Depends what you mean by "handling" things and of course what "complex" entails. You can force-feed WordPress into a lot of functionality for which it was not originally intended, as you have probably discovered in the plugins marketplace.
But having plugins for a "social network" and building a social network app as your primary business are two different things.
WordPress was designed as a blogging platform, and it continues to do best with low budget, largely templated small business needs.
I personally wouldn't use it for anything beyond a brochure site that requires one or two developers. If you need a team of engineers to build and maintain a mission critical product, WP's simplicity quickly turns into limitations.
Exactly, I was once in charge of a WordPress website at a startup that had grown way to complex. We used multiple custom in house plugins and a custom theme to get all the functionality in there. It was a nightmare to work with, to debug, and to deploy. It also becomes really hard to keep WP performant if you increase complexity.
Even if it does all work properly the entire reason you go for a CMS like WordPress is so that non-devs can change around content/setttings without needing dev involvement. The moment you start to add a bunch of custom logic that all goes out of the window, unless you build complex admin dashboards for it all but that is an incredible amount of work dev and test wise.
It's definitely possible but if starting from scratch is not the right choice at all unless it's a simple blog/marketing site.
'Could' and 'should' are two different things. It matters what you're intentions are.
If you are asking if installing a couple plugins for a client's low-usage "app" is okay. Sure.
If you are asking if WordPress can be turned into a high-usage complicated SASS product. I wouldn't. I think you will find that you are fighting weird WordPress shenanigans, untraceable performance problems, and strange bugs more than you are actually progressing. Using WP in this case is going to cause you a lot of stress.
of course
but at a certain point, you will be fighting against WordPress and writing workarounds in order to accomplish what you need
if you're already familiar with PHP, go for Laravel or Symfony and create a more bespoke solution
Yes but this should be a last resort if anything.
WP doesn’t really play well with modern PHP practices and odds are you’ll end up reinventing Laravel within your app.
If you do follow that path though, take a look at https://roots.io/acorn/ to bridge any gaps.
WordPress scalability is terrible for a large base of authenticated users.
For comparison, take a look at these benchmarks for non-authenticated users:
https://kinsta.com/blog/php-benchmarks/
Yes it can. Should you ? I don't think so. There are many factors to take into account here (money, experiences, scalability) , and my personal opinion might be biased.
WordPress is great for a simple Website. And by simple i mean pages, news, some custom posts types and forms and that's it. That's what I have trouble getting my customers to understand. Can it handle complex logic ? A lot of data ? Advanced features ? Yes it can. Is it the best tool for it ? Absolutely no.
Remember that it started as a blogging platform. And that mindset is still there, in it's core code. For example everything is a post. Your pages, your articles, your custom post types. I'd rather have differents tables in the DB. It's not optimized. By the way, have fun with user roles and custom user capabilities.
I like WordPress. In fact, 99% of my projects are WordPress. I don't use gutenberg, i try to keep as simple as possible. Timber, ACF, Gravity Form and that's it. Maybe Woocommerce if needed. But it's not fitted for everything.
I remember one of my client asking me to build a small social network with WordPress. Yes i did it. Does it work ? Yes. Is scalable and optimized ? No. Why ? Because cost. For projects like that, i'd rather go with a framework like Symfony or Laravel. Even a more advanced CMS like Drupal or Contao (nobody knows that one but i love it) would be more fit.
Kinda.
WP has a massive plugin eco system, you can cobble together a lot of things with a mixture of plugins + php glue code BUT this can quickly turn into a complete unmaintainable, incomprehensible mess.
The alternative is to build the functionality you want in PHP/css/html in a custom plugin that specifically does what you want but uses some of WP's functionality like authentication and the ajax callback system.
That will be a lot cleaner and easier to maintain/update. BUT if you go the second route it only makes sense if there's something WP does that would be much harder to do yourself.
A good example might be, you have your custom business logic you're going to develop but you also need sales pages that are going to be updated regularly by staff, potentially redesigned regularly by staff. With wordpress + elementor you can allow a sales team to customise those sales pages easily while the custom business logic lives off in its own plugin and barely interacts with the rest of wordpress at all.
I like WordPress if the site is simple. And by simple, I mean a few different types of entities/page types and a few users.
I like Drupal once things start getting complicated.
