The problem today isn't really about how you create it (4 weeks). It's more about how you maintain and use it (5 years).
Seriously, I've been creating websites with WordPress since 2007 and I've tried so often to switch to something else because I believe WordPress is losing it's cool in some way. Especially when it comes to smaller sites that only holds 15 - 25 pages you should be able to use something else but the problem I really face every single time is everything you do AFTER you're finished building the site and start using it.
- Google Search Console (integration)
- Google/Piwik Analytics (web stats) from the WP dashboard
- Simple redirecting your 404 pages
- SEO insight and help creating content
- and a lot more..
I mean, often you create a site for your neighbour and he's not really into computers and all tech stuff the same way we are but he knows his way around on his computer and in Facebook. The WordPress dashboard (or any CMS) can be a little overwhelming when you see it at first because it's difficult to understand how it works but when you click around for a few hours you start to get the picture what it can do and how it works.
Most questions I get form people after a few weeks working with their sites is, why does X website rank above me in Google when I type blablabla.. This is so frustrating to explain and it will take lot's of your time because it's based on so many factors that you can't control.
Just imagine telling someone starting a brand new business that they can't really rank very high in Google just because they are starting fresh and all other businesses are online for 5+ years. It's the truth - you can only rank high with a brand new site on broader search phrases, like 3 or 4 (lower volume) keywords in a single question because the competition isn't so steep on those questions. It's kinda depressing if you think about it without creating a site already. It's not very positive and it doesn't motivate people to explorer the internet neither.
This person on topic probably knows everything about motorcycles, his passion is about motorcycles and fixing them
not about spending hours online researching how Google and other marketing for his business works - Yack.
What I always do is, I downplay their expectations a little bit so they don't expect they have 300 daily vistors tomorrow just because they have their own website online now. After that I install them a very good WordPress SEO plugin next to the above features list.. I let them focus more about adding content + good content at first instead of searching themselves and not knowing why they don't rank for those searches yet.. Seriously, click the screenshot below to see what I mean. This feature is probably the most important reason I still use WordPress today. There are probably a lot of cool easy to use software online for creating websites but this part is where a CMS will always outcompete any other software. Integration with the internet vs static sites and using 25 standalone tools, logging into them to get some insight about your online business.
Screenshot
Everybody can 'understand' what they see in this screenshot because it guides you around. When you create a new page and you're doing it wrong you'll see red coloured dots telling you it's not very good and below you'll get some tips about how to fix it. Changing your content a little bit, for example, adding an image or url to another page on this page results in an orange colour (better score) <--- see that's positive and improvement. Instead of telling someone they can't do X thing you give them something they probably still don't really understand in the basics but when they do it right they'll get positive feedback and after a while you'll see proven results.
I have so much success with this. Because people will (1) start creating better content. (2) are more focus about their own site and adding content. (3) stop wildly searching themselves and hoping to see their own site but instead start searching for the pages they just created based on the keywords they want to rank for.
...and when they do show up after 5 or 6 days at the bottom of page #1 in Google they call you happy and tell you it's working.
It's all about how you use good tools todays and how they integrate with each other. Seriously I really wish WordPress wasn't my go to tool because it frustrates me on a daily base creating sites for it and it's the same as Apple. I have become less fan favourite of the brand over the years because all the fancy stuff they are adding. But in the meantime, you can't say it's bad. macOS or iOS isn't bad by foundation, the software that Apple creates on top of this foundation isn't what it was in the early days and thats makes us feel bad but our foundation macOS + iOS is still the best together, Mac and iPhone or iPad play nice together with iCloud sync (not iCloud Drive) in the middle. Lucky for us we can install 3rd party software and that's totally what WordPress does too. Those plugins (above) are really the reason why I still like to use it.
