From its beginnings as an easy-to-use solution for bloggers, WordPress has grown into a major – and I mean major – player in the content management systems (CMS) universe. It now powers over 35 percent of the world’s websites, according to Hostinger.com, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
User-Friendly Content Management for Creatives
The reason? This popular content management solution is still extremely easy to use. And, it has grown in scope to the extent that even larger content teams can use it.
It works with most web hosting systems and day-to-day use of the system requires absolutely no knowledge of programming. In fact, most WordPress (WP) users don’t know even the barest basics in coding. Its intuitive interface acts almost like a tutorial, making it simple to post content, even for beginners.
Super-easy to manage and easily customizable, it has a wealth of available plugins that allow you to customize your content and add nifty features to your website with ease. That capability provides your users with a seamless, brand-focused experience.
Does WordPress Work for Enterprise Content Teams, Though?
With 35% market penetration, it adapts well to the content needs of practically any business, including ecommerce sites. But does it work for big companies with enterprise marketing teams? Is WordPress adequate for larger content teams’ needs?
In fact, it is quite adequate for many larger teams’ needs. Many enterprise teams use it, as Hostinger.com points out, including Sony Music, TechCrunch, The New Yorker, and even the White House. It’s open-source, so it’s a cost-effective alternative to other CMS choices.
However, there are a few caveats, as Core DNA’s Sam Saltis points out:
- Headless content management: If your IT needs require a headless CMS, WordPress has only a limited capacity to accommodate those needs. As Saltis shows, by using WordPress’s REST APIs to create a headless solution, you will lose some of WordPress’s signature features, such as themes.
- Multiple sites: Additionally, if your company has multiple websites, WordPress can accommodate them; however, it will take some expertise from your coding teams since its solution requires editing PHP files. And, some of the WP plugins might not work.
- Multi-tenancy: Multi-tenancy allows system administrators to manage software for several clients in a single place. In such a system, updates occur simultaneously for all clients. WordPress does support multi-tenancy, but much like multiple-site capability, management of multiple tenants is a more complex task, better done in the hands of your coding teams than in those of your content teams.
- Multiple tiers of access privilege: Larger companies, government organizations, and non-profits often need a wide variety of access privileges for the users who are managing their content. This need is especially apparent when it comes to compliance issues. Financial enterprises, as well as healthcare institutions and legal firms, must adhere to stringent regulations that define what they can publish without landing in hot water. Since WordPress grants only role-based permissions, there is no way to earmark specific pieces or types of content, for a narrowly defined list of content creators and editors.Without a comprehensive content marketing platform that can help a company limit access for each piece of content or campaign, there’s potential for problems and confusion. This is a critical factor to consider when choosing a CMS.
- Robust analytics: With the complexity of their content production requirements, large companies need a way to analyze the effectiveness of each piece of content they put out. Not only should their content management system integrate seamlessly with analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics, but an enterprise CMS must be customizable for each campaign’s key performance indicators (KPIs).Although WordPress has such integrations, they are community-developed, third-party plugins that may be glitchy or increase security risks, says Saltis. Instead of using community-developed tools, content teams that use WP can opt for a content platform with built-in content analytics. If the content platform can integrate with Google Analytics and other search and social media analytics tools, it makes using WordPress easier and less susceptible to issues.
- Security issues: Since WordPress depends on plugins for many of its extra features, enterprise teams that use it for their CMS need to partner with their IT provider to make sure that any plugin they use is secure. Whether you rely on in-house developers or outsource development to a third-party provider, there’s a good chance that you might need a few tweaks to tighten your security.
- Technical support: As an open-source CMS, WordPress relies on its online community to help solve user issues. Like with security, you should be fine so long as you have an in-house or outsourced IT team that can help debug any issues that arise.
Knowing that enterprise companies are going to have reservations with choosing WordPress based on the caveats listed above, WordPress’ parent company, Automattic, introduced WordPress VIP, a dedicated services organization for large companies. They provide a variety of offering, including: hosting, IT support, and connecting you to development partners.
The Key to WordPress Success: An Efficient Integration
Your team can avoid many of the issues you face when posting directly to WordPress when you use a content platform that integrates seamlessly with the WordPress framework. While we can’t speak with authority about the WP integration features on other platforms, we do know what ours – DivvyHQ – brings to the table.
First, you can draft your content in our platform, edit it, and then send it to WordPress directly, with all the metadata, images, categories, and other data going straight through, with no strange code that messes up your formatting.
If you’ve ever had the frustration of writing a blog post in MS Word and then pasting into WP, only to discover that your content is displaying with weird fonts, has double space, etc., you’ll appreciate how easy the content creation and posting process can be.
Secondly, if you discover a typo or another error once your content is in WordPress, you can edit it right on WP, and the content will update to your DivvyHQ version automatically. Instead of spending time copying and pasting, your busy content teams can do the work they were hired to do.
Furthermore, Divvy’s synchronization capabilities can help solve the multi-site update and multi-tenancy challenges. When updates occur, they occur across both platforms in real-time, whether you have teams all over the world or all over town.
Using a content platform like DivvyHQ can also help you conquer WP’s analytics challenge. With its own customizable analytics and its ability to integrate with all the major analytics platforms, you can use its robust content measurement feature to see which content isn’t performing up to par, make changes on the fly, and then measure the content again to see if it improves its performance.
Finally, using DivvyHQ’s content automation feature can help you automate your posts to reach customers and prospects in varied time zones. You can also use it to schedule posts ahead of time in case key team members are out due to illness or vacation. Additionally, if you need to reach your prospects halfway around the world during their peak hours, your team won’t have to stay up until the wee hours to post.
If you want to discover more about how DivvyHQ can help your teams get the most out of WordPress, we’re here to help. Request a demo today!