When you should (and shouldn't use Wordpress).

Wordpress is an open sourced blogging platform used by a lot of sites worldwide.  However there are times when Wordpress is great, and when it is not so great.

First Up ...

If your site is basically a blog (or is very news oriented), Wordpress is a fantastic option to consider using.  If your site doesn't fall in this category, you may want to consider other options.

Why you should consider options:

1. Wordpress primarily deals with two types of content "posts" and "pages".  (which is awesome if you are running a blog).   However there are other types of content out there (consider a product, which has multiple images, price points, description and a summary).  Sure you get Wordpress to display this, but when a "non developer" user (e.g you) starts trying to edit this content, things can fall apart.
2.  Security:
   1. Wordpress needs constant patching due to its popularity and the fact that its open source (e.g anyone can download, view and contribute to the source code).   Wordpress installs (that are not kept up to date) are a very easy target for hackers.  This is a such a common occurrence: Wordpress has even has a dedicated page for if you are hacked.
   2. Most Wordpress installs have a myriad of third party plugins (to handle banners, forms, enewsletter signups).  If you have a security breach, you need to identify if it's the "core" of Wordpress or one of the many plugins that are installed.   If your web developer isn't up to the task (see below), you can get in deep trouble.
3. Support
   1. There a lot of web developers out there that "know" Wordpress, but many do not have the skills or the ability to "get under the hood" to fix things when things go wrong. 
      For every great Wordpress developer (and they do exist) there are a many others who only know how to download Wordpress, install a pre-build template and change the layout a bit.
      We (TMD) have even had cases where other web development agencies have contacted us to fix their clients Wordpress backends, because they cannot.
   2. Plugins are sometimes used as a "quick fix" (e.g you need some banners fading in / out: there a lot of plugins that will handle this).  Which is great if it does exactly what you want it do "out of the box".  But tweaking / changing this, can be time consuming (and if your web developer isn't up it, may not even be possible).  Also if you change your 3rd party plugin code, its highly likely your changes will be overridden next time an update to this plugin is released.
   3. Updates are a good thing yes?  Well they are definitely necessary …  however with every update, things can break (e.g will your 3rd party plugins work in a newer version of Wordpress when its released?). 
   4. When / if they break:
      1. Can your web developer handle this?   Do they know how to fix it?
      2. Will your web developer simply blame the "3rd party plugin"?
      3. Will this 3rd party plugin developer: issue a fix in days, weeks or never? (maybe your version of this plugin is no longer supported?)
      4. Will there be additional costs to upgrade?

Conclusion

The key point here is Wordpress is great a blogging platform.  You can even use it for small sites, but anything outside of this proceed with caution. 

Further if a web developer offers  Wordpress as an option for your next project, really quiz them on their abilities on customisation of Wordpress (ask to see examples), and their ability to provide support and fixes when things need to be patched and changed.