WebsiteBaker versus Wordpress

by Boudewijn van den Akker - yze.nl

As we all know Wordpress is the leading cms in the World. Lots of articles are written about that but the truth is…. Why is it so immense popular and even more important; what results are given when comparing to WebsiteBaker?

Before I kick off it’s always easy to burn down the popular guy eventhough you do not know if it’s justly or not. In my case I DO have experience with both systems and therefore I think I can give you some objective comparisment results.

WP started as a blog, was developed as a blog back in the days that there were dozens of scripts that represented blogs. Nowadays they still lean on the same basics as back then; in fact it’s still a blog but since the blog concept lost it from the cms concept they merged it as WP was a full working cms (in fact it is basically a cms). The big difference, and that is where it all went wrong for WP, is that WP intentionally never was developed to work as a fully fledged cms but a a one-page blog which was editable in a backend.

And with that fact in mind even today this is noticable when you login in the backend of WP; it’s one big pile of unlogical implemented and inserted mess of addons and extensions. You cannot overlook the fact that the backend started out as a one-page editable workaround but during the need for a real cms they inserted and implemented dozens of mods, pages and so on, simply to create the workaround as demanded by the users.

But what do you get when you let thousands of users decide what to put in a backend? Right: a mess. And that is what WP is nowadays. Unlogical and slow.

And WB? WB started out with the development of a fully fledged cms from starting point on till now. All good.

Knowing these facts let’s dive into both systems:

First glimp workaround:

WP: After login into WP the First thing you notice is the overkill of buttons on your left. (thanks to all those wp users with their valuable input). Mistake #1: Not developers have to work with a backend, but end-users who pay (big) bucks in order to get a reliable and easy workaround. The average end-user is a n00b, doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing and what you’re saying and when WP comes in with literal dozens and dozens of (sub)menu links you can, no MUST understand that you are not delivering quality for your payed customer.

And WB: just select the menu items which are important for your customer and hide the rest. A handfull menu items is enough in order to let the customer have all the freedom they need.

 

Speed:

Provided: Both systems were tested on the same server with the same specs.

With all those fancy buttons and overkill it’s easy to think that wp is slow. Well…. It is. Everything you change needs time. Too much microtime. But when you add up all those seconds within a few minutes you start to get annoyed fast. You want speed and simplicity and not to annoy yourself after a few minutes. Big nono for end-users.

And WB? Less crap means less loading time and that’s what WB does.

Usability:

With all those buttons in WP there must be something good underneath, somewhere, hidden or so that will declare all the above negative points. But no… creating a page is a very devious and long-breathtaking adventure. In my case I had near 20 (!) fields/positions to fill out before the entire page was correctly setup. Did I mentioned the saving time per page?

In WB just fill out 1 field, save and you’re done.

Media:

Besides all the above WP experiences which truely surprised me in a negative way I reckoned that the Media section was scoring big time. Well….again it didn’t. I can write down a LONG story about the entire media section (which again is highly overkilled) but the main, basic, standard, must-have feature is simply NOT present: create dirs and subdirs in order to structure your media section. I was simply astonished. World’s biggest CMS didn’t have any option to create dirs and subdirs? Yes it doesn’t. I don’t know why this is not possible but It would not surprise me if it has to do with wrong coding from starting point on: when WP was coded as a one-page blog and so without the need of creating dirs in the Media section.

WB: Create all the structures you need with the highest form of simplicity.

SEO:       

Yes! Now WP stands up over the rest because the entire CMS is SEO optimized. Wel again….bad luck. Despite all those fancy widgets, plugins, fields, tabs and seo stuff our average WB created websites are simply higher ranked than WP created websites. Reason? Google likes less -, not more coding. ;)

Nice example; in WB you can SEO all pages in just one page. Easy does it.

Security:

Again: WP is popular and what becomes popular must burn nowadays but let’s look beyond that. I cannot avoid the fact that WP was written back then as a one-page blog, not a cms. They made the mistake not to re-write the entire code from scratch. My guess is that this ended it up in the most hacked cms in the World nowadays. Even the latest bare installations are hackable with just one line of code. Again: you sell this to your customers?

Besides that a website is as strong as the weakest link; and WP features thousands and thousands of widgets and extensions that are used. Most of them are one-time developed by vague developers and highly dangerous. Add this up to the lack of security as mentioned above and you simply DON’T want this to sell this to your customers.

WB? Created thousands and thousands of websites…no hacks known.

Final result:

When checking all the above facts then why is WP so immense popular? There are several answers for that. It’s popular because there are thousands free plugins and widgets available (regardless security issues) and even more free templates (same thing). Knowing this lots of ‘webdesign bureaus’ use this because the overhead is very low and all the tools are available when a client is asking for it.

That said; custom programming isn’t that easy with WP and bureaus who use/sell WP simply have to do with what’s available on the market. That’s why lots of starting bureaus will end within a few years because they aren’t able to grow while their clients demand it. What remains are the professional bureaus who uses WP. And that’s something I don’t understand regarding all of the above. I cannot walk away of the impression that these bureaus are using WP for the benefit of the average end-user because there aren’t any. What’s stays behind is, even for big bureaus the advantage of a giant palace of templates and widgets. Nothing more, nothing less.

And WB? WB was build as a fully fledged CMS with one goal; simplicity. What can be done in WP in 5 steps can be done in WB in just one step. It’s a pure backend CMS what means that you need coding skills in order to create a template and couple this with WB. Yes not even WB is perfect; e.g. the mod section is poor and some mods need a re-write or upgrade.

 

 

This article is tagged with:
Wordpress WebsiteBaker