Which back end for our website?
- Thread starter eteb3
- Start date
Irrelevant because Google doesn't even like its own Analytics code.
What matters is the page load speed which is faster than any site you have.
Paul.
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Difficult to avoid a platform war when the question is literally what platform to use though
Paul.
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But @eteb3 just needs a simple donations site. No ecommerce needed. Which means a CMS not opencart. And because WordPress is baked into almost all hosting packages it's easier to install and configure. To install concrete CMS you need to:
Great if you are a developer but not for a complete numpty.
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Absolutely, the number one rule we can all benefit from remembering is that there is no universal best platform, if there was it would have 100% market share with 0 competition, instead, we have a plethora of frameworks which offer different pros and cons depending on your circumstances.
Personally, I recommend WordPress as well.
Even if you have no idea what you're doing, being the most popular framework means you have an abundance of free information online guiding you through the entire process, literally every step, from setting up the website to building to securing etc.
Even if you prefer to outsource, you have a large number of agencies and freelancers specialising in WordPress websites so you can shop around and negotiate better terms.
Perhaps the most important benefits of WordPress (for me) are the scalability and flexibility of the framework, so when your business grows your website can grow with it, and whenever you want to change hosts, that's easily done and you're never locked into a propriety framework and held hostage over your success (talking about you web flow)
Good luck.
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Done that. I'm now presented with a blank page. It's the opposite of user friendly. Where are all the themes? Where are all the plugins.
I'm sure you find it very easy to use but for someone who has no idea how a CMS works it's not simple.
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I must be doing something wrong then. At least with WP you get a welcome page as your homepage. All I see is a hopepage with zero content. No headers or footers, no site title. Nothing.
I’ll upload a screenshot when I get home.
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I'm a trustee of a very small charity, but we plan to do a big fundraiser (well, big for us) to buy a building. That will last perhaps a year tops, then we'll be back to our old tiny ways.
We've had a discussion with a web developer who's suggested we consider WordPress, Framer, and SquareSpace.
SquareSpace looks too expensive month-to-month.
So my question re the other two is: which would you recommend for a small charity with
1. a small static site AND
2. a high-spec fundraising page, taking donations, donor info, Gift Aid, etc, and probably also sale of debentures*
I imagine these are two quite different jobs. Should we run a separate site for the fundraiser? Or is there a sweet-spot that would do both?
Many thanks.
*(before someone screams, a charity's debentures are exempt securities under FSMA/RAO.
Without a doubt I would recommend WordPress for your needs, it will easily cover everything you need.
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..... And this is why you don't DIY your website - IF - your website is of any importance to you, is expected to have commercial value and you don't have a ton of time to sift through a million conflicting opinion pieces, forums, articles etc.
I've used Concrete, admittedly a long time ago, but it felt basic. Which isn't a bad thing, but I also didn't find it overly intuitive either.
I'm not a fan of scaremongering, especially when it's designed in such a way that puts commercial priorities of your business above the needs of the client and spreads misinformation.
"WordPress really is a pretty awful platform, it's very slow, it's not coded well, and it gets hacked very regularly." - @antropy
Really, no offence, but honestly this is something I'd expect to hear from teenage Playstation or Xbox fanboy/girls trying to sh*t on the other platform - just because.
Your comments may apply to some WordPress sites, like the no/low code variants of WordPress (cheap themes, page builders) but they certainly don't apply to all types of WordPress websites.
I just think tarring ALL WordPress sites as "awful" is extremely misleading and comes across as very biased.
Like, you've not provided any evidence of the fast loading of your own websites. You've dismissed Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom - what do you use and what do your sites score on that tool?
I've used Concrete, admittedly a long time ago, but it felt basic. Which isn't a bad thing, but I also didn't find it overly intuitive either.
I'm not a fan of scaremongering, especially when it's designed in such a way that puts commercial priorities of your business above the needs of the client and spreads misinformation.
"WordPress really is a pretty awful platform, it's very slow, it's not coded well, and it gets hacked very regularly." - @antropy
Really, no offence, but honestly this is something I'd expect to hear from teenage Playstation or Xbox fanboy/girls trying to sh*t on the other platform - just because.
