First, let’s take a moment to quickly define what HTML and WordPress are before making distinctions, shall we?
HTML (or Hyper-Text markup Language) is officiated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and forms the foundation for Web sites in general (versions vary, for instance there’s HTML 5, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and others). HTML doesn’t need a third-party media player to handle image and video content and is cross-platform, meaning it can be used on a mobile phone, laptop, or tablet. In addition to HTML, most sites will also use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for presentation.
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and describes how HTML elements are displayed on screen or in other media. CSS saves a lot of work since programmers can control the layout of multiple Web pages at once with this code.
HTML sites may also use a Content Management Systems (CMS), which will use HTML, CSS, programs, scripts, and databases to provide a system where content can be easily updated by non-technical users.
Conversely, WordPress is a freely distributed CMS or blog platform that, at this time, is singularly responsible for over 30% of all Internet sites worldwide. Again, WordPress is open-source, meaning its source code is free for anyone to modify and update as they wish.
I made the case in an earlier post (WordPress vs HTML5/CSS3: Part 1) that WordPress has, “its limitations,” enough to make a professional stop and think. In this post, I’d like to quickly present the more compelling reasons why one would choose to build beautiful, amazing Web sites using HTML5/CSS3.
1. Security
With hacking going on everywhere, all the time, online security issues are important. An attack stresses your business and has the potential to cause a great deal of time and financial loss. HTML doesn’t leave holes for malfeasance to exploit, immediately bringing risk factors down for a successful attack.
2. Little Maintenance Requirements
Because HTML is NOT a database, there is no need for you to perform the monthly (or more often) updates WordPress requires.
3. Organic Search Engine Optimization
Once again, because HTML is not a database, it is naturally easier to apply organic optimization techniques and keyword phrases to your Web site. FYI, search engine’s like Google can’t “see” through databases which is why WordPress (which is a database) needs “plugins” to enable features that are otherwise natural to HTML.
4. Fast Download Speeds
HTML Web sites require less coding than WordPress sites and sites with more coding are more complex weighing more, these two factors combine to slow the speed with which files can download to your device. Now that Web page load speeds are a primary rank factor with Google, an HTML5 static site becomes much more attractive than WordPress. HTML sites are smaller by nature while WordPress requires all sorts of plugins and workarounds to get even slight improvements in page load speed.
5. Easy Server Requirements
Unlike WordPress that requires the Host server to support PHP and MySQL (databases), HTML has almost no requirements at all.
6. Flexibility
HTML5 is a programming language itself and can be used to create everything on a Web site. So, a design can be applied to branding elements, backgrounds, admin areas and the like. Nothing is fixed and everything is changeable.
In conclusion, while there are times when producing a Web site using WordPress makes perfect sense, for most of the development challenges presented, HTML/CSS is the best choice. It’s very stable while also being substantially less vulnerable to hacking, all without sacrificing any functionality whatsoever.