WordPress

Pros

• Fairly simple setup
• User-friendly
• Highly customizable
• Easy to find professional help from multiple sources

Cons

• Non tech-savvy users may require outside assistance to setup
• Security needs to be tended to constantly
• Some plugins may require outside assistance to make function as needed

WordPress is one of the most popular and ubiquitous content management systems for public websites in the world. The software platform is a user-friendly PHP-based website solution, allowing for storage of webpage data from a central MySQL database.

WordPress is fairly easy to set up, provided the user is generally tech-savvy; even if the user has no MySQL or PHP experience, site setup is possible with a little bit of reference material (much of which can be found free online).

Initially launched in 2003 as blogging software, WordPress's ability to expand its initial site capabilities by the use of either free or proprietary "plugin" software has led to its massive popularity, well beyond its initial audience. With a simple plugin installation, this blogging software can be modified to become a public forum website, an online art portfolio site, an e-commerce site, a crowdfunding site or even a news distribution service.

With all this platform popularity and site customization available at will, however, comes the need for constant security vigilance. Assuming a user is wise and installs a reliable security plugin to their site, the sheer number of brute force attacks and other dubious actions taken by potential attackers will be apparent. Thankfully, WordPress makes system and plugin updates available at more than regular intervals, however, and sites can even be setup to automatically run updates as needed.

In terms of day-to-day usability, WordPress is designed to be as user-friendly for basic posting functions like news posts and permanent pages. Adding photos, PDF documents and other media are a snap, and depending on how the editing area is set up, it can be operated by someone with little to no HTML or CSS coding knowledge. Some popular plugins can be added to enhance the ease of editing pages as well.

The only other concern about operating a WordPress site is that some specialty plugins may require some technical knowledge to implement. For example, if someone wants to install a Google Analytics plugin so that site viewing data can be gathered, one will need to know how to setup a Google Analytics account first, so that necessary data can be added to the site plugin's settings. However, due to the system's popularity, finding specialists with the system is easy online, and most can help clients quickly with competitive professional rates.

Pros

• Fairly simple setup
• User-friendly
• Highly customizable
• Easy to find professional help from multiple sources

Cons

• Non tech-savvy users may require outside assistance to setup
• Security needs to be tended to constantly
• Some plugins may require outside assistance to make function as needed