WordPress now powers 22% of the web; an impressive number. So impressive that WordPress has become a buzzword that a lot of people don’t really understand. Every week I get a new request to “convert” an existing site. This is not an easy or inexpensive option. There may be a lot of great reasons to do this, but there can be just as many reasons not to.
Content Management
This is what WordPress is famous for and the idea of having a site that you can edit yourself is very appealing. It’s why I started developing in WordPress exclusively; my clients kept asking for this ability. But be honest with yourself – do you really want to write a new article every week/month? Or do you just need a few tweaks to a page or two a couple of times a year? If you’re starting from scratch, you may as well go with WordPress so that even these tweaks are easy, but is it worth re-building the whole site just for this ability? You may not like paying a developer to go in and make a few simple text changes, but if it’s only once or twice a year, it’s probably much cheaper to do that than to re-build.
Maintenance
If you already have a simple HTML site (does your URL end in .html?, then you do), it probably really is “set it and forget it.” Not so with a WordPress site. The price we pay for having such a nice content management system is that it’s software – software that needs updating on a regular basis. Think about how many times your phone apps have updated in the past year. Sometimes it’s for feature enhancement, but most of the time it’s for security. WordPress and all of it’s plugins are no different. To keep your site secure, regular updates are required. They are constantly improving how easy and well this works, but it will be some time before “set it and forget it” works in the WordPress world.
Conversion
If you have a site that works for you, but want it in WordPress, just because – there is no simple answer for this. We can’t move the house. The house has to be built from scratch (especially if you want it to look the same), and then you have to move all the furniture in. The cost for this is the same as if I was building something new, because that’s exactly what I’m doing, building something new.
If you’d like to start adding regular articles or events or if you need to update that home page every month or if you want to incorporate new functionality like shopping, then this kind of move may make very good sense. If you’re just tweaking a few things a couple of times a year, then it probably makes much more sense to stick with the system you have.