I'm creating a new site in Wordpress and found out this plugin is very powerfull and ended up creating customs fields for almost every part of the website, I've even placed WYSIWYG editors instead of built in ones because it's easier for me to code my templates.
Is it ok to build an entire site with Advanced Custom Fields or it may become an issue in the future?
Since the webpage is based on static products data, WP or plugins updates will rarely be needed.
Is it ok to build an entire site with Advanced Custom Fields
IMO
It is "ok" to build an entire site with a plugin, but would I recommend it? probably not.
The only reason is because you never know what might happen to your site, if you install a "bad" plugin that breaks ACF plugin.
Or let say for some odd reason they stop providing support for ACF or updating it for whatever reason.
I've seen a lot of apps that have a good support system die out or get bought up by conglomerate companies and they stop public development and support.
WP or plugins updates will rarely be needed.
Regardless you should keep updating your wordpress to current versions, you never know about a security exploits people find, wordpress core dev push out new versions to battle those exploits.
This can apply to plugins as well.
Personally
I like to build things myself without the reliance on plugins in general.
That way I only have the tools that I need, instead of extras that a plugin may come with.
Sometimes a few lines of code can go a long way instead of depending on plugins that may have thousands of lines of code.
Let alone wordpress has a lot of native options baked in that you can rely on or extend as opposed to relying heavily on ACF or any other plugin.
Related
I want to use the 'Ultimate member' WordPress plugin since building that kind of system is a bit tedious.
Unfortunately, no.
As others have pointed out, plugins rely heavily on Wordpress' architecture and functionality for their own functionality.
You may be able to find a service which offers an API for account creation and authentication, but chances are you'll be using custom content for your users, which you'll need a server-side language like PHP (used by Wordpress) for.
Wordpress really isn't too much of a pain to set up, and if you have all the HTML, CSS and JS files complete, you can throw it together in a few hours.
If playing around in WP code really is not for you, there's even plugins to do it for you. Just complete the "5 minute setup" and away you go.
I'm researching to see if building a full website for a hotel be a good idea to do on WordPress.
I read that wordpress is okay but there are better options.
I want to design and code my own front end look to the website, but have the backend on a stable platform that can take all the reservations seamlessly.
My main concern is to be able to have a backup of all the files and easily switch to another server in case something goes wrong.
I can host the website on my server or host with the service you suggest that comes with the platform all together.
Any ideas and/or suggestions are greatly appreciated!
There are other options, no doubt, but yes, it can and is really possible to build it using WordPress as CMS.
If you want to design and code your own theme, you'll need to study the WordPress Theme Structure and, since you'll build it by yourself, you'll also need to develop plugins to create custom post types (aka CPT) to make the hotel management easier on the WP back-end.
About the theme structure, files, child themes and everything, I'd recommend you to read https://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
About the plugins development: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/
About Custom Post Types: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/post-types/registering-custom-post-types/
About the backup: it's super easy and you can even make a full backup using free plugins via back-end. But if the site goes down you can easily do it via FTP downloading only wp-content folder and the database. It's really simple to migrate from one WordPress to another, or from host to host.
About the hosting, you'll need to use a server if you want to build this project. There's a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org
The .com is simpler, you are not able to build everything you want. The .org is the open source project, which you get the files, upload to your server and connect to database (MariaDB or MySQL). Most hosts offer automatic installation for WordPress and, from there, you can change whatever you want and need.
Note: many developers create CPTs INSIDE the theme's code, but this is not recommended by WP as you can see in We recommend that you put custom post types in a plugin rather than a theme. This ensures that user content remains portable even if they change their theme.
WP is not really hard, after 1 week studying you'll see yourself getting over most difficulties. Even if it takes longer, don't give up. There's a huge community to help you with WP questions.
Hope it helps and I'm sorry my bad writing, I'm not an english native speaker.
C ya
I am developing a website on the WordPress platform and this is my first time using WordPress.
WordPress offers an estimate of 20% of the entire project scope, this means I have to write code for the remaining 80%
My question is how do I extend the WordPress platform to provide the functionality I require?
Thanks for your responses in advance
Pls remember am a newbie! will appreciate clear and detailed responses
Thanks
It really depends on what you're attempting to achieve, but a good first port of call would be to immerse yourself the details in plug-ins (specifically the "Writing a Plugin" section) and the Plugin API, as this is the easiest way to extend WordPress using the wide variety of hooks that the API provides.
However, it's also quite likely that at least some of the functionality you require has already be created as a 3rd party plug-in, so I thorough check of the currently available plug-ins would most likely pay dividends.
