Why NOT TO Use WordPress for Blogging

Photo by Sabri Tuzcu on Unsplash

When it comes to blogging, WordPress always tops the list! But it’s not always ideal path to go with WordPress as it requires a lot of configuration and it’s expensive for some of us(at least, for some students). Here are a few reasons not to choose WordPress to blog!

Why Not to Use WordPress

Expensive

For you, this might not be true, but for some of us, it is. Running a WordPress blog is somewhat expensive. You have to cover hosting costs by yourself.

Security Risks from Plugins

If you are already running a WP blog, or managed one in past, you may know that the older version of the plugin you’re using, the more vulnerable you’re to security threats. Have a look on the following tweet. Elliot Alderson wrote about how he was able take over 127 twitter accounts! Link to GitHub Repository.

Slower Page Load-Time

It’s relatively slower compared to static blogs built using JAM Stack(static sites). You can improve load-time but for that, you need to have knowledge about how to edit WP themes.

Obviously, WordPress has some advantages, like: you don’t have to be a tech-savvy to blog in WP etc. But these are the reason I wouldn’t choose WordPress to blog.

So, what are the alternatives

Static Sites/Blogs

Yes, static blogs are here at your rescue. It’s super easy to build a blog using any static site generators if you have basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You can use any static site generator of your choice. There are plenty of them out there.

• Jekyll — Static Site Generator written in Ruby. Uses liquid syntax for templates.
• Gatsby — Built using NodeJS and react. You need to know the basics of React and GraphQL to work with it.
• Hugo — written in Go Lang. Uses Go syntax.

… and a bunch of them.

Hosting static sites is really easy. Because it’s just a static site you’re deploying. You could use GitHub pages, surge.sh or even now.sh. These are free of cost and you don’t have to spend a single penny on it.

Blogging platforms

you can also blogging platforms like Medium to blog. But keep that in mind that you never own the content. The main benefit of blogging on Medium is, you get the required audience if you are posting it under any established publications.

Writing a Blogging Engine from Scratch

You know what it takes to build a blog engine from scratch :)

That’s it. Have a great day ahead!