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Ask HN: Is wordpress still the go to fool-proof CMS?

by oliverjudge on 8/3/21, 9:55 AM with 11 comments

If you were building out a marketing site (designed to be used by marketing people) would you still turn to Wordpress?

I've seen a fair few projects spun up on Squarespace/Webflow/Craft, but none of them seem to have the same quick on boarding and up and running feeling of Wordpress. What did you choose for your marketing site and why?

  • by colesantiago on 8/3/21, 11:56 AM

    > Is wordpress still the go to fool-proof CMS?

    Yes. Wordpress is more customisable and extendable than the rest.

    Squarespace, Webflow and Craft are either proprietary, have huge hype by newcomers (especially Webflow) or have missing features that make you want to go back to Wordpress.

    I am sure that you can make a basic marketing site in either of these but you also mentioned 'CMS' and Wordpress is the easiest and the most extendable.

  • by codegeek on 8/3/21, 3:01 PM

    "designed to be used by marketing people"

    Yes. A resounding Yes. You can try to do it in other cool things but if you want to build a serious marketing site which can be managed by non technical people, WordPress is the way to go. I am a technical founder who runs a SAAS and I have been playing around with things like Hugo, Netlify, headless CMS etc but WordPress kees beating them due to the speed, maintainability and time to market factor.

    Don't go crazy on Plugins especially shitty 3rd party and you will be fine. Don't listen to people who dislike PHP and all that.

  • by legrande on 8/3/21, 12:39 PM

    Long time Wordpress user here. Over time I realized that WP can get very insecure the more plugins and bells and whistles you add to it. Plugins just increase the attack surface of it, so I only used tried and tested and community vetted plugins, and also use no more than 5 plugins to be safe. With Squarespace etc you don't have to worry about security which is why I'm thinking of using it eventually when I can afford it.

  • by andrei_says_ on 8/4/21, 7:27 AM

    I use craftcms for new sites. It’s free for a single admin and is a CMS and not an ancient blog engine hacked to act as one.

    Templating is straightforward.

    No 1-click install themes but also no inscrutable unchanged-able spaghetti code.

    It’s just a clean predictable and reliable dev process out of the box.

  • by TechBro8615 on 8/5/21, 7:19 PM

    Anyone used Strapi? Or wordpress + advanced custom fields + wp-graphql? I like the look of Sanity.io but it's not open source / self-hostable.

  • by fiftyacorn on 8/5/21, 6:51 AM

    My only gripe about modern wordpress is the number of screen builders for themes. It was easier in the past where you selected the theme, tweaked it a little.

  • by gtirloni on 8/3/21, 1:13 PM

    Definitely. As much as I dislike supporting PHP, the interface is great for users and keeps getting better.

  • by codingdave on 8/3/21, 1:16 PM

    Absolutely. Vanilla Wordpress, mostly, not the mess you can build by adding a heap of plugins.

  • by pelagicAustral on 8/3/21, 2:10 PM

    Ghost never had the makings of a varsity CMS