WordPress is the most popular CMS on the Internet. Almost 40% of webpages are based on WordPress. Why is it so popular, and what is even more important: Will WordPress die soon? Or, the worst question: Will WordPress kill web development? These questions are circulated over the internet, and the community is wondering, and I suggest facing this question.
In this article, you’ll read about
Why WordPress is so popular?
When you look at how a dynamic webpage works behind the scenes, you discover that there are five components that allow a web developer to build a dynamic webpage.
First, HTML Markup 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, a 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 uses 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 an easy-to-use dashboard where you can add content. The WordPress engine will then convert this content to a website based on the themes 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, and easy to attack by hackers. That’s all true, but only on the surface. Let’s dive deeper.
WordPress first appeared as a CMS in 2003, HTML in 1993, CSS in 1994, JavaScript in 1995, and PHP 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 in mind 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, unoptimized templates do the dirty work. If you check several templates available in an online store, you discover that some get good speed test scores, and some do not.
These same situations occur when you use a 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, and asynchronous JavaScript code all matter. Finally, you can see a quick web page built on WordPress, but you need to choose deliberately.
The last word about hackers’ attacks. It’s nothing new that popular solutions are experiencing more hacker attacks. 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 authorize web services. Cracking a simple password takes less than one minute. So why do so many people think there is no problem?
Lastly, use auto-update options in your template and what’s even more important in your plugins and all CMS systems. Is this enough? No, but your site will be more protected than the majority of WordPress sites, so there’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 a CMS, which 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, you will likely need to customize some of these themes to build a website as you want it.
Even if we agree that the template that you will use will be 100% ready to use and that you will build your website just using these templates and instructions added to these themes, one question remains: who builds 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 as web developers will be needed.
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