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Why Wordpress Is Not A Good Choice For Hosting Your Landers (18)

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As I mentioned at AWE in my speech, newer affiliates often ask "Can't we just use Wordpress to host our landers?"

And the answer that we nearly always give is

But why? Well, there are a bunch of reasons.

So here's a semi-complete guide to why Wordpress isn't a good idea for your lander hosting, and what you could use instead.

NOTE: This is specifically a guide to why WP isn't a good idea for paid traffic affiliates. I LOVE Wordpress for running things like authority sites, and absolutely would recommend it - in combination with a dedicated WP host and a good CDN - for that sort of task. But for paid traffic landers, I don't love it so much.

Why Wordpress Isn't A Very Good Idea For Paid Traffic Affiliate Lander Hosting


Wordpress Core Gets Hacked A Lot

Wordpress is one of the most frequently attacked pieces of software on the Internet because it's used on so many sites. It's also one of the pieces of software that is more susceptible to hacks: new vulnerabilities crop up on a regular basis.

Now, the Wordpress team fix those hacks pretty quickly, usually, but that means that:

• If you're actively under attack, there's a good chance a hack will go through before the fix comes in.
• You need to constantly be alert to keeping your Wordpress installation up to date.
  

Wordpress Plugins Also Get Hacked A Lot

If you're using Wordpress, the chances are you're also using custom themes and plugins.

Those actually use custom code, and that means they can also introduce security holes. In fact they're kind of infamous for it. Programming a WP theme or plugin is one of the best ways to get started with a career developing software, and that means a lot of the people coding plugins aren't super-aware of security issues.

That has two ramifications. First, like WP, you need to be super-aware of updating WP plugins too. Secondly, if you're using any plugin outside the really well-known and well-developed ones, you may well have hidden security holes in your setup.


Unoptimised Wordpress Is Really Slow

Like, really slow. By default, some versions of Wordpress make up to 200 database calls per page they load. That eats both time and system resources.

An unoptimised WP setup will take seconds to deliver a page, and will scale really badly - often handling less than 10 simultaneous users on smaller setups.


Optimising Wordpress Is Hard, And It's STILL Pretty Slow

I've run sites on Wordpress for years, and I'm at least semi-expert on optimising them by now. To optimise a new site still takes me a day or so.

The best Wordpress caching plugins are very complex and require a lot of tweaking. There are simpler options, but they tend to have nasty edge-case problems. If you're an affiliate, there are better things to be spending your time on.

And even if it's optimised - at which point WP's performance is much, much better - it's still a lot slower than serving HTML files. The most heavily optimised WP site will still take 400ms or so to load, assuming both the server and the visitor are in the same country with a good server and fast internet. That might seem like almost nothing, but a well-optimised HTML page will load in 30-50ms - and that's enough difference to affect conversion rates, particularly on pops.


Using Wordpress Ties You Into A Design

Changing HTML designs is easy. Open in Muse or Visual Studio Code, edit, done.

If you're using Wordpress, though, you're tied to the theme you're using. You can edit the theme, sure, but it'll change ALL your landers. And changing a WP theme is much harder than changing a single HTML page.

As a result you'll end up limited design-wise - which can be disastrous if you haven't already found a solid, well-converting lander template.


So What Should We Do Instead?

As a rule, I'd recommend using simple HTML pages served either from Nginx or through a CDN. They're flexible, they're fast, and they're very secure.

But if you absolutely have to use a Content Management System like Wordpress - perhaps because you're advertising on Adwords and need a bunch of additional pages tied to every lander, for example - then there are a variety of smart ways to mitigate these problems.

You can use CDNs intelligently (and not in the way most people use them). You can use hosts specifically focused on WP. You can use other systems that do similar things. And there are other tricks too.

I'll cover those in a post next week - stay tuned!

I hope that was useful! If you have any questions or comments, post 'em below!

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Thanks for the post Caurmen. I'll be anxiously awaiting the next installment!

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I actually think WordPress is perfect for mobile landing pages.

For mobile landing pages I like to start with WordPress and then delete all the files except for the index.php file. I'll then rename the index file to "index.html" and edit the code to html and css, add some javascript and then put all my static content on a CDN. Couldn't recommend WordPress more

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@mobile_ad_monitor - Lol! Yes, definitely a good approach when considering using Wordpress for mobile

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Quick question: then how about paid cms such as Shopify, are they also subject to similar vulnerabilities as WordPress?

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@sushiparlour - Shopify has some of the same problems but not all.

You should not use Shopify unless you actually need their shopping cart / store solution. Having said that, if you do, they're a great choice. (I've been using Shopify a fair bit recently and I really like them as a platform.)