Wordpress has support for plug-ins. Additionally, it's all PHP scripts, so you can modify the core system as needed; however I would highly recommend that you only use plug-ins to extend functionality, as by changing the core system you won't be able to apply security updates.
For more information on plug-ins, read the Wordpress codex, which also contains detailed documentation on all functions available.
In addition to Plugins, which other users have already mentioned as a way to extend Wordpress functionality, you should read about the concept of Child Themes.
Themes in general make up the appearance and some functionality of your Wordpress site. For making your own theme, which you will be doing, it is a good idea to start off with an existing theme and build upon it. The standard Wordpress theme Twentyten is a great starting point, where many issues have already been taken care of.
The changes you add can be pure CSS restyling or much more complex additions.
i have created a website for a non profit organization. People on the site want to post stuff . i want to figure out the best way to allow them to do this.
Can i host a wordpress site and somehow embed it into my website
Do i need to install some whole CMS solution?
Other solutions for supporting user driven posts.
to clarify, the functionality of wordpress is all i need (people posting content and pictures).
It's easy to integrate Wordpress into a static html site.
Integrating WordPress with Your Website « WordPress Codex. (You do need mysql, but almost every hosting company out there offers it.)
If you want to convert an existing html site to Wordpress, look at Theme Development « WordPress Codex. Developing Wordpress themes is no more complex than other CMS's, and here are lots of tutorials out there. You divide up your html into header.php, index.php, page.php, footer.php, etc., and css into style.css. If you do a standard Wordpress theme, then plugins will work fine.
Go ahead and do a full install of Wordpress; there's no option for a minimum install. WP is small, anyway.
If you need a finer degree of working with editors, subscribers and contributors than Wordpress offers out of the box, look at different plugins that offer role managing capability, giving administrators the power to give different levels of permissions to users to write, edit and publish. WordPress › Search for roles « WordPress Plugins
You can pull other content into Wordpress via RSS, too, and either have that content appear as an RSS feed, or have it integrated into published posts. FeedWordPress | simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication for WordPress
You can get a free account at wordpress.com and try out a limited version of Wordpress, limited in that it is hosted by wordpress.com and you have a small number of plugins and css modifications you can make. But once you selfhost Wordpress, then you can do much more with it in terms of plugins and adapting the css to an existing site.
You could use a Wiki.
There are a few popular free Wiki packages out there these days. By far the most popular would be the framework behind Wikipedia - MediaWiki. Wikis' are a proven way to let users create the content, with systems in place to prevent vandalism/spam. MediaWiki also has a whole bunch of great plug-ins for anything you would need.
Another Wiki option is to use the Wordpress-Wiki plug-in for Wordpress. It lets you use Wordpress, but with some features of a Wiki. Not as feature rich as MediaWiki, but a good option if you really like Wordpress.
You do not need to install a whole cms solution, though wordpress can host an entire site, not just blogs.
You could hack it by using a hosted weordpress and displaying it in an iframe (this one might get some flames - but it works and it's easy)
You could also install wordpress on your server. By the sounds of it this is not your expertise, and while setting up wordpress is getting easier every release, for smaller sites I would much rather recommend pivotx
wordpress has a lot of overhead and requires a mysql database. The templated, while there are more available than in pivotx are harder to create. So I'm suggesting the other solution because it does the bulk of what wordpress does, and though it has far far far fewer plugins, it is a lot easier to theme, as it uses smarty.
This problem/scenario is pretty common. And the most common solution is to install a CMS. Our compagny installs Drupal to let end user manage their website easily. They can edit menus, and change content as easily as you write a document in word processor software.
But there is a lot of CMS out there...
Have you tried blogEngine.net?
I have two sites http://www.dotnetscraps.com and http://www.abhyast.com/ that are hosted using blogEngine.net. It is free and has multi user support, and the best part for me is that it supports both XML and SQL hosting. Anything that you post automatically ends up in the App_Data folder which is what you need to backup.
http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/
There are a plenty of themes to choose from, and if you wish you can customize your own theme without much effort.
I work at a more traditional ad agency and I am the sole web guy here. Recently a designer here redesigned our website based on the popular blog style seen about on the internets at the moment. Design is similar to this blog: http://effektiveblog.com/
I put forward that this would be a WordPress job, due to the designed features (tag cloud, dated/categorized posts, ability to be updated, rss, etc)
However, the non-web people at my workplace are saying they don't want to "do WordPress" and are planning on out-sourcing a custom CMS for this blog-look-a-like site!
