Why I don't recommend Wordpress for your author website
Before I start this post, allow me a disclaimer. I think Wordpress is brilliant. I really do. There’s a reason that more than 30% of ALL websites are built using this platform. I used Wordpress for my own websites for years, and was a huge advocate of it.
It has lots of plus points: it’s incredibly flexible, meaning you can adapt it as your needs change; it’s incredibly customisable – with literally thousands of plugins out there meaning you can add pretty much any functionality you need to your website easily (and often for free); it’s great for blogging (and in fact in the beginning it was used mostly as a blogging platform); holds its own with SEO (search engine optimisation;) and, for simple websites, can also be incredibly affordable.
However, I still don’t think it’s the best platform for author websites. Even though many authors use it.
Every week I’m contacted by authors who’ve set up their websites on Wordpress (often by themselves) and are thoroughly disillusioned with it/struggling/furious/fed up.
It’s not hard to persuade them to make the leap to Squarespace. And in fact, my blog post – why Squarespace is the perfect web platform for authors – is the most popular one on my website by far.
I’m not going to regurgitate what I said there about why I love Squarespace.
I thought instead I’d come at it from the other angle, and discuss why Wordpress is probably not the best choice for your author website.
I should add here, I’m not on commission, I don’t get paid by Squarespace – I don’t even get an affiliate fee when I launch a client website on Squarespace (which sucks btw Squarespace – sort it out! 😆).
Right, enough preamble, let’s get to it:
1 Wordpress isn’t actually that simple
I often hear people say that setting up a Wordpress website is easy.
I disagree.
If you are not comfortable with tech (and many authors I speak to aren’t – and why should they be?) I would say that setting up a (self-hosted) Wordpress website isn’t that easy at all.
There are two types of Wordpress websites – self-hosted Wordpress (wordpress.org), and wordpress.com which is run directly by Wordpress itself and hosted by them.
You definitely don’t want to use wordpress.com for your author website as it offers very limited storage for content on your site; isn’t very flexible, means your URL has to have ‘wordpress.com’ in it; and also will host super-ugly random Google ads on your site - not a great look for a professional author! You can turn all these limitations off, but only by upgrading to a paid plan - which somewhat negates the point.
Also, wordpress.com websites are quite limited in their functionality, whereas wordpress.org websites have pretty much limitless potential.
I’m going to talk about self-hosted sites here, as those are the ones most authors have.
So to set up your self-hosted Wordpress website, first of all you have to buy your domain and hosting for that domain. This is relatively simple (covered in my blog post here), but if you’ve never done it before, can be a bit overwhelming.
Then, you need to install Wordpress on your host’s servers. Again, your domain host can help you with this (but it’s still a bit… techy).
Then, you need to install a template for your website (called a ‘theme’) in Wordpress. There are lots of ‘free’ Wordpress themes, but you can also pay for a premium one for a more ‘designed’ look. There are thousands of Wordpress themes out there, and it can take a long time to find one that you like.
The majority of the ‘good’ themes are not free. So, you have to pay for one you like, then download and install it into Wordpress (rather than just picking one from the Wordpress interface).
Then you need to build your pages. Wordpress’s basic functionality is absolutely fine, and their back-end CMS (content management system – the place where you edit the content on your website) is much more user-friendly than it used to be.
But if you want to do anything more than publish words and pictures on your site, you will need to add ‘plugins’…
2 Wordpress Plugins are a security nightmare
So, what’s a plugin?
A plugin is basically an extra bit of code that you add to your website to add additional functionality.
It can be something ‘visitor-facing’ like displaying your Instagram feed in your footer, or something technical like improving your SEO (search engine optimisation – your website’s visibility in search engines like Google). Or it might be integrating your website with an email hosting platform such as Mailchimp, so that when readers sign up on your website, they are automatically added to your Mailchimp mailing list.
You’ll need a lot of plugins even for a basic website.
One of the most common plugins is Contact Form 7, which allows you to add a (yep you’ve guessed it) contact form to your site.
And one of the most essential plugins you’ll need to add is a backup plugin… more on that later.
There are thousands of plugins, offering thousands of different ‘extras’ that you can easily install on your website. Which is great – and is the reason that Wordpress is so flexible. But it’s also a security nightmare.
Wordpress is an ‘open source’ platform, meaning that anyone and everyone can contribute to the software behind it (a bit like Wikipedia).
Plugins are developed by (random) people across the world, and are not affiliated with or checked by Wordpress. When you add a plugin to your website, you have no idea who built that functionality, or what other code might be hidden within it.
They are also incredibly vulnerable to hacking – as they are effectively ‘ways in’ to your website that people can exploit.
For security reasons, you’ll find all your plugins will need regular updating. Which means logging into your website at least weekly, and performing the required updates.
I was super savvy about this but I STILL had a former Wordpress blog hacked twice, and lost lots of content. It’s devastating (and a right expensive pain to fix).
If your site is hacked, this is where the backup plugin you installed when you set it up comes in handy (you did remember to install one right?!).
Because hopefully you’ll have a backup saved so that once you’ve un-hacked your website and got rid of all the malicious code someone’s dumped on it (something you’ll have to pay a professional web developer to do, by the way), you can reupload all your content and rebuild your site without spending – oh – more than four or five hours on it…
Trust me, unless you are a great lover of all things tech, you do not want to have to deal with this stuff.
None of this is an issue with Squarespace, as Squarespace does not allow you to add any unapproved software to your site. They also host your site for you, back it up automatically, and guarantee all your content is 100% secure.
It’s pretty much impossible for your Squarespace website to be hacked.
Plus all the great stuff you need plugins for on Wordpress is already included in Squarespace’s own software.
Contact form? It’s a simple two clicks to add one to your page.
SEO? Squarespace builds this into its back-end from the start.
Mailchimp integration? Already there, just a couple of clicks away…
You get the picture!
3 Wordpress is not necessarily that cheap
Last but not least, I hear a lot of people saying that Wordpress is the cheapest way to build a website.
Squarespace’s pricing plans start at £10 per month, and you also need to pay £19 per year for your domain name. Which means you can have a 100% secure website that looks good, is mobile responsive, has all the bells and whistles you need, for less than £150 per year.
You can, feasibly, set up and run a Wordpress website for less than £100 per year. The basic Wordpress software itself is free.
However, you’ll still have to pay for hosting and your domain; and if you want it to actually look good, you’re going to need to add a custom theme (and the sky is the limit when it comes to how much these cost); and if you want it to be really secure and unhackable, you’re going to have to pay a company such as Sucuri to safeguard it for you…
Not to mention the cost of your time. Which is difficult to measure, but I guarantee it will take the average author (with no tech experience) far longer to set up their website on Wordpress than it would to set it up on Squarespace.
So in summary, if you are thinking of setting up your author website yourself (which I really recommend by the way – I’m not all about sales here, I think it’s incredibly empowering to master this stuff yourself!), then I highly recommend you steer away from Wordpress, and instead take a look at my beloved Squarespace, or Wix, which offers a very similar (secure) experience.
As ever, any, questions, pop me a comment below or tweet me @charduck.
As you can probably tell… I love talking about this stuff! #nerd