WordPress sets the standard of how a website should function on the web. You always know at the core, the code is solid. You can sleep well knowing your SEO and site structure is in good hands compared to other platforms, even hand-coded HTML. We tested a number of HTML-only sites throughout 2012 and they actually performed worse than WordPress. The little things on HTML sites seemed to get ignored in mass which added up to many small problems. Those problems are all fixed by a default WordPress installation. There’s a plugin built for just about everything you could ever need. It’s a no-brainer to just use WordPress and move on.
WordPress SEO Risk?
In terms of SEO, many people have used and abused sites built on the WordPress platform. This leads to many SEOs questioning the association of using the platform. We have not seen it significantly hurt or improve rankings by switching over to different platforms. However we are starting to feel great concern for code diversity, because changing themes does seem to have a measurable impact on ranking.
Fortunately for code diversity, there are a couple plugins that helps to mask and diversify the code of a WordPress site. So far there hasn’t been a direct impact on ranking, but with the method Penguin and Panda handle links and content, it wouldn’t be a surprise if a Zebra was born and targeted the code itself. If you want “insurance” on your code, check out Hide My WP. It’s the best for code diversity, but we don’t use it often as it isn’t needed yet. WordPress also likes to inject a lot of stuff in the header, which is cleaned up with Yoast SEO (covered in the default settings section). WordPress also likes to make a mess of classes which sometime have a purpose, but can be cleaned up with a plugin like this. By no means is it a “best practice” plugin like W3TC, which is the best caching plugin.
Programmers
It’s important to note that just because a programmer knows PHP that they do not know WordPress standards. Honestly the standards are pretty simple, but programmers like shortcuts. They like to say “what is the desired function” and when you complain about the difficulty of requiring user logins or an extra twist, they say “that costs extra” but “it does what you needed it to do.”
If you need a custom app coded, for example the keyword tool on SEO Revolution, it can usually function as a standalone app. This is how most programmers want to code. Later, they will want to require some elaborate new login creation for a toolset (another project that costs more money) or a password protected folder (because that’s user-friendly), etc. It’s all a bunch of shortcuts that can be fixed by a few lines of code on top of what they already wrote. Tell them to learn WordPress core, write a shortcode hook to execute the app within WordPress, problem solved.
It’s pretty easy to discover when a programmer doesn’t understand actually WordPress. Programmers think they know WordPress but rarely is that the case. Start asking them questions on how they think it should function based on what you already have built. Ask them if they are building object oriented. Ask them if they are building the application to be extensible. Ask if the application takes URL querystrings from external domains, and if so, how would that be protected? These are the types of questions you need to ask your programmer.
Sometimes it’s easier than that. Start asking them questions that involve the lingo of WordPress to see if they actually know it. For example, “What’s it called when it starts pulling the default posts out of the feed? Like if I want to just have a blog feed displayed?” The answer is “the loop”. If they don’t know this basic element, they probably don’t need to touch WordPress.
Most importantly, see if something already exists on the web outside of the repository that can be hacked or modded in a way to fit your needs. Usually this is the case and can save you a lot of time developing if you contact them directly. We’ve been able to do this with standalone apps as well. We got a price of $30 for the modifications. It’s safe to say this same app would have costed at least $1000 to build from scratch and take weeks to complete instead of 2 days.
Minimalist
If your site can run on 4 plugins, don’t install 5 just because you can.
Recommended Plugins
These are the plugins we have tested, verified, and use on our sites. No links given as it is best to direct to the source, and links can change.
iThemes Security – Our testing showed that this provided the best security for your WP site without killing resources, speed, etc.
Yoast SEO – The only SEO plugin you need.
Hide My WP – This masks the footprint that you are using WordPress so fewer hackers attempt at entry into your site.
Infinite WP – Have a lot of WordPress sites? Of course you do. Manage them with this plugin.
Redirection – Manage all your 301 redirects with ease.
P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) – See which plugins are slowing down your site so you can deactivate them.
W3 Total Cache – Monitor this as depending on your structure and the depth of your site, this can cause speed issues.
WP Smush – Great way to reduce the file size of images, improving the speed of your site nearly instantly.
Defaults
1. Regarding post titles vs. URL slugs/permalinks – your title can have up to 12 words for SEO but only 512 pixels will show. Penalties are known to happen when the slug has .tld/more-than-five-words-here/
2. Old sites that have been using “organize my uploads” should uncheck it to make the problem stop getting worse. An easy “fix” would be to disable directory indexing.