10 Challenges Working With WordPress As A Content material Administration Platform in 2023

I’ve been working and growing with WordPress since its inception. The content material administration system’s simplicity is phenomenal, and its mass adoption has no shock. There are haters on the market, however I typically remind those who the problems with WordPress are often centered across the themes and plugins applied, not the core platform.

The analogy I typically use with individuals is aftermarket automotive elements… some are unimaginable, and a few can destroy your automobile. WordPress isn’t any totally different. A working example that I want to share is that this website, Martech Zone. Just a few years in the past, I discovered a unbelievable theme with all of the options and performance I wished to share my content material in a usable, stunning, and stylish consumer interface. Over time, I continued to boost a baby theme that I constructed and was blissful the builders of the unique mum or dad theme continued to help every model of WordPress.

Till not too long ago.

Just a few weeks in the past, I used to be having a problem on the location and couldn’t discover how the code was developed so I went over to the developer’s discussion board… and their website was down. So, I went over to Themeforest the place I bought the theme… and it was gone. I then regarded for the builders of the theme… they usually have been gone.

I used to be alone!

Many years in the past, once you purchased a product you anticipated to make use of it for all times. In in the present day’s fast-paced, low-cost expertise world, we’ve grown accustomed to tossing our expertise when it breaks or turns into out of date. That’s fantastic… I don’t thoughts shopping for a brand new toaster. However when it’s the software program working your web site, it’s fairly the headache. To return to my analogy, it’s much less like an aftermarket set of rims and extra like your transmission breaking. It’s a major expense, and an enormous problem within the WordPress ecosystem.

WordPress Is Nonetheless Nice

My purpose with this text isn’t to complain about WordPress, it’s a versatile platform that may be up to date, transitioned, or custom-made with little or no effort. As nicely, the ecosystem of builders, themes, and plugins is past the creativeness. I’ve helped firms do some extremely modern integrations and automation with the WordPress API, and I proceed to be optimistic about its future.

My purpose with this text is to share, what I imagine, are some important shortcomings of the platform in order that persons are conscious of a few of the core platform’s inherent challenges. Discover I mentioned core… I understand that there are themes, plugins, and headless architectures that may overcome these. I’d identical to to see WordPress architects innovate on a few of these shortcomings.

Particular to Martech Zone

I don’t have time to develop for a month, so I needed to transition the location to a brand new theme after which iron out the problems.

• Creator Archive – One concern that I’ve proper now’s that I’ve a whole bunch of authors so constructing an writer web page requires fairly a little bit of improvement so I can restrict the record to anybody who has shared an article within the final month. That’s not too tough… I can develop a customized template, question the most recent posts, pull the distinctive authors, then construct an array of them, organize them alphabetically, and show their profile info.
• Customized Publish Sort – I constructed a group of acronyms for the location that was actually doing fairly nicely. On every of the acronym pages, I even included the most recent posts utilizing the acronym. And… it labored nicely, individuals actually appreciated transferring from the definition to some articles in regards to the subject. Nevertheless, I needed to construct a customized archive, taxonomy archive, and single put up template for the customized put up kind to show it correctly. Now, with a brand new theme, I’ve to redevelop these.

For each, I’ve the core code. I simply should construct out the templates in my new youngster theme to get them operational. It’s not tough however it’s time-consuming. WordPress has the options to develop these but it surely’s not that straightforward. For those who’re a enterprise – that is fairly an expense. Evidently there’s a possibility for WordPress to construct accompanying (core) consumer interface choices to customized put up varieties for customizing how they’re queried and displayed. Once more, I do know there are plugins that assist… I simply assume this is a chance for the core platform.

The brand new theme I bought and the kid theme I’ve has this limitation as nicely. All customized put up kind archives, taxonomy pages, and single customized kind posts use the default theme choices. Once more, I do know that could possibly be a pleasant characteristic within the theme… however I actually want this was core characteristic. I’d love to have the ability to click on on a customized put up kind setting, choose how its queried, and choose a structure choice… fairly than coding all of it.