They're somewhat more secure than Wordpress for a few reasons:

1) They control their own setup: hosting and all. That means that they can eliminate server setup issues with security, and also architect for security rather than ease of use. I don't know how good their security team is but I'm guessing they're pretty competent.
2) Their code isn't Open-Source. Open-Source code has a lot of advantages and I'm not ragging on it here, but it is easier to find security holes in if you're looking for them, so hackers find it easier to find vulnerabilities. (Of course, the Wordpress team also looks for them and fixes them as they find them.)
3) Plugins (or apps as they're called in the world of Shopify) are a bit less rife in the Shopify world - but you should still be very cautious of the security implications of using them. I got bitten by a Shopify plugin quite recently, and since then have been advising clients to be extremely minimal with how they use plugins on their store.
4) Because all the code is under Shopify's control, they auto-upgrade everything rather than relying on you to upgrade. Out-of-date Wordpress installations are the biggest security risk as they usually have known, publicised bugs and security holes. Shopify doesn't have that problem.

Shopify DOES still have a speed problem - it's a lot better than unoptimised Wordpress but rather a lot slower than raw HTML. They don't have a scaling problem because they control their own servers and they're already built for huge scale. And they do have the problem of limiting your design: you can do almost anything in a Shopify theme but it'll be hard work and require a coder with experience in Liquid (their scripting language).

Hope that answers the question!

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Thanks for opening my eyes to this Caurmen.

Although it was more of a 'slap to the face'

I've always used WP and ignored the need to learn HTML in the process. Looks like it's time to face my fears dang nammmit!

I use a CDN + Traffic Planet Hosting (made for WordPress)....but.....time will tell (your update to this post)

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@thetailend - to be fair, if you're using dedicated WP-only hosting and an aggressive CDN, that'll fix some of the problems. So you're probably in nowhere near as bad a shape as someone who's using a Bluehost WP install with no caching and wondering why they're having problems

But yes, I would strongly advise you to learn HTML and write "flat" landers - you'll reap the rewards!

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can I host wordpress as personal site and my HTML landing pages on the same VPS using different domains??

I have this vps

and thank you

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@Caurmen, what do you think about using Adsbridge to host landing pages, we've used it and noticed some good result with it, but not sure its the fastest, looking someone who can vet it thoroughly against a CDN.......... Many thanks

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@digitalraves - I haven't throughly audited Adsbridge's hosting solution, I'm afraid, so I'm not sure on that one. Do they not have CDN distribution built in? It would seem like an obvious feature.

@skaach - I'd strongly recommend against doing that. Servers with Wordpress on tend to get hacked. A dedicated VPS or a distribution like S3 + CDN is usually best. As a side note, that's a VERY expensive VPS you have - I'd usually expect to pay more like $10 - $20 pm for those specs, unless it's a managed server.

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I'm just getting started and straight away I thought of Wordpress because that's where most of my experience is. I'm going to get started on Wordpress for landers and see how it goes but the only reason I'm doing that is because the host I use at the minute for my websites is amazing (wphostingspot.com). The reason I moved to them is for the exact same reasons listed above, hacking, slow, etc. but with WPHS everything is managed, the core, security, plugin updates, plus the guy who owns it, Matt is a superstar. I'd highly recommend them if you're using WP for landers.

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Do you have any tutorials on writing flat landers using HTML or PHP?

I use WP alot because of the ease of putting up landers using Optimize Press or some other fancy plugin that creates quick landers.

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Adsbridge does contain CDN.
-Alex

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Not sure if this is a dumb question. But will a site like instapage be okay? It is tool that allows users to design web pages from scratch. Would we be able to put that in our SiteGround Hosting services by any chance? Thank you

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Not a dumb question!

I wouldn't recommend Instapage. They only allow pages to be hosted on their own servers, and you'll find your design choices limited by their interface.

Learn to use HTML, via a tool like Muse or direct through code. You can learn in a few hours via sites like CodeAcademy or Lynda, and it's worth it.

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Hello thank you for your response. Quick question. Are there any landing page builders that we can use and host on our personal CDN?

I do not ask this question in order to avoid learning HTML. I used to take HTML course in undergrad, so I would just need to brush up on it. But mainly am asking because conceptually I am trying to figure out one thing.. Do you code all of your landing pages in html then drop it into a cdn bucket? If there are minor changes do you optimize the entire page via coding? Once again sorry if the questions seem a little too basic but thank you for your feedback.

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Not at all too basic!

Here's the usual hosting process I use: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Cost-Way-Ever!

I do indeed code everything in HTML - sometimes using a visual designer like Muse, usually just using a code IDE like Visual Studio Code. And if there are minor changes, I do those in code too.

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