Why use WP? We don’t serve dynamic content (i.e. store, curated content, etc.). So why build out a site using PHP and mySQL if you’re not serving dynamic content? At the time (~2016) we needed to decide what to use to build out the next generation of the NG website. We looked at several options including static HTML templates, static site builders and WP. The old site was built and managed using Adobe Dreamweaver. But the look and feel and underlying code was showing some age. With WP taking the web by storm, accounting for ~30% of all “dynamic” websites on The Internet we decided to give it a try. After selecting a theme known for performance optimizations and UI customizations we made it our own and then copy and pasted the data from one site to the other. Not very sexy or efficient, but sometimes copy and paste saves the day when you need to move data around. A shinny new WP based website. It was like buying a new car.
The Update (5 to 6):
I should start by stating that the site performed well and needed only minor updates for several years. That was until WP decided to change everything with the introduction of WP 6 and the Guitenburg editor. You couldn’t just update to WP 6 without also updating your theme, or in our case our modified child theme, plugins and everything in between. So we waited for things to stabilize. Fast forward to 2023. The Guitenburg editor is optional and almost everything has been updated to be compatible with WP 6. We were able to remove a few plugins, always a good thing, and did have to replace a few others since they had not been updated, All in all it took about 24 man hours to update the site from WP 5x to WP 6x. At ~$120 an hour that would cost your average business owner ~$3k to update the website! Can you imagine if all software updates were so expensive? It’s just one of the hidden costs of using WP as the engine behind your website, especially if all of your content is static.