Side topic: Why we picked contentful over WordPress in 2021

Everyone heard of WordPress and may have heard about the high usage KPI on the web. It says more than 30% of all websites are WP, and more than 60% of all Content-Management-Systems are. I have to admit those are impressive numbers. But what do they tell us?

Is WordPress the easy-to-setup solution for all small businesses? Just find a hoster, one click to set up, and pick a theme, some plugins, and ready-to-go? Not even close to reality (anymore)!

Focus on the product, pick the best-of-breed

Speaking of WordPress, we are talking about smaller websites, landing pages, blogs, or entry-level shops. Let's pick the example of a landing page and think about what such a page contains. There's some content organized in blocks and widgets, a call-to-action funnel, and a maybe simple contact form. That's not much and should not require any backend software like WordPress is. Therefore, I would consider a backend-driven solution like WP as a non-fitting foundation for a landing page or even a modern blog.

Instead, I would go with a Single-Page-Application (SPA) or even a static site if someone prefers this. If dynamic content management is required, implement headless SaaS solutions like contentful. Those modern services are tailored for such a purpose, not bend to. A data model for a landing page is done in no time. No installation required, no update-hassle, no backup-and-recovery challenge, and no plugin-fest.

A SaaS CMS shines because there's no installation required, no update-hassle, no backup-and-recovery challenge, and no plugin-fest.

Example of a headless SaaS approach for Content-Management-Systems

Some years ago, WordPress released an update that made it possible to fetch the data via a decoupled frontend. Going headless was a good move in a new direction, and I admit I use this API myself for a blog. Still, WordPress is pretty static in its structure, which disqualifies it from a modern Content-Management-System. To some degree, you can extend it, but it's not a current and reliable way to work with software. Thus, I would recommend looking into SaaS solutions made to be self-service CMS systems.

We created a self-service blog system with landing pages and a homepage for a closed marketing platform for a decentralized franchise system in the real estate area. When we got into the project, we needed to consider the CMS to use. We compared WordPress, Strapi, and Contentful. The first one wasn't natively made for the task and was dropped; the second was viable but available on-premise only to that time, which was not aligned to our strategy. Contentful was directly available on the cloud, and we could create our data models within some hours. No installation, no hassle, a great API client, and an excellent integration for ReactJS.

The project was completed three workdays by a single frontend developer and has worked fine since then. Of course, Contentful is not the only viable option, but we picked it and were happy with tech and business levels.

Focus on the product, not the technology

The goal should be to create great products for our clients, and this requires a customer-centric mindset, and part of this is to focus on the result, not the tech. Instead of wasting time installing a backend and composing plugins, and writing a "theme" for WordPress, just set up a SPA, host it on cloud services and connect it to a SaaS CMS if necessary. This approach would be modern and future-proof.

Please focus on the Landingpage itself, the content, and what the landing page is supposed to accomplish. Not a loose promise that you get all done with some plugins installed.

Wrong expectations – false promises – The Maslow's Hammer

Most times, when I read or hear about web designers advertising WordPress, it says there's a plugin for everything, and it's such a big community and well-supported ecosystem. I agree with this, but this isn't a blanket reason to use it for every imaginable use case.

Even if WordPress is a good hammer, not every use case is a nail.

WP isn't suitable for large-scale projects; it's not a good foundation for agile development teams due to its monolithic architecture with plugins. In addition, it has too much overhead for tiny applications like landing pages, and the plugin story is not telling the truth; you will not get all your requirements covered by them!

WordPress over-promises and under-delivers for many cases, and it seems to fail to fit when necessary to perform in large applications. The web world is moving to microservices, microfrontends, and progressive web apps with good reason. All those parts a specialized for specific roles and purposes. This idea reduces overhead to a minimum and concentrates on a company's particular service while optimizing cost-efficiency, maintainability, and quality over time.

WordPress is still a good solution for blogging, especially for non-developer bloggers, using a managed cloud service. And it's possible to accomplish a good website with tools like Elementor. But it doesn't do it any better than modern technologies do, while it doesn't follow any new software design concepts at all. So you really should consider using WordPress for what it's meant to be used for, not for everything which looks like a website.

So you really should consider using WordPress for what it's meant to be used for, not for everything which looks like a website.

Offers I saw recently given by web designers to clients.

I wrote this article because of some quotes I got hands-on the last two years. It seems that many amateur-like one-person agencies sell "web-solutions" of every kind to their clients these days. My advice to the clients is clearly to be careful in what they invest, and my recommendation for developers using WP as Maslow's-Hammer is to consider looking into newer tech stacks to add them to your current portfolio. Especially if you want to grow with a good foundation in the future.

Regarding the quotes, I was asked to review those. It was remarkable that the more significant part of the effort was to install and deploy WordPress including plugins; don't forget, those plugins will get old and deprecated after a while. In no case the client's content and product were focused at all. Since we are talking about landing pages, the effort should mainly go into the actual product's content, primarily determining the outcome and leads.

It was remarkable that the more significant part of the effort was to install and deploy WordPress and necessary plugins. In no case the client's content and product were focused at all.

With a project comes a budget, and with the budget, the requirement to think about how to utilize what we, as web developers, have to accomplish the best result possible. In my opinion, the content part should make up around 80% of the complete project; in other words, the vast majority of the project hours. Make sure you got your deployment processes in place and not waste too much time creating a platform for a small-scale product. Additionally, I don't think I can recommend installing a web installation on a customer's "webspace". Those are often the wrong persons for this kind of operation.

I can understand why WordPress is still used for new projects for smaller businesses, but I want to motivate other developers to think about the next step in the progression of the web. Rethink if WP is the right solution for everything, just because you well understand to develop with it for years.

Feel free to contact me via LinkedIn if you think what I've written here is utterly wrong; I assume many will do so. Also, I would appreciate your feedback if you see some truth in what I say. Finally, if you need some ideas on adding other tech stacks to your portfolio, don't hesitate to contact me; I will help you.