: Site administrators can create custom forms to collect data from visitors, without coding, through an add-on module.
• Search Engine: The system includes a search engine but it only searches pages on the site, not documents.
• Multi-Language Support: An add-on package helps manage a single piece of site content that appears in multiple languages (for example, a news story with both English and Spanish versions).
• Sharing Content Across a Set of Affiliated Websites: You can use different themes for different site sections, and define what data can go in each section using a variety of criteria. This makes it straightforward to support a group of affiliated websites that share some pieces of content but not others.
• Support for Multiple Domains: You can support sites with different domains using the same deployment of the CMS.
9. User Roles and Workflow
• System Roles: The system supports three administrative content roles—someone who can draft new content but cannot publish; someone who can draft and publish their own content; and someone who can edit and publish other people’s content as well as their own. Community contributed add-ons allow for the creation of new roles, such as permission to edit based on category.
• Possible Article Statuses: Articles can be in draft, pending review or published mode. More content statuses are available through an add-on module.
• Notifications: There is no notification system to flag and forward content but add-on modules are available to create this functionality.
• List of System To-Dos: Site content editors can see a list of content items that need their attention, such as drafts to be published, within the interface.
10. Community/Web 2.0 Functionality
• Comments: The content editor can allow site visitors to post comments for any piece of site content.
• Comment Moderation: The system provides access to very detailed Spam filtering and detailed comment moderation support, including the ability to individually whitelist or blacklist users.
• Blogs: Blogs, including multi-author blogs, are supported.
• Community of Blogs: Registered site visitors can create their own personal blogs on the site, if the administrator allows visitors this ability.
• Publishing a RSS Feed of Your Content: Full support for outgoing RSS feeds is provided.
• Displaying Others’ RSS Feeds: Other RSS feeds can be pulled into and displayed on the site as part of the core functionality, but you would need to use an add-on module to moderate which items from those feeds you would like to display.
• Visitor Profiles: Public site visitors can create their own site profiles with a few standard fields. More full featured profiles are available through add-on modules.
• Social Networking: A popular add-on module allows public site visitors to friend each other and create groups.
• User-Submitted Content: With an add-on you can provide a way to allow public website visitors to submit content (like stories or photos) through the front end, and then manage that content like any other site content.
• Share This and Facebook “Like”: A number of widely-used add-ons allow site visitors to easily repost an article to sites like Twitter or Digg, or to add a Facebook “Like” functionality.
• Engagement Dashboard: Through a combination of core features and using add-on modules, you can create a dashboard overview of how many people have commented or forwarded information.
11. Extending and Integrating
• Integrating with Other Systems: Add-on modules that manage integrations with Salesforce and Democracy in Action are available.
• Likelihood that Custom Add-ons Will be Necessary: As the system combined with available community contributed add-ons allows for administrative users to create custom forms or content types through the administrative tools, it’s unlikely that writing custom add-ons will be necessary—except to integrate outside systems, or for unusual or sophisticated needs.
• Programming Language for Add-ons: Add-on components are coded in PHP, a widely used programming language.
• Customization Flexibility: The tools available to programmers include access to modify or enhance all system functionality.
• Updating Core Code: If you want to extend the system beyond available functionality, you would very rarely need to update the core code.
• Dependences Between Add-ons: The system is designed so that each add-on works fairly independently. However, it is possible to have two add-ons conflict by accident.
12. Security
• Security Updates: Security vulnerabilities are not published on WordPress.org. Updates occur frequently.
• Security Advisories: Secunia.com reports that there have been 34 security advisories for the WordPress 2.x core code between January 2007 October 2010 (no advisories have been issued on 3.x code). Eight of them (23%), all termed less critical or not critical, have not been patched. Nine (26%) of the advisories since 2007 were termed moderately or highly critical updates. From January 2009 – October 2010 specifically, they reported
seven advisories, only 1 (14%) moderately critical or above.
• Security Process for Add-ons and Themes: There is no official process for vetting add-ons or themes for security issues beyond community ratings.
13. Support/Community Strength
• History: WordPress originated in 2003 as a continuation of another open source CMS, B2/cafelog.
• Consultant Support: The CMS is supported by hundreds of different independent consultants or firms in the United States.
• Community Support: There are a number of different helpful forums and discussion lists where anyone can ask questions about the system and receive answers. These communities have a reputation of being helpful to newcomers.
• Available Books: Several reputable books on the system are available.
• System Governance: WordPress is led and supported by the for-profit company Automatic, which provides the service WordPress.com.
• Online User Forums: In WordPress’s “How To and Troubleshooting” forum (the busiest of eight topic based forums for questions about functionality and implementation), approximately 1,500 discussion threads were posted to or created in the third week of October 2010. Of these threads, about 275 (18 percent) were questions
without any replies.
