WordPress May Not Be the Best Choice for Your Holiday Rental Website

WordPress is a buzz word these days and you may have heard people tell you it’s the best content management system for your holiday let website. The fact is it’s not as easy and hassle free as you might be lead to believe. Don’t get us wrong, we love WordPress, in fact we use it ourselves for certain websites. However, just because WordPress works for us doesn’t mean it will be the ideal option for you. If you are non-technical or you simply want a hassle free option, there are better alternatives elsewhere.

Here’s why

WordPress isn’t free

You may have heard that WordPress is free. Yes, the software is free, but you will still need to buy a domain name and pay a hosting company to host your holiday rental site for you.

There is still a learning curve

You may have heard that WordPress is easy. True, it does have a relatively simple Content Management System compared with some other options. However, you will still need to learn how to maintain your website and if you are non-technical you may find it challenging to grasp how things fit together. If there is something specific you need to do with your website and you’re not sure how to do it, you can expect to spend many hours online researching how to get it done.

Security can be an issue

WordPress is open source, meaning absolutely anyone has access to the code. This and the fact that it is so popular make it a huge target for hackers. Plus anybody can develop plugins for it. If you install a plugin that’s badly coded or you fail to keep the core software up to date, your holiday let website will be vulnerable to attack.

Constant Updates

The core WordPress software is updated incredibly frequently and when this happens it’s up to you to download the latest version and install it. It’s important to keep up with the latest version for security reasons. This takes time and it won’t always go as smoothly as you would hope. You may be there for hours trying to fix something that got broken in the process.

Regular backups

Due to the security issues and the constant updates mentioned above it’s advisable to make regular backups of your WordPress website. That way if something does go wrong, whether it’s due to a hacker or a software update, there is always the option to rebuild the website from backup.

Compatibility

It’s good to have a wide range of plugins to choose from, but many WordPress plugins aren’t kept up to date with the core CMS. When the WordPress software is updated, these plugins can develop compatibility issues. This means parts of your holiday rental website may no longer work, so you either have to figure out how to resolve the problems yourself, or hire someone else to fix them for you.

Consistency

WordPress plugins are developed by lots of different people and they all work very differently. While some plugins are relatively simple, others are very complex. It takes time to find the ideal plugins for your website and to figure out how they work. On other occasions you may find some plugins don’t work at all for you, so you have to uninstall them and begin again. So again, expect to spend many hours online researching the best plugins to use for a particular situation and testing them to see if they work.

Speed

The availability of lots of WordPress plugins means you can enjoy great flexibility. However, they will not all work well together and the more you use the slower your website will become.

Time

The sheer amount of choice in terms of themes and plugins is good in one way. However in another way it means you have to devote a fair amount of time to finding the right plugins for your holiday let website, not to mention the right theme. This all takes time you may not have.

As you can see, WordPress can present you with many challenges. If you’re not technically minded you can end up feeling overwhelmed and confused by all the options and how to use them. Consider your position and the amount of time and knowledge you have available to use WordPress. This should help you determine whether your holiday rental website would be better off powered by another platform.