Building a custom CMS vs using WordPress
Choosing between writing your own Content Management System (CMS) and using a pre-existing solution such as WordPress is a crucial decision that can impact the direction of your business or project.
There are many factors to consider when making this decision, including time, performance, security, and hosting.
Time
Writing your own custom CMS takes time. This reason alone makes using a solution like WordPress seem increasingly viable.
WordPress as a platform has been improved upon since its intial release date on May 27th, 2003. It has had alot of people working on it to make sure that it's functional and ready for deployment.
Performance
Performance is an important aspect of website development.
A custom CMS can give you better control over minute details that affect the speed of your website.
WordPress has a lot of plugin capabilities that make content development easier. However, these ease-of-use plugins may have unintended consequences that directly impact the performance of the website.
Ultimately, as our world and technologies increase in speed, so do our expectations. An underperforming website leads to higher bounce rates, which means you are losing traffic/leads - business.
Security
WordPress is a highly targeted platform to exploit from a security standpoint.
Its complexity unfortunately means there are more attack surfaces, usually through the ecosystem of plugins that are available for use.
A custom CMS would give you more direct access to patch these vulnerabilities, or to not even introduce them to begin with. The coding for a custom CMS could be simply tailored around the needs of your business, without introducing unnecessary code.
Hosting
Are you self-hosting or using a third-party service to host your website?
Most third-party hosting providers will have implemented automated means to install WordPress. This makes setup super easy and spinning up a website a time-efficient process.
Third-party hosting providers might only expose certain aspects of the server, for example a control panel that allows you to traverse directories and files. They might not allow you access to make changes to certain applications or code which can affect the website.
If you are self-hosting, having direct access to the server gives you more control over the back-end. Writing your own custom CMS also gives you the flexibility you need to interface with the hardware.
Finally
Both WordPress and a custom CMS have their pros and cons. WordPress is a popular and easy-to-use platform that can be set up quickly. However, it may not be the best choice for businesses that require a high degree of customization or have specific security needs.
A custom CMS can be tailored to your specific needs, but requires more time and effort to develop and maintain. Ultimately, the decision between WordPress and a custom CMS comes down to your specific business needs and goals.