Your comments may apply to some WordPress sites, like the no/low code variants of WordPress (cheap themes, page builders) but they certainly don't apply to all types of WordPress websites.
I just think tarring ALL WordPress sites as "awful" is extremely misleading and comes across as very biased.
Like, you've not provided any evidence of the fast loading of your own websites. You've dismissed Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom - what do you use and what do your sites score on that tool?
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Google scores this blank page 85/100. The fully functional wordpress site on the same domain name scores 88/100. No real benefit to ever switch to concrete.
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We built a branded WordPress site recently - with section animations. Checked it on Google PageSpeed Insights 3 times today, for performance it scored (mobile/desktop) 100/100, 97/100 and finally 99/100.
www dot sader dot agency (I can't post links yet)
We also use GT Metrix and Pingdom but if anyone knows of a better tool to test with - do let me know.
www dot sader dot agency (I can't post links yet
)We also use GT Metrix and Pingdom but if anyone knows of a better tool to test with - do let me know.
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Tell me you're not a developer without telling me you're not a developer.
Time To Last Byte obviously.
Paul.
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There has been lots of discussion about this over the years. The important thing is to get interactive content on the screen as soon as possible. If it then takes a couple of seconds to load things below the fold it’s less of a problem as your visitors will hopefully be checking the above the fold content during this time.
I agree the whole page should fully load fairly quickly but the key is TTFB - get stuff on the page ASAP.
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I'm not a developer. I used to code, I learned a bit of OOP and then delegated coding to my team a long time ago; but none of this is really relevant to your original oversimplified and inaccurate point that:
"WordPress really is a pretty awful platform, it's very slow, it's not coded well, and it gets hacked very regularly."
It simply isn't true to say that about all WordPress websites and I posted evidence that shows otherwise. You can deflect all you like with sarcastic comments but it doesn't change the fact that not all WordPress sites are how you describe them and that your unfairly negative opinion of them isn't accurate.
As @fisicx mentioned, TTFB (and layout shift) is, at least in my opinon, a better way to grade a website because users won't care whether something they can't see has loaded or not; as long as it has loaded when they scroll to it.
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Exactly, so you wouldn't really understand what it's like to work with the code and how it's built. If you have any experienced developers on your team they'll tell you the same.
I never said ALL WordPress websites. But generally speaking my comments are true.
Right but the reason I chose that metric is because we're talking about the underlying platform, not the front-end code and template that can be changed very easily.
Paul.
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I don't feel like you're really taking on board anything I'm saying; we're starting to go round in circles now so I'll make this my last post on the matter.
I do understand how to work with code because I wrote HTML, CSS, PHP and a little JavaScript for many years. As I explained, I don't do that any more, but yes, I absolutely do understand it.
I don't know what point you're trying to make here to be honest, or what you think my experienced developers would tell me exactly.
Well, I'm quoting you word for word and there's not too many other ways to take what you've said other than that you have a blanket hatred for all things WordPress. For reference, you said:
"WordPress really is a pretty awful platform, it's very slow, it's not coded well, and it gets hacked very regularly."
You have worded it in such a way that anyone else reading this, especially non experts, can only take from this that you are talking about all WordPress websites, without any effort made to distinguish between those made with no/low code solutions and those coded properly.
It's simply spreading misinformation...
It's also contradictory to claim you aren't talking about all Wordpress websites and then in the next breath say that you actually are generally talking about all WordPress websites...
I do understand how to work with code because I wrote HTML, CSS, PHP and a little JavaScript for many years. As I explained, I don't do that any more, but yes, I absolutely do understand it.
I don't know what point you're trying to make here to be honest, or what you think my experienced developers would tell me exactly.
Well, I'm quoting you word for word and there's not too many other ways to take what you've said other than that you have a blanket hatred for all things WordPress. For reference, you said:
"WordPress really is a pretty awful platform, it's very slow, it's not coded well, and it gets hacked very regularly."
You have worded it in such a way that anyone else reading this, especially non experts, can only take from this that you are talking about all WordPress websites, without any effort made to distinguish between those made with no/low code solutions and those coded properly.
