New research from 34SP.com has found that more than half of UK small businesses are using WordPress as a content management system (CMS) thereby “finally blowing away its image as just a blogging platformâ€, according to a deck prepared by the domain provider.
The vast majority of companies who said they used the open source platform for their CMS were organisations of fewer than 50 employees. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most popular reason for companies using WordPress was its ease of use, and not needing to know HTML skills. This was followed by the ability to be managed from any computer (16%) and a plethora of plugins and extended functionality (16%).
Put simply, for small businesses who don’t need a site with bells and whistles, WordPress has long been the answer, avoiding both the hassle of HTML and calling up their webmaster every time something crashed.
There were other benefits cited by the respondents, including a large – and free – support network, better SEO, and more intricate scalability. The report cites CNN and Forbes, two large news sites which rely on WordPress development tools.
In an age where developers, cloud – digital in general – is facing an ever-increasing skills gap, it’s interesting to note how WordPress is continuing to cannibalise small town developer jobs. But will this continue to be the case?
Despite this report singing its praises, WordPress hasn’t had the best week of it. Last week it was reported that a vulnerability in its MailPoet plugin led to more than 50,000 websites becoming vulnerable.
“This is not something we’re excited to report,†wrote Daniel Cid for Sucuri Security in a blog post, but it turns out the company’s initial misgivings about the severity of the issue were proved right. The backdoor creates a user name of 1001001 and proceeds to wreak havoc in the back end, overwriting good files and spreading malware.
With this, maybe it might give the small business owner more peace of mind by putting together a bespoke solution, as opposed to losing precious data.
So what solutions are there for devs if there isn’t enough work coming in already? The report examined what personal traits WordPress developers hold. According to the researchers, the average WordPress dev is likely to be liberal-minded (98%), educated to degree level (68%), likes a glass of wine (31%) and reads The Guardian (29%).
“Despite its origins as a blogging tool, WordPress has now evolved into a trusted CMS for businesses,†said Daniel Foster, technical director at 34SP.com. “The very fact it was designed as a blogging tool means that it’s simple to upload content and add pages, plus it can be managed from any computer.
“We have actually seen an increase in the number of businesses wanting to host their WordPress site with us, and our research further proves that it is continuing to gain popularity with business users,†he added.
What’s your view on this? Do you see WordPress as a threat or not? You can take a look at the full slideshow here.
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Article source: http://www.developer-tech.com/news/2014/jul/28/wordpress-being-used-more-and-more-smes-are-devs-missing-out/