Ten Further WordPress Challenges

Listed below are another points that I’ve run into that proceed to problem and value time and assets with my purchasers:

1. Search Engine Optimization – For those who’re publishing content material for acquisition efforts in your model, product, or service, natural search optimization isn’t an choice – it’s a should. The capabilities of WordPress are woefully insufficient right here… even in case you’re paying for Jetpack in your website. Tag optimization, wealthy snippets, sitemaps, and different options are essential to optimizing your website for search engine customers. It’s why we gained’t implement a website with out Rankmath.
2. AMP – Whereas it’s not WordPress’ fault, AMP help is horrible. Jetpack has AMP capabilities however, inexplicably, they disable shortcodes help out of your mum or dad them to your AMP show. Simply as a baby theme assumes options and performance from a mum or dad theme, evidently AMP needs to be a child-type theme. One of many causes that I chosen the brand new theme I did was inherent AMP help.
3. Efficiency – WordPress continues to be a canine in relation to velocity as you proceed to customise it with further plugins and theme options. Once we work on our purchasers’ websites, essentially the most complicated points we deal with are website velocity. If we do a deep dive, we frequently discover a whole bunch of queries and requests made for even a single web page to be displayed. I’m not an skilled on this space, however I’m stunned there are usually not inherent database question caches and native caching on the core platform at this level. I’ve labored with different platforms that revealed pages by bodily creating cached information fairly than dynamically producing them with each request.
4. WooCommerce – WooCommerce was initially developed to make the most of the WordPress API, so it makes use of the core posts desk to retailer product info and treats the merchandise and classes like a customized put up kind. Merchandise aren’t posts or pages, although. Merchandise are a group of options, pricing, and variations. For those who’re popping out with a brand new model of a product and also you’re going to launch it on a sure day, it’s fairly tough to draft and publish the brand new model launch. The workaround is to create a brand new product, unpublish the previous product, replace the brand new product’s permalink, and so on… after which, in fact, you’ve got a special product ID between the 2.
5. Types and Information – It actually takes a type plugin or built-in third-party platform to handle types and knowledge in your website. I’m stunned that WordPress hasn’t integrated types and knowledge as a core characteristic – particularly since WooCommerce principally makes use of each as nicely. Elementor, for example, does a tremendous job and even has webhook capabilities that make it easy to combine.
6. Spam – I used to be paying for Akismet but it surely was ineffective in opposition to type spam and doesn’t appear to have developed at everywhere in the years. I nonetheless obtained a ton of spam, particularly by means of types on my website. The WordPress staff ought to simply kill it and purchase and combine CleanTalk which is a much better answer with native type plugin integrations.
7. Staging – Just about each managed WordPress internet hosting now has staging versus manufacturing environments the place you possibly can develop and check, then push your adjustments to manufacturing. We use Flywheel for this and completely like it. However staging to manufacturing has terrible limitations due to the structure of WordPress. As we develop on staging, our purchasers are usually nonetheless producing content material in manufacturing. Theme improvement typically leads to database edits. In consequence, we will’t simply push staging to manufacturing… we’ve got to manually push adjustments to manufacturing. If WordPress did a greater job of discreetly separating ALL content material from Themes & Plugins, it could possibly be potential to easily have the power to push one or the opposite fairly than simply choosing theme vs. database.
8. Workflows – The vast majority of firms require the power to have content material workflows with individuals who write, edit, then approve content material earlier than it’s scheduled to go dwell. Whereas WordPress has nice roles built-in, there’s no workflow administration to assign and notify these roles. In consequence, firms look externally to develop, edit, and approve the content material after which solely use WordPress to publish it.
9. Content material Journeys – Newer content material expertise platforms aren’t organized by the kind of content material, they’re organized by the kind of consumer. These programs have dynamic capabilities with rules-based or intelligence-based flows that stroll a customer by means of an expertise. That’s a dramatic change and one thing that WordPress could by no means be capable to accommodate.
10. WordPress Widgets – I’m a fan of the Gutenberg editor and actually respect the flexibleness it supplies whereas supporting earlier content material architectures. Nevertheless, when WordPress determined to try to adapt the consumer interface for widgets to look and act like Gutenberg, it was a catastrophe. The consumer interface is terrible… and you probably have a ton of widgets, it’s slowww. One of many options of my new theme was an choice to disable this interface and I used to be ecstatic.

I do know I’m going to get a ton of pushback on third-party functions, integrations, plugins, and themes. We proceed to keep up and promote our personal record of really useful plugins for WordPress. Once more, my level is that the options above have gotten core to a content material technique, not a characteristic or performance outdoors of them.

Disclosure: Martech Zone is utilizing affiliate hyperlinks all through this text.