white mushroom on moss close up shoot

The main argument that all take into when deciding if to go with a CMS or to build something from scratch is the software limitations and scalability. It is true, but the main argument to chose a CMS instead of building everything from scratch is the huge amount of time that we save using the software.

This is applied not only to CMS but to any other kind of websites. The truth is that everything can be customized and configured, but some software’s make this very very hard so at the end time saved to use a CMS can be lost when trying to customize it. This is not the case for wordpress. WordPress is simple so you can build whatever you want on it with less effort. But, more important, the community of plugin developers around wordpress is so great that you can find almost everything. So if someday you wake up an you get a great idea to do with your wordpress website do a quick search on plugins directory, there are 99% chances that it is already created and you save a lot of time.

Can you achieve great things with wordpress ?

Last week i wanted to add a membership functionality to one of my websites. Visitors pay a monthly fee have access to some advanced tools. I started to think how can i do this, i started to plan create the paypal payment gateway, membership handling prices, etc. I knew that these plugins exists but some of them with high prices. I wanted something simple, payments to be made and then they have access. Right before i began to work i have done a quick search on wordpress plugin directory. I’ve found s2member which actually was able to do all i was looking for and much more.

It was simple to install, all customizations provided, everything. My conclusion: You can really achieve great things with wordpress.

What about the time ? I saved about 20 hours of work on the new functionality that would have probably have bugs and it could have been considered trash compared to this plugin where creators spent hundred of hours thinking how to provide the best free plugin to manage the membership functionality on wordpress websites.

This is the power of community and this is why wordpress is prefered by most and it is really helping the web development. You can now run any kind of website you want with minimal effort.