It's simply spreading misinformation...
It's also contradictory to claim you aren't talking about all Wordpress websites and then in the next breath say that you actually are generally talking about all WordPress websites...
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That WordPress is badly coded and not nice for developers to work with.
It's very simple; WordPress itself is slow and vulnerable unless someone who knows what they're doing does a lot of work to it first.It's also contradictory to claim you aren't talking about all Wordpress websites and then in the next breath say that you actually are generally talking about all WordPress websites...
Paul.
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That doesn’t make any sense. The time the last byte is loaded depends on multiple factors very few of which have anything to do with the platform.
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If the Admin username is admin and the password is letmein, sure. All websites are vulnerable to hacking. If you're the biggest platform, expect more hacking attempts. A bit of common sense goes a long way.
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It is unfortunately much more than an easy to guess password.
The whole Wordpress architecture, especially the way the plugins are structured directory-wise makes it easy to be hacked. It is "insecure by design", and this design cannot be changed, as this would mean changing the thousands of plugins that are already built. Of course this is impractical.
The design is not the only issue with Worpress of course. Its much more than that. In short summary do not use Wordpress unless its for a simple blog, and you do not install ANY plugins at all. Even then do not use it, and why would you. It is slow, which also causes the SEO to go down, and you will pay extra if you want it to run faster and be optimized.
If you are serious about your users and traffic, your site speed, best SEO possible, and of course can afford it move to Golang, and just forget about PHP. It is 10x faster and "secure by design"
The whole Wordpress architecture, especially the way the plugins are structured directory-wise makes it easy to be hacked. It is "insecure by design", and this design cannot be changed, as this would mean changing the thousands of plugins that are already built. Of course this is impractical.
The design is not the only issue with Worpress of course. Its much more than that. In short summary do not use Wordpress unless its for a simple blog, and you do not install ANY plugins at all. Even then do not use it, and why would you. It is slow, which also causes the SEO to go down, and you will pay extra if you want it to run faster and be optimized.
If you are serious about your users and traffic, your site speed, best SEO possible, and of course can afford it move to Golang, and just forget about PHP. It is 10x faster and "secure by design"
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What I'm getting from this is that beyond anecdotal evidence there isn't a lot to back up many of these claims.
I'm not saying WordPress is perfect, or the best platform out there, but the way some of you speak about it is like simply installing it onto a server is enough to give it aids, cancer and trench foot at the same time.
We've all fixed hacked websites... That in itself, regardless of the platform, doesn't mean that WordPress itself is insecure.
People who install a ton of crappy plug-ins and then leave their WP install to rot for 4 years... Yeah, monstrous. Douse it in kerosene and set it on fire. Burn it alive.
@antropy @gg12 Are you really saying that a properly coded WordPress website, that wasn't put together by a non-expert, but by someone who understands the fundamentals of design and security is the worst platform to adopt?
No offense, it's just really, really hard not to take your comments with a truck-load of salt when you make zero effort to caveat any of your incredibly strong opinions...
I'm not saying WordPress is perfect, or the best platform out there, but the way some of you speak about it is like simply installing it onto a server is enough to give it aids, cancer and trench foot at the same time.
We've all fixed hacked websites... That in itself, regardless of the platform, doesn't mean that WordPress itself is insecure.
People who install a ton of crappy plug-ins and then leave their WP install to rot for 4 years... Yeah, monstrous. Douse it in kerosene and set it on fire. Burn it alive.
@antropy @gg12 Are you really saying that a properly coded WordPress website, that wasn't put together by a non-expert, but by someone who understands the fundamentals of design and security is the worst platform to adopt?
No offense, it's just really, really hard not to take your comments with a truck-load of salt when you make zero effort to caveat any of your incredibly strong opinions...
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As a user of websites I have to disagree vehemently. The worst possible scenario is a web site that "loads" quickly then, just as you click somewhere, the whole page is re-rendered as new content loads and you end up clicking somewhere completely different. I would much rather a website be slow to load the complete, useable, site.
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