WordPress vs Weebly – Which one is better? (Comparison)Winner: Weebly eCommerce and Business Monday, Apr 6 2015

As stated below, This blog post is a comparison between WordPress and weebly.  I believe there is enough evidence brought together to make your own decision

http://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/wordpress-vs-weebly-which-one-is-better-comparison/

Last updated on April 1st, 2015 by Editorial Staff

Are you trying to decide between WordPress vs Weebly to build your site? WordPress is a popular choice and powers 23% of all websites on the internet, but Weebly is another solution that allows you to build your website, blogs, and eCommerce stores. If you are wondering what’s the difference between Weebly and WordPress, then you are in the right place. In this article, we will compare WordPress vs Weebly by listing the pros and cons of each, so you can decide which one is better for you.

Note: this article compares Weebly with self hosted WordPress.org sites not WordPress.com blogs. See our guide on what’s the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

Hosted Platform vs Self-Hosted

Weebly is a completely hosted service. This means that your website resides on their servers, and you have to abide by their terms of service. Should you decide to switch platforms, the migration process is extremely difficult. Their admin area has all the tools that you can use to build, edit, and manage your Weebly site.

WordPress on the other hand is a free software that you can install on your ownweb hosting account. This means that you own 100% of all your content, and WordPress makes it very easy to switch to a different platform should you choose to do so.

Winner: WordPress

Features and Plugins

Weebly comes with a good selection of tools built-in with their platform. This includes the ability to add an online store, blog, contact form, photos, etc. The best part about built-in features is that you do not have to install an extension or an application.

However if you need a feature that is not available in Weebly, then you are in trouble because you cannot hire a designer or developer to add it for you.

On the other hand, WordPress has all the features you can dream of: online stores, contact forms, galleries, portfolio, SEO etc. However most of these features doesn’t come pre-installed, and you have to add them with plugins.

There are over 37,000 free plugins available in the official WordPress plugin directory. Not to mention countless other premium plugins available from third party websites. If you can think of a feature, then there is a good chance that a plugin already exists for that. Plugins like WordPress SEO by Yoast makes WordPress more SEO friendly that Weebly.

The best way of thinking about features in WordPress vs Weebly is by looking at feature phones vs smartphones (iPhone or Android). WordPress is a smartphone that comes with all the essentials, but you can install an app to add new functionality. Weebly is a feature phone that doesn’t allow you to install apps. You get what it comes with.

Winner: WordPress

Design and Layout Choices

Weebly excels at design, and the most desired feature of Weebly is their drag and drop page builder. Currently they have nearly 100 themes which you can customize using their drag and drop tools. It is very easy to use and extremely beginner friendly.

WordPress does not come with a built-in drag and drop page builder. However there are thousands of pre-made templates available some that offer drag-drop functionality. Many of them are available for free in the official WordPress.org themes directory. Other themes can be purchased from theme shops likeStudioPress, Themify, and ThemeLab.

WordPress also has drag and drop themes created by Headway Themes andThemfiy which makes it super easy to create your own layouts.

Winner: Weebly

eCommerce and Business

Weebly allows you to open your own online store. However their features are very basic, and there is not much you can do to customize your store the way you want.

Weebly charges 3% transaction fee on top of the fee that you will be charged by the payment processor such as Stripe and PayPal. This means that you are paying double in transaction fees. You can upgrade to their Business plan $25 per month to remove the additional transaction fee.

WordPress has several robust eCommerce plugins that allows you to create your own online store like WooCommerce, EasyDigitalDownloads, iThemes Exchange,WP eCommerce and several others.

Most of these comes with dozens of pre-made themes, you can add coupons, customize receipts, and basically everything that you want to do.

Also there are no additional transaction fees. All you pay is the payment processor fees which you will have to pay with any platform.

Winner: WordPress

Data Portability

Weebly allows you to download your site as a zip file, but this will only contain your HTML pages and images. If you had a blog, then it will not be exported. If you had sliders, then they would not work in the exported site. Basically it is very difficult to move a site away from Weebly.

When you host your own website on an open source platform like WordPress, you can easily export your data into many formats. You can export your WordPress site as an XML file, database export, download your files and content. You can easily migrate your WordPress site to any other platform that you like.

This freedom gives you full control of your website, and this control brings peace of mind to many site owners.

Winner: WordPