Build Personal Website

In this article I am going to share my thoughts, research and decisions about choosing WordPress to develop my personal blog.

When I decide to build a personal website to publish articles and tutorials about web technologies and to showcase my portfolio I had to decide with which platform I am going to build it. There are plenty of possibilities to choose from such as react, angular, Gatsby and so on. But I wanted to check out WordPress first because recently I have discovered the ”WordPress REST API”.

The WordPress REST API provides API endpoints for WordPress data types that allow developers to interact with sites remotely by sending and receiving JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) objects. its  means that I can create any feature I want with JavaScript. I can create, update and delete anything in database using JavaScript with the REST API.

I wrote to myself the key things that I needed from my platform that will help me to decide if WordPress fit my needs:

• Database
• Security
• SEO and Analytics
• Good User Experience
• Development environment with build tools
• Fast

Database

This is easy. I needed a database for my blog and this is what WordPress meant for in the first place. But accessing the database with PHP felt wrong for me. I am more experienced with JavaScript and I prefer to do it in the client side rather in the server side. Thankfully today we have “WordPress REST API” that gives us a way to interact with the database and make changes in it with only JavaScript. 

Security

This is catchy. Seems that People always say that WordPress is not secure and its basically wrong. Any platform is vulnerable especially when its open source, and WordPress is one of them, but WordPress gets update and fixes frequently and when ever a hack is found out the WordPress team fix it right away. 

So 3 things I had to keep in my mind when I want to use WordPress:

1. Hosting environment is good
2. Trusted plugins
3. Update wordpress and plugins

For me the “Trusted plugins” issue was not a problem Because I know I am going to develop any feature I want with the WordPress REST API and JavaScript and I am not going to use any third party plugins. 

By using SSL combined with JWT or Oauth when I use WordPress REST API outside of WordPress I get more security layers for my WordPress website and most importantly, my database.

SEO and Analytics

This is not my field. Yes I know SEO from developer view but still its not my proficiency But for sure WordPress can help. With a few small tutorials and I have an SEO environment and  By using one SEO plugin and I can upgrade the website and learn even more about the subject.

Fast

WordPress can be slow. Means the User Experience is bad. but if I can create “fast features/plugins” and a “fast theme” Then WordPress will be fast.

With the WordPress REST API and JavaScript I can create fast features without using server side scripting with PHP. 

Creating a fast theme with WordPress can be overwhelming because even that I built in the long past themes from scratch and I am very experienced in HTML and CSS, Knowing the ins and outs of WordPress themes and all the best practices is not a simple task and I knew that I don’t want to waste so much time for a WordPress theme because learning so much for something so basic and that  I don’t use in my daily Job is not worth for me. 

Another option for creating WordPress themes is “child themes”. I have experience with that in the past and they are great but they are not so fast.

Luckily, I found out a new technology in development called WP RIG. With the WP RIG I can create super fast and progressive themes. More about it in the next 2 sections.

User Experience

User experience and WordPress doesn’t goes well all the time. To achieve a good user experience you first need to serve a fast website WP RIG solves this issues, more about WP RIG in the next section.

Development environment with build tools

This is the main con for me to use WordPress.

As a developer I wanted to use:

• Good IDE editor with the right tools for coding – in my case VSCODE, 
• Write modern JavaScript and PHP – in my case ES6+.
• Build process environment that lints, optimizes, and minifies your code
• Orgenzied code structure and directories

With the WP RIG I can achieve all that.

As explained in WP RIG website, WP Rig is a modern WordPress starter theme and build process bundled into one convenient package. It helps you create beautiful, lightning-fast WordPress themes with exciting user experiences that meet the latest web standards. You write modern PHP, CSS, and JavaScript, WP Rig lints, optimizes, and minifies your code to make the theme–and the site it runs on–as performant as possible.

Conclusion

Thanks to the WP RIG and WordPress REST API I decided to go with WordPress. I can now build a theme and features for my website from scratch, with the best tools and user experience in mind.