Managed WordPress Hosting: Do They Really Suck?

April 4, 2023 By WP Helpline Off

WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) platform out there, managing to grab an impressive 64% of the market share. As a content publishing platform, it is quite possibly the simplest and most elegant solution in existence to getting your content out there for the world to see.

But – as with any other tool – WordPress has its quirks and foibles that can make you want to run, not build, your blog. If you’re planning on using WordPress to power your blog, then this article is for you. Here we’re going to run down the main issues that you may encounter along the way and how you can either work around them or prevent them from arising in the first place.

Security Issues

WordPress is open-source software and as such, is completely free to download and use. This means that anyone can access and tamper with your website’s source code, so long as they have enough knowledge about web development and programming in general. Malicious individuals can take advantage of this to hack your website, stealing your data and putting your blog, and your readers, at risk of being compromised.

To combat this, WordPress comes with a built-in security feature called ‘Trusted Website’. This feature allows you to select a specific security key that is required to log in to your WordPress site. If someone tries to log in to your site with an incorrect or stolen password, they will be asked to provide the correct credentials. This way, even if they do manage to gain access to your site’s source code, they will be prevented from doing any damage.

Additionally, WordPress offers two-factor authentication (2FA) for its users as a means of boosting their security. You can enable this feature on your account settings page or via a WordPress plugin. Once you have set this up, even if someone does manage to guess your password, they will be required to enter a code that you have previously set on your 2FA trusted device (typically a smartphone or a hardware token such as a YubiKey).

Overall, WordPress offers some great security features that you can take advantage of to keep your blog or website secure and free of hack attempts or data breaches. But it also means that you have to take the extra step of thinking about how you are going to secure your blog or website and make sure that you practice safe blogging (or whatever blogging practice you follow).

Scaling Issues

If you’re using WordPress for content that is meant to be viewed by a larger audience (such as a magazine site or a news platform), then you may encounter scaling issues. The built-in ‘Trusted Website’ feature mentioned above isn’t meant to handle large volumes of traffic, which is why you may need to look into additional solutions for this scenario.

WordPress is a popular choice for CMS platforms because it is very flexible and has a large community of dedicated developers who are constantly improving and adding new features to the platform. As a developer, this makes WordPress extremely accessible and easy to upgrade, customize, and add new features to. Unfortunately, this also makes it highly vulnerable to hacking and data breaches as the platform is extremely customizable and open-source. If a developer wants to improve their day to day job, they can take advantage of this and add new features or fixes to the platform. The more features that are added, the more complicated the platform becomes and the more strain it puts on the web host that is supporting it.

If you’re using WordPress for a simple blog that isn’t intended to be viewed by a large audience, it may be overkill to handle the strain that a large volume of traffic can put on your web host. In this case, you may want to consider alternative solutions such as a static HTML website or using a self-hosted WordPress instance on your own server.

Overall, while WordPress is a great solution for those who want to quickly set up a blog or website, it does have its limitations. If you’re looking for a robust solution that can handle large volumes of traffic and hack attempts, then you may need to look elsewhere. At the very least, make sure that you practice safe blogging (or whatever blogging practice you follow) and keep your WordPress password safe (especially if you use the same password for other online accounts).

Reliability Issues

If you’re looking for a robust blogging platform that can handle large volumes of traffic and hack attempts, then you may want to consider alternative solutions such as a static HTML website or WordPress itself hosted on your own server. But if you still want to use WordPress, then you may encounter reliability issues due to the heavy nature of the software and the large amount of plugins that are available for it.

WordPress is known to have a large number of stability and security issues that can arise from day to day usage. This is why some people (including myself) prefer not to use it for mission-critical applications where uptime is crucial. Instead, they opt for a lightweight blogging platform such as static HTML with a few plugins to help make it act like a fully-fledged CMS. It’s not a perfect solution, but for those who need a quick and dirty blog or website, it’s the perfect fit.

WordPress is extremely popular because it is one of the simplest and most accessible CMSs available out there. It’s easy to set up and use, and it has a large community of developers who are always willing to help out when issues arise. While it can be a great choice for those who want to quickly and effectively launch a blog or website, you should know its quirks and limitations. If you’re looking for a robust solution that can handle large volumes of traffic and attempts at hacking, then you may need to look elsewhere.

Evolving Trends

One of the things that make WordPress so great is that it is an open-source platform and as such, is always evolving to keep up with the latest trends and technologies.

This means that as new features are added, they can be easily accessed and integrated into your blog or website to provide a better user experience. Additionally, as new versions of WordPress are released, they contain all of the previously-discussed improvements as well as brand new features that you can take advantage of.

A prime example of this is the ‘Experimental Web Developer Features’ flag that can be found in the documentation of WordPress. This option allows you to enable and disable experimental features that are not yet fully baked into the platform. Some of these features include:

Automatic Private Messaging (AMP) for commenters
A built-in video player
Revised Comment Moderation
New Post Formats including a map and an event reminder
Picture-in-Picture commenting
And much more

These are some interesting features that you can try out and depending on your needs and usage patterns, some of them may prove to be the ‘killer apps’ that you’ve been searching for. Not only that, but many of these features are also fully customizable via the dashboard.

You should note, however, that while new features are added every year, it doesn’t mean that old features will stop functioning. So you may encounter compatibility issues when using experimental features.

Additionally, some of the experimental features are extremely resource-heavy and depending on your web host’s plan, you may run into scalability issues. For this reason, it is best to use features that haven’t been officially released or that you don’t use very often.

WordPress is an open-source platform and as such, is constantly evolving to keep up with the latest trends and technologies. Not only does this make it easier for the developers who are contributing to the project to keep on top of what’s going on, but it also allows you to take advantage of all of the new features that are available to you. Not only that, but new versions of WordPress contain all of the previously-discussed improvements as well as brand new features that you can take advantage of.

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