I built a custom website. Am I missing out on WordPress plugins?

Hi there,

I have been working on a website for six months in Laravel and I wanted to build it myself because I would feel that I got limited by WordPress in customizing how I wanted the website to look like and function.

However I see these posts about WordPress plugins that are 'great'.

Am I missing out on a lot of these plugins since I am not running a WordPress site? Or is there a way to include these plugins on my site? Are there other options?

Thanks in advance
Julian

In short no. A WordPress plugin requires WordPress.
Your best option is to see if the plugin author has a "non WordPress version".

Yeah you're missing out imo

No, you are not missing anything.

Wordpress is one of the most insecure platforms to use for your web project.

If you can, stick with Laravel.

Thanks for the replies.

I am pretty happy with how the site is at the moment, I think it brings good value for the society but I have a problem getting people to the website.

The reason why I am asking I see people posting about SEO plugins like The SEO Framework, RankMatch or Yoast and I think it would be nice to have content guidance while you're writing and SEO optimization.

Crazyfire said:

No, you are not missing anything.

Wordpress is one of the most insecure platforms to use for your web project.

If you can, stick with Laravel.

Click to expand...

If WP were insecure at least 95% of websites would get hacked. It's used everywhere.

bartosimpsonio said:

If WP were insecure at least 95% of websites would get hacked. It's used everywhere.

Click to expand...

Wordpress websites constantly gets hacked. It costs a ton to build a secure Wordpress site and maintain it. WordPress core itself is good enough if you do constant updates. Try adding a bunch of plugins and leave it for a while without updates.

Is there any WP Plugins that is worth considering getting for a non-WP website or should I just go with Ahrefs/SEMRush/SE Ranking for SEO content and optimization?

Crazyfire said:

Wordpress websites constantly gets hacked. It costs a ton to build a secure Wordpress site and maintain it. WordPress core itself is good enough if you do constant updates. Try adding a bunch of plugins and leave it for a while without updates.

Click to expand...

WP is updating itself nowadays.

Anyway, yeah plugins can be a liability but IMO can't say WP is insecure. If you look at how many WP sites get hacked compared to how many millions exist it's probably negligible.

Wordpress is always updating and it always opens new doors for hacking it. If something is so vulnerable that it has even a discussion about being constantly hacked, one should think twice before using it. Constant updates and maintenance prevent that, tho. I just like my websites to be built and forget about constant maintenance for the software part.

Well, everyone has their own opinion.

Laravel is a not-so-old platform (2011) and not-so-popular as WordPress is (2003). So you will be in a similar situation of using a less popular operating system, like using an iPhone or Mac vs using Android or PC. You will notice that almost all are available for popular systems.

In other words, if you are looking for some specific functionality, chances are that it will be already available for WordPress in a plugin, paid or free, or as a code snippet for free a Google search away.

"Or is there a way to include these plugins on my site?" No. Laravel is a framework and WordPress is another framework. For using the WP plugins you will need the WP core installed in your server.

"I would feel that I got limited by WordPress". Well about that, I have felt that way in the beginning because they, of course, do a generic product that can fit the needs of most people but we always want something to be different than how it was designed. This, unfortunately, may happen with Laravell too or any other framework you use on PHP. The only ways are, hire a developer to customize the script or like I did, learn PHP, and do it yourself. Believe me, the second one is VERY rewarding. There will be no mysteries at all for you when looking at the code if you learn PHP and you will be able to add or eliminate ANYTHING as your need or your taste goes.

As for security, it mostly depends on having the current updates installed and having a good security plugin like Better-WP-Security (the free version is more than enough) installed and configured. I have never been hacked in the 12 years my website is been up. I have lots of visitors and have had countless hack attempts but the security plugin has stopped all of them.


Cheers!

Juliani said:

Is there any WP Plugins that is worth considering getting for a non-WP website or should I just go with Ahrefs/SEMRush/SE Ranking for SEO content and optimization?

Click to expand...

They are not compatible.

It's like asking which is the best video cassette film to play on my BluRay.

I think you're meaning Yoast or RankMath type plugins for SEO purposes.

Wordpress is a target because it's open-source and most of the plugins are too. So as you get a robust product, hackers get to disect it and its plugins. But being opensource, it gets patched often by a big community, aside of one-off plugins and themes that never get update.

Not using Wordpress and being sure you are 100% secure is a pipe-dream. Look at all the major platforms that were hacked recently, were they on wordpress?

Security depends on your whole stack, thinking your personal built project is going to fare better than a major mature project is wishing no one will specifically target you. CMS like wordpress, phpbb, drupal are easy to detect by scraping footprints and enumirating vulnerable plugins/URLS.

Once your site gets popular or a determined script kiddie gets interested in fucking you up. there are many things that can go wrong and detecting it, patching it, and getting it all back to normal is solely upon you. So just backing up everything isn't going to prevent you from getting your data leaked without you every knowing anything. Some breaches go undetected for years.

That aside, building a project with best security practices will give you a lot of performance benefits than a generic Wordpress website. If you can build a CMS, i think you can build the necessary plugins yourself as well, as Wordpress Plugin Database is open-source. Study the plugins you need and implement them accordingly.

The script kiddies actually help make your site secure over time.

I would say open source projects will be more secure in general than your own side project. You will end up re-inventing a lot of security if you built completely from scratch. We got constantly attacked in the beginning building our own site, but eventually the script kiddies ran out of things to exploit and helped us get more secure.

Thanks for the replies. I will continue my search to include snippets or likewise to my content writing

Regards
Jul

not sure if you’re missing out or no but Wordpress gives you peace of mind thanks to the plugins bec everything is taken care by them, also you could have made a custom site in wordpress too

Mr Positive said:

not sure if you’re missing out or no but Wordpress gives you peace of mind thanks to the plugins bec everything is taken care by them, also you could have made a custom site in wordpress too

Click to expand...

Is it possible to migrate my website to Wordpress and after that use WP plugins? What do you mean by custom site in WordPress?

What is the main purpose of your website?

Is it static website with just few pages? You can stay with your custom code.

Or are you trying to create blog or website where you constantly need to create new pages? Better move to wordpress.


You can easily migrate custom website to wordpress. As you are programmer it should be issue for you.

If its working as you want it to, then I dont see why you would need Wordpress plugins. Unless there is something that you cant implement, stay away from WP.

Wordpress plugins are of-course convenient but the most important functions for websites are almost always available in another format. Just search github. I tend to use react frameworks or custom PHP