WordPress is too much for the typical small business owner to manage.
Yesterday I got yet another reminder of why managed website builder services like Wix, Weebly and Squarespace exist.
I updated the plugins on one of my WordPress sites and POOF! The site broke. Completely. You couldn’t access it. I couldn’t even access the WP-Admin to turn off the plugins to troubleshoot it.
With a bit of help from GoDaddy, I was able to FTP to the site and remove the plugins folder to diagnose the issue.
But here’s the thing: talk to the average small business owner about updating plugins or FTP’ing into their site and they’ll lose you.
That’s why site builders exist. Anyone can create a site using them. They don’t have to worry about updating plugins and breaking their site. Security is handled behind the scenes.
Using a site builder instead of WordPress comes with drawbacks but it’s a huge market for a good reason.
I have some experience with CMS like Wordpress and Drupal from years ago, and then I moved on to more robust systems called frameworks (a cms is built on top of or using a framework) like Flask. For anything simple like a 1 page scrolling website and up to around 10 pages I use pure HTML. I’d recommend anyone who is not a web developer to avoid these PHP based CMS as they demand too much upkeep. As a reasonably competent part-time full stack developer Wordpress scares me. Behind the hood everything seems convoluted. Trying to understand and work on these systems requires knowing the CMS thoroughly, and then initiating a thousand clicks here and there for configuration options… I came to a realisation that a few lines of code could achieve the same thing in a proper framework. Building a wordpress design/theme felt like unscrambling an egg or deciphering hieroglyphs. Learning web design (design + front-end) using any cms that requires rummaging through many strange template files will stunt your development. A Wordpress developer might instead select a base template and tweak it here and there. Creating a front-end prototype and using a more standard templating system like Jinja to integrate this into a framework is much simpler. Managed solutions like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly etc. are all much better options for smaller business vs a standalone Wordpress installation.
Might anyone know of a good WordPress backup solution? Seeking one that is NOT plug-in based (for the reasons Andrew gave above) and I want it to be automated with the ability to auto execute 2x per day. I tried CodeGuard, but it sucks. Anything else out there?
If your site uses cPanel and offers the ability to create Cron jobs, I would do something like this: https://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/backup-website-cpanel-manual-automatically-script-cron/
wpengine.com does a decent job with automated (and manual) backups and one click restores of former update points.
“former update points” were meant to say “former backup points.”
Did you check if your host offers one?
Agree. Wordpress has gotten scary. I had the same thing happen a few months ago. Was totally blocked from even getting to the dashboard.
Yeah, WordPress is getting lot of problems with some plugins, I also got some problem when i installed one of the plugin into my wordpress ccount
I have been using Weebly pro accounts for 7 years with no isssues at all, if built and indexed correctly Weebly websites rank well in all search engines.