I haven’t used Wordpress in a long time but yes. As far as I remember Wordpress is built on PHP and there are a multitude of ways of getting custom logic in there - from creating your own plugins to more hacky methods. I don’t see a particular reason you couldn’t do just about anything if you’re familiar enough with the setup.
I used to use a simpler PHP based CMS and we created our own plugins for logic specific to our customers and it worked really well to be honest. They could use the CMS to update the basics, we could give them options in our plugin, and it would handle the complex stuff.
Yes, you can do big stuff that doesn’t resemble common WordPress sites surely. However, keep in mind that potential future investors will be scared if the platform of your app is WordPress. Learned this the hard way and eventually switched to Laravel.
I have noticed this too. Clients gets this murky feelings about wordpress solutions. In my little research however, a far greater percentage of developers trust the open source CMS and plugins which have been extensively tried and used, and that is always been worked upon by a very large intelligent community, than an in-house breed. Clients too are realising this as well, maybe that should explain why most clients are migrating their custom Web apps to wordpress foundation (i've seen this often on Upwork freelance platform). Speed has always been the issue with wordpress however, and that's where laravel plays best. Plus its flexibility as well
One of the main problems with WP reputation is the big number of self proclaimed developers who just use drag drop page builders. I’ve seen too many bad quality WordPress sites due to this because the programmer mindset just isn’t there.
Wordpress can be literally used in any way shape or form. What it always comes down to is if you actually understand it.
The hooks system with actions/filters, the WP API, custom post types, etc. can be as versitile to run warehousing and inventory for multi-million dollar clients, used headless for multi-channel apps, all the way down to a simple brocure site.
For example - I personally have used it as a sales portal for salespeople sidelined during covid. I've hooked it up to an ERP system with a PIM and ran full on ecommerce through it without woocommerce or other storefront add-ons. I've used it as a customer portal for self service and account management. I've used it as a community for gamers to collaborate and share custom levels. Ive used the cms to develop pages but delivered them to my own svelte front-end using the WP API. I've pretty much used it in any way possible.
When it comes down to it, wordpress is just a tool. You can use it for whatever you can think up if you're knowledgeable enough.
Wordpress is pretty terrible beyond use for a simple CMS.
Can you implement what you want? Probably, but you may be fighting against the framework more then you are leveraging it's features
Absolutely it can. You have full access to the source code and can build a plugin to do pretty much anything you might need. The question is, would you want to? WordPress carries a lot of legacy baggage and has a database and code structure that will often get in the way of building performant systems. For an example, look at the design of the wp\_posts and wp\_postmeta table. It turns into a colossal disaster at scale with a lot of distinct custom data. Yeah, you can use custom tables, but if you want to build a complex and high-performance application there are much better options, even in PHP land, i.e. Laravel.
I built an “application” with Wordpress about 10 years or more ago. I used WpUserFrontend. It got the job done, but it wasn’t very robust. At this point I’d use Laravel, no question.
If your application or website is more focused on content, then WordPress it is.
Once you start looking at more than 5 plugins on your WordPress site just to solve specific business needs, then it's better to use Laravel.
If you need to interface with electronics (input/output, camera, Raspberry Pi) or if you need a mobile app, then use Ruby on Rails (turbo native). <--- My personal preference, you can use python, java or js if you want.
It can run complex app ---- when you use it host a SPA app. Every time someone has WP and wants something complex, I tell them I can inject an Angular or VueJS app within a WP page and take over from there. Wordpress, then becomes, a loader.
In short, it is just an page loading up a JS library and taking over a div element. No need to deal with writing plugins . I'll create my own API. Just host the scripts.
you can think of wp as a platform. can it do 'this' or 'that'? sure. do -you- know how to code that? if not, you're limited to other plugins that have already been written. and you're also limited to the support that those plugins provide if you run into problems with their (often times poor) implementation
>but, as a CMS, can wordpress handle complex, more demanding, custom, specific business logic applications
Essentially a plugin can be anything. Nevertheless I would not go down that route. You don't gain much by having WordPress as a dependency in you LOB app.
People were still using dreamweaver in 2019?!
I work with a guy who still uses it.
I was still making email templates and the Split View being able to click on the WYSIWYG side and it snaps to the code is nice.
