WordPress Continues To Amaze

Having used WordPress as a website content management system (CMS) since 2013, I have seen many different updates in the interface over the years as well as a huge variety of themes made available.

With such wonderful support by WordPress Foundation as well as an army of both paid and volunteer developers, it is easy for a content producer like me to constantly be tempted to adopt the latest trends for my website look and feel.

This was the exact challenge I faced in February 2024 when asked to help my friend, who was relocating from the US to Malaysia – as he wanted to move the hosting of his website to a Malaysian outfit too.

It wasn’t difficult to recommend to him the Malaysian host that I had been using since 2017, after I too found lots of issues over the years in using hosting services from around the globe – located mainly in the Americas and Europe.

Even hosts in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan proved to be problematic – with complaints ranging from being overcharged with hidden fees to simply lagging connections.

What then made Malaysian hosts better? It turned out to be the dedicated undersea Internet pipes that these hosts are connected to, which bypass American and Northeast Asian hubs that all were previously forced to pass through. No longer was Malaysia so badly affected by frequent undersea cable snapping due to heavy shipping traffic.

The host I chose to be with and also recommended to my friend had one further advantage – it was very WordPress-friendly by providing fantastic support with certain packages that I subscribed to. Cost-wise, these hosting packages remain among the cheapest around.

Reliable hosting and affordable cost remain the main reasons why many people I know choose WordPress for content publication on websites and I’ll like to now share my experience with the new website that I set up for my relocating friend.

Repointing the domain registry from the US host to the Malaysian outfit was quick due to Internet cache management, though my friend eventually decided to change the domain name – because the US-hosted website came under serious DDOS attack.

The problem was due to the US-hosted website using a very old version of WordPress that had not been updated for over five years. External visitors saw badly-mangled content and the domain registry had to be repointed back to the US host to present proper viewing of the website.

This meant the existing content could not be easily ported over using available WordPress migration tools. All the old content, including images and videos, had to be downloaded and then reuploaded to the new host.

After the initial downloading was completed, including a full backup, the US hosted website came under the DDOS attack. While the website was restored over two days later using the backed-up data, my friend felt safer to get a new domain instead.

Registering the new domain was done quickly via the Malaysian host operator and getting the latest WordPress tools made it possible to get a basic website activated within minutes – though it took many subsequent hours to go through various theme options for the best content fit.

There were simply too many attractive WordPress themes, my friend and I went through easily 80 to 100 of them before finally shortlisting five potentials. Activating each one then taught us just how powerful WordPress had grown under the hood.

For the first theme choice, instead of replicating the original website look, my friend decided to take a very ambitious multimedia approach. Amazingly, the theme could accommodate this plan and host service was fast for page loading.

That was the point at which my friend realized just how seductive WordPress had become, offering the opportunity for lots of flashy visuals that the main purpose for the website was temporarily forgotten.

Removing the multimedia led to changes in themes as the website content presentation took precedence again. But even then, the insidious enticement of WordPress with its almost endless options made my friend waste so much time considering what more the website could have.

For example, e-commerce tools and payment gateway platforms were on offer at prices far lower than they were just two years earlier. Listing all the attractive widgets that swayed my friend to consider would take far too long – it just illustrates how powerful WordPress is today.

Piecing together the website visual at the new domain should have been a piece of cake rather than over the 10 days it actually took. So for newbies getting their first exposure to WordPress, be forewarned. This caution should apply to seasoned users as well when exploring WordPress.

Before uploading any content, lessons learned from the DDOS attack was applied and the Malaysian host was ever ready to extend assistance. The most important tool was a more robust automated host service to ensure proper backup of website content.

Testing this hosted backup over the next few days gave my friend confidence to finally proceed to upload everything that was already on the US host to the Malaysia-based website. This process was slow because content was created from scratch. But not too slow, as anyone with frequent WordPress usage experience will testify.

Tweaks needed to be done to the final WordPress theme chosen when all the content was fully uploaded, to ensure the best experience for external users. Thereafter, there was hardly any need to touch the WordPress setup as the Malaysian host handled all the routine stuff.

My friend has been very satisfied with this website migration, but being eager to explore what more content that could be presented to visitors, he is constantly going the through the boundless WordPress variations and offerings.

While he was doing so, I did have to make one major change to take a backward step as both my friend and I preferred the classic editor interface. While it is annoying how WordPress no longer makes it easy to go back to this classic editor usage, it’s still possible to do so.

Having been a WordPress user for many years, I am definitely glad that the CMS platform has evolved with the times – especially to cater for mobile device viewing in the vertical format rather than the horizontal layout of PCs and tablets.

Tools to preview content presentation for these various devices are so useful when one is crafting the layout, fixing issues long before they cause any reputational damage with external parties. Best of all, these tweaks are done by extensive button choices, rather than HTML coding!

These are among the reasons why WordPress is my CMS for choice for website content creation and presentation – just like almost half of Internet users around the world. Unlike many software that preceded it, WordPress is quite user-friendly even for novices. The preview function is invaluable – both for the static page creation and regular postings.

What makes such a powerful tool especially irresistible is that it is essentially free, making it a perfect fit for personal websites, while also customizable and scalable to handle the needs of large enterprises.

Being open source, the CMS is open for developers to constantly improve – which is why there are so many attractive options available for WordPress. And like most open source software, there are premium parts of WordPress that comes at an extra price.

Perhaps the most important part of using WordPress, as indicated right at the start of this essay, is the hosting support. With the right hosting partner, staying updated on WordPress features and getting quick fixes to problems makes running websites a breeze.

ENDS