As you can imagine, this is very frustrating and back-to-front.
However, as I haven't really delved fully into WordPress enough I don't fully know what arguments to put forward in regards to advantages/disadvantages in building it with WordPress vs a custom CMS.
Any thoughts on what to suggest to non-web superiors? or links even pointing to similar discussions?
I've been in the WordPress world for a few years and my observations have been that most of the "WordPress vs. other CMS" arguments boil down to a couple things:
Ultimately, you could use WordPress for nearly any CMS task, and you could use a general CMS to build blog content
WordPress was designed primarily as a blogging platform, so that's where it really shines. Yes, it can be used for other CMS tasks, but it does blogging best and that's where you'll find the most support and robust features.
More general CMS systems will offer features designed for a variety of content (not just blog posts or static pages), but they won't offer as many features (or as easy of an experience) for the blogging component as WordPress will.
Generally I tell folks that if the focus of the site is frequently updated content that is managed in a chronological fashion (like a blog), go with WordPress. If they're looking to integrate a bunch of disparate content and blogging isn't really important, they'll probably be better served by a more general CMS.
Wordpress is great for blogs and mid size simple websites. It's "static pages" approach is really useful, because you can create hirarchies that are fully editable from admin panel. It's plugin ecosystem is very good also - from SEO to automatic backups.
When I needed to convince some people that Wordpress would be a good idea to a CMS solution (not just a blog one), I created a prototype, and said that I just needed to edit a few php files (all copied from the default template), a few administration tasks and a few plugins and I was all set.
This prototype was really simple: no design, just structure. I made it in a saturday afternoon, and I made a challenge to everyone involved if they could create the same structure I created, with a full admin interface, in less time. No one could. And it's a tested plataform, yes, it's not "all MVC based", but it works and its administration is great to use.
I don't know if you have time to do it, but since is really fast to do it, I'd rather show them instead of just saying it.
One disadvantage of Wordpress is its performance. You may need to look at some cache plugins for your installation, like WpSuperCache. And be warned that if your website, in a long run, is going to have a lot of different requirements, Wordpress may not be the ideal solution.
WordPress is definitely the world's most popular CMS. The script is in its roots more of a blog than a typical CMS. For a while now it's been modernized and it got thousands of plugins, what made it more CMS-like.
Advantages -
Easy to operate-
WordPress does not require PHP nor HTML knowledge unlinke Drupal, Joomla or Typo3. A preinstalled plugin and template function allows them to be installed very easily. All you need to do is to choose a plugin or a template and click on it to install.
It's good choice for beginners.
Community-
To have a useful support, there must be a large community of users, who will be a part of e.g. a discussion board.
Plugins-
The script has over dozen thousand of plugins available on its website. They are the reason WordPress is considered a CMS, not only a blogging script. Strong majority of the plugins is available for free.
Templates-
On the scritp's homepage you can view thousands of graphics templates, that can change your website's look. You can find there both free and paid templates. The paid ones are often more advanced as well as more interesting.
Menu management-
WordPress menu management has extended functionalities, that can be modified to include categories, pages, etc.
E-commerce is available on WordPress
At Designed to Connect, we generally use Woocommerce – an e-commerce add on to WordPress to build our e-commerce websites. As an e-commerce store, you will often find yourself updating your products, pricing, sales, coupons and more. Woocommerce is extremely effective in doing all this along with offering great reports features.
Disadvantages -
WordPress updates their software frequently-
WordPress is constantly changing and growing and it needs regular updates. This is not a big deal unless you are looking for a set-it-and-forget-it solution, in which case this might not be the solution for you as it needs periodic updates.
Customization of a theme can be costly-
If the website was built upon a theme and you decide that you want to make major changes to it, it may be time-consuming to have a programmer make changes to the layout of the theme. If you anticipate needing to make major changes to the theme, consider having a theme built from scratch to meet your needs instead.
Advantages:
Low cost to upkeep / maintain website is cheap
Easy and good with usability on back-end
Tons of plugins (which can slow your site down significantly)
Write your own functions if you know PHP.
codex.wordpress.org, the documentation is so easy
Tons of updates for security
The community, the millions of users
SEO possibilities (when compared to other famous CMS)
Can make a big corporate to small website
Disadvantages:
Not the the most optimum use of its resources (but its getting better every update)
Security (also improving)
Advantages:
Simple
Huge number of themes and plugins
SEO
Easily convert site to Ecommerce
Disadvantages
Customization
Source: Advantages and disadvantages of wordpress