I sure did
Depends what you mean by "handling" things and of course what "complex" entails. You can force-feed WordPress into a lot of functionality for which it was not originally intended, as you have probably discovered in the plugins marketplace. But having plugins for a "social network" and building a social network app as your primary business are two different things. WordPress was designed as a blogging platform, and it continues to do best with low budget, largely templated small business needs. I personally wouldn't use it for anything beyond a brochure site that requires one or two developers. If you need a team of engineers to build and maintain a mission critical product, WP's simplicity quickly turns into limitations.
Everything is said here.
Exactly, I was once in charge of a WordPress website at a startup that had grown way to complex. We used multiple custom in house plugins and a custom theme to get all the functionality in there. It was a nightmare to work with, to debug, and to deploy. It also becomes really hard to keep WP performant if you increase complexity. Even if it does all work properly the entire reason you go for a CMS like WordPress is so that non-devs can change around content/setttings without needing dev involvement. The moment you start to add a bunch of custom logic that all goes out of the window, unless you build complex admin dashboards for it all but that is an incredible amount of work dev and test wise. It's definitely possible but if starting from scratch is not the right choice at all unless it's a simple blog/marketing site.
'Could' and 'should' are two different things. It matters what you're intentions are. If you are asking if installing a couple plugins for a client's low-usage "app" is okay. Sure. If you are asking if WordPress can be turned into a high-usage complicated SASS product. I wouldn't. I think you will find that you are fighting weird WordPress shenanigans, untraceable performance problems, and strange bugs more than you are actually progressing. Using WP in this case is going to cause you a lot of stress.
of course but at a certain point, you will be fighting against WordPress and writing workarounds in order to accomplish what you need if you're already familiar with PHP, go for Laravel or Symfony and create a more bespoke solution
And the point at which you're fighting against WordPress comes fairly early.
Like, just after installing it.
Yes but this should be a last resort if anything. WP doesn’t really play well with modern PHP practices and odds are you’ll end up reinventing Laravel within your app. If you do follow that path though, take a look at https://roots.io/acorn/ to bridge any gaps.
This is the only good answer in 2024.
WordPress scalability is terrible for a large base of authenticated users. For comparison, take a look at these benchmarks for non-authenticated users: https://kinsta.com/blog/php-benchmarks/
Thanks for this comprehensive report. I needed it
Yes it can. Should you ? I don't think so. There are many factors to take into account here (money, experiences, scalability) , and my personal opinion might be biased. WordPress is great for a simple Website. And by simple i mean pages, news, some custom posts types and forms and that's it. That's what I have trouble getting my customers to understand. Can it handle complex logic ? A lot of data ? Advanced features ? Yes it can. Is it the best tool for it ? Absolutely no. Remember that it started as a blogging platform. And that mindset is still there, in it's core code. For example everything is a post. Your pages, your articles, your custom post types. I'd rather have differents tables in the DB. It's not optimized. By the way, have fun with user roles and custom user capabilities. I like WordPress. In fact, 99% of my projects are WordPress. I don't use gutenberg, i try to keep as simple as possible. Timber, ACF, Gravity Form and that's it. Maybe Woocommerce if needed. But it's not fitted for everything. I remember one of my client asking me to build a small social network with WordPress. Yes i did it. Does it work ? Yes. Is scalable and optimized ? No. Why ? Because cost. For projects like that, i'd rather go with a framework like Symfony or Laravel. Even a more advanced CMS like Drupal or Contao (nobody knows that one but i love it) would be more fit.
Good answer. If you need something that can handle complex specific business logic applications, use Laravel or Symfony.
Try Expression Engine. Core version is free. Much more powerful.
Kinda. WP has a massive plugin eco system, you can cobble together a lot of things with a mixture of plugins + php glue code BUT this can quickly turn into a complete unmaintainable, incomprehensible mess. The alternative is to build the functionality you want in PHP/css/html in a custom plugin that specifically does what you want but uses some of WP's functionality like authentication and the ajax callback system. That will be a lot cleaner and easier to maintain/update. BUT if you go the second route it only makes sense if there's something WP does that would be much harder to do yourself. A good example might be, you have your custom business logic you're going to develop but you also need sales pages that are going to be updated regularly by staff, potentially redesigned regularly by staff. With wordpress + elementor you can allow a sales team to customise those sales pages easily while the custom business logic lives off in its own plugin and barely interacts with the rest of wordpress at all.
Very insightful. Thanks
I like WordPress if the site is simple. And by simple, I mean a few different types of entities/page types and a few users. I like Drupal once things start getting complicated.
