Well, nothing is limitless. So, with this in mind, WordPress also has limits to what it can do. A more pertinent question however would be, ‘what are you trying to achieve?’
If you are looking for a web development platform for publishing purposes, then WordPress is quite a capable Content Management System. Actually, the best there is. At 10+ years, WordPress has grown to become a powerful platform for development of a wide range of websites. At the core, WordPress is unassumingly simple, allowing you to create a website with pages, posts, and media.
With use of themes and third-party plugins, it becomes possible to extend this functionality from what the core system allows. With thousands of plugins build to perform different functions, you can easily and instantly transform a WordPress installation to whatever model you need for your business.
The base WordPress install is quite easy to perform. That is one of the CMS’s strong points. After this however, comes the more challenging task of choosing the most suited themes and plugins for achieving the desired functionality from a pool of thousands of free and premium themes and plugins. There are therefore thousands of possibilities, all which cannot be discussed in one single post. It basically boils down to your requirements, and what you want to achieve at the end of the day.
From feature rich blogs, and media management sites, to powerful ecommerce stores, and online booking systems, it is all possible with WordPress. It was built to support such extensibility. For instance, there are more than 6 major ecommerce plugins built for WordPress that will convert your simple WordPress install into a powerful ecommerce store.
Extending the core
At the core, WordPress is a lightning fast, well-constructed Content Management System. It has some vital features like Search Engine Optimization and responsiveness already built in. The more 3rd party plugins and themes you add on top of the core system, the more sluggish your website becomes, especially if these are not lightweight and well written. This process is completely trial and error because there is no way of knowing which theme or plugin will have a negative effect on your website’s performance – apart from reading through customer reviews.
With time however, you get to learn that there are developers who are more superior than others. Ones whose experience reflects in the solutions they provide. Their products add to the functionality of the core WordPress system with none or very little adverse effect on the speed, security, and general performance of the website. Then there are the others, whose products mainly exist on the WordPress codex only. While many feature well-written code that will not bloat your website, some are not and the only way to tell them apart is by going through their user ratings and reviews. This system is however not perfect because new plugins though of excellent quality, may not have enough ratings to convince users they are worth a try.
If you are a developer, you’ll be happy to know that WordPress supports API which lets you extend the functionality of your website even further by linking it to external systems enabling it to send and receive data from these systems.
In conclusion…
In the end, it goes back to what you are trying to achieve. If you do not already know the possibilities with WordPress, you cannot ask whether it will support your needs. You first have to define what you want to achieve and then see if it is possible to extend WordPress’s core functionality to accomplish the task you want to achieve.
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