Real websites that YOU own, why it’s great to own sites with Wordpress – 2019 Update
The truth is, when you want a website, you want a work of art. Something that UNIQUELY encapsulates your business, what you’re about. These technologies, Wix, Squarespace ETC. They are color by numbers that try to represent your website, and that doesn’t sit very well with me. Custom website design requires back and forth between the customer and the designer, when you go with Wix, Squarespace, THERE IS NO DESIGNER! You buy it and they say “Ok, well time to make your website!” but really, it’s a facade as you’re not making a website, you’re just changing a few options on a website they already make for you.
I wrote an article about this recently, but I feel it’s quite important to hammer home for the normal business owner who wants to run a successful website. Let me just say this bluntly as possible, Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, and any other all “buy and build” website resources, ETC will make you as successful a blogger as a shovel will make you a construction worker. You RENT webspace from these companies. They make no sense; they’re based on PROPRIETARY software which means you don’t really know what’s going on behind the scenes. They’re limiting your access to free range, open source technology. While, they build their own proprietary software. It’s limited money money software on top of this very same open source technology they deny their users.
These are BAD webhosts, and they do it under the guise of simplicity, which is fairly true, but once they have spent so much money on advertising, it doesn’t really matter what features they do or do not add, because they already have market share and people trust them.
The facade of ownership in proprietary web software, how you own your site with Wordpress
Juxtaposed to this, every single line of code of Wordpress is available online for study, research, ETC. This leads to a community of extremely forward thinking, giving people. The wheel is never reinvented because there’s no need to, the community always wants to advance. If it’s about profit, it usually comes in the form of consultation. Things that break on purpose sometimes, I’ve heard, or premium plugins – which can be admittedly unscrupulous overall. So please do your diligence when buying plugins, I plan on doing a piece on the “false promises” of plugins very soon.
Owning your data with Wordpress, Why Wordpress is Better
When you have a Wordpress.org install on a webserver, it is YOUR data. Bottom line, no one owns it but you. When you have Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, these people own your website. You’re renting out templates with your name for the right to have a website with them. You have nowhere near full control of the website, and you never will until you change to an open source framework, whether that be WordPress or just flat plain HTML/CSS/PHP. None of the aforementioned services allow you to utilize PHP, so anything functionality wise is too “adult” for you to handle, it’s very condescending on their end.
New changes in Wordpress in 2019
Wordpress has mostly stayed it’s course in terms of design style. That is, Besides the ill advised Gutenberg project that tried to bake a bad visual designer into Wordpress. This means that Wordpress sites that should be outdated, lots of times aren’t. Half decade old sites can sometimes stand up very well besides possibly needing a mobile upgrade. Wordpress doesn’t force change, that’s why it’s the best, ontop of it being free in all ways.