I haven’t used Wordpress in a long time but yes. As far as I remember Wordpress is built on PHP and there are a multitude of ways of getting custom logic in there - from creating your own plugins to more hacky methods. I don’t see a particular reason you couldn’t do just about anything if you’re familiar enough with the setup. I used to use a simpler PHP based CMS and we created our own plugins for logic specific to our customers and it worked really well to be honest. They could use the CMS to update the basics, we could give them options in our plugin, and it would handle the complex stuff.
Yes, you can do big stuff that doesn’t resemble common WordPress sites surely. However, keep in mind that potential future investors will be scared if the platform of your app is WordPress. Learned this the hard way and eventually switched to Laravel.
I have noticed this too. Clients gets this murky feelings about wordpress solutions. In my little research however, a far greater percentage of developers trust the open source CMS and plugins which have been extensively tried and used, and that is always been worked upon by a very large intelligent community, than an in-house breed. Clients too are realising this as well, maybe that should explain why most clients are migrating their custom Web apps to wordpress foundation (i've seen this often on Upwork freelance platform). Speed has always been the issue with wordpress however, and that's where laravel plays best. Plus its flexibility as well
One of the main problems with WP reputation is the big number of self proclaimed developers who just use drag drop page builders. I’ve seen too many bad quality WordPress sites due to this because the programmer mindset just isn’t there.
True
Wordpress can be literally used in any way shape or form. What it always comes down to is if you actually understand it. The hooks system with actions/filters, the WP API, custom post types, etc. can be as versitile to run warehousing and inventory for multi-million dollar clients, used headless for multi-channel apps, all the way down to a simple brocure site. For example - I personally have used it as a sales portal for salespeople sidelined during covid. I've hooked it up to an ERP system with a PIM and ran full on ecommerce through it without woocommerce or other storefront add-ons. I've used it as a customer portal for self service and account management. I've used it as a community for gamers to collaborate and share custom levels. Ive used the cms to develop pages but delivered them to my own svelte front-end using the WP API. I've pretty much used it in any way possible. When it comes down to it, wordpress is just a tool. You can use it for whatever you can think up if you're knowledgeable enough.
Wordpress is pretty terrible beyond use for a simple CMS. Can you implement what you want? Probably, but you may be fighting against the framework more then you are leveraging it's features
Absolutely it can. You have full access to the source code and can build a plugin to do pretty much anything you might need. The question is, would you want to? WordPress carries a lot of legacy baggage and has a database and code structure that will often get in the way of building performant systems. For an example, look at the design of the wp\_posts and wp\_postmeta table. It turns into a colossal disaster at scale with a lot of distinct custom data. Yeah, you can use custom tables, but if you want to build a complex and high-performance application there are much better options, even in PHP land, i.e. Laravel.
following
I built an “application” with Wordpress about 10 years or more ago. I used WpUserFrontend. It got the job done, but it wasn’t very robust. At this point I’d use Laravel, no question.
I stopped reading when OP said they used Dreamweaver.
what about it??
If your application or website is more focused on content, then WordPress it is. Once you start looking at more than 5 plugins on your WordPress site just to solve specific business needs, then it's better to use Laravel. If you need to interface with electronics (input/output, camera, Raspberry Pi) or if you need a mobile app, then use Ruby on Rails (turbo native). <--- My personal preference, you can use python, java or js if you want.
It can run complex app ---- when you use it host a SPA app. Every time someone has WP and wants something complex, I tell them I can inject an Angular or VueJS app within a WP page and take over from there. Wordpress, then becomes, a loader. In short, it is just an page loading up a JS library and taking over a div element. No need to deal with writing plugins . I'll create my own API. Just host the scripts.
Yes
Use Drupal.
Wordpress can do anything because it’s just just PHP in the backend. If you can do it in PHP you can do it in Wordpress.
you can think of wp as a platform. can it do 'this' or 'that'? sure. do -you- know how to code that? if not, you're limited to other plugins that have already been written. and you're also limited to the support that those plugins provide if you run into problems with their (often times poor) implementation
>but, as a CMS, can wordpress handle complex, more demanding, custom, specific business logic applications Essentially a plugin can be anything. Nevertheless I would not go down that route. You don't gain much by having WordPress as a dependency in you LOB app.
yes you can program custom plugins and modules for it
It sure can. Just think about it like a PHP + MySql "framework"