So far, WordPress is one of the biggest web-hosting platforms on the World Wide Web. Many business owners and entrepreneurs believe that it is one of the most reliable platforms for a website to be created on. But how true is this? How secure is WordPress as compared to other CMS?
The Pros and Cons of WordPress
WordPress has been in the market for almost two decades now with such big brands as Sony Music and Bloomberg among others using it to host their websites and blogs. This open-source CMS is completely free, but you will have to make some purchases nonetheless at one point or another.
It is also worth mentioning that WordPress’s popularity is directly connected to its reputation. You will get access to thousands of free and paid themes, plugins, and other tools you can use to enhance your website. In other words, it is useful in many ways and wants its users to enjoy the platform to its full extent.
Another aspect of WordPress that contributes to its reputation is the dedicated team that fixes any kind of bugs that might become an issue in the long run. These specialists work on everything from themes to plugins to the minor problems on the platform itself, so you won’t need to worry about such details.
It is important to remember that they work both on technical and on software development matters. While they will be solving the issues from the past, they will also be looking into the future to improve certain aspects that can be even better. This, of course, includes security in all senses of the word.
Consequently, if you keep the platform up-to-date and always update it to the latest version, you will be sure that it is as secure as possible. If you want to find out more about how vulnerable or secure the platform is, there are always many forums and portals where you can discuss these things (which is what sets WordPress apart).
On the other hand, this popularity leads to most hackers largely targeting websites hosted on WordPress and looking for new vulnerabilities that they could use to their advantage. Other platforms don’t seem to be as interesting to them as WordPress is. And if you don’t update the platform regularly, your site might be susceptible to hacker attacks.
Moreover, third-party developers love creating themes and plugins for WordPress and many websites owners use these very themes and plugins. The problem is that it is very risky to use them when you are not sure if the developers are reliable. The WordPress team tries to keep an eye on such things, but you can never say for sure if they have identified all the risks.
The Pros and Cons of Drupal
Not everybody knows about it, but Drupal is actually three years older than WordPress and will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2020. It is also open-source and free and hosts a fair share of websites on the World Wide Web. Drupal Core is the standard version of the platform with features like menu management, RSS feed, system administration, etc.
The platform also has such features as page layout customization, account registration, and many more which makes it quite similar to WordPress. Like the latter, Drupal is considered one of the top-performing web hosting platforms currently available on the market for considerably low prices for various features.
You also need to consider using additional tools to help you manage your website (but this probably works for any platform you decide to use). For example, you might want to have more content on your site and use a writer from a service like Online Writers Rating. This will ensure that your content is of the highest quality and created on time.
Like WordPress, Drupal has a team who identifies and fixes various bugs and vulnerabilities. Users can get in touch with one of the representatives who will help them ensure the security of their website. The open-source community of contributors and developers also helps to improve the platform.
There is a lot of information and extensive documentation available online on how to manage your website hosted on Drupal. This also includes the security aspect with such things as safety, vulnerabilities, bugs, issues, errors, and so on. The support team is also active on Twitter which means you will be able to contact them at any time.
The biggest downside is that Drupal’s core code is inherently less secure than that of WordPress. Many developers have agreed that this is the reason why Drupal has faced more vulnerabilities than WordPress had since its creation.
The Pros and Cons of Joomla
The youngest of the three platforms, Joomla is a free open-source CMS launched in 2005. The team that developed it used object-oriented programming and software development patterns to supply the platform with such features as RSS feeds, search, blogs, news flashes, caching, and others.
Like with WordPress and Drupal, there is a lot of information and documentation online about how you should manage your website on Joomla (including the security aspect, of course). Because it is an open-source platform, it is largely managed by its active community of developers and contributors.
As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of documentation available on how to manage a Joomla-based website. This information includes such topics as admin account protection, proper file permissions usage, being up-to-date, security extensions, and more. Though there is a special team to help you, it is not as useful as the community.
As a result, the system doesn’t have a feature for automatic updates. Because the team is much smaller than the one from WordPress and Drupal, it won’t be able to manage everything. In other words, you will have to be out for yourself and rely mostly on your own actions to do everything right.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, WordPress has its negative and positive sides, just like any other platform. But that doesn’t mean that it is completely insecure and unreliable. If you want to try something else, go ahead and compare the platforms before settling down for the one you find most fit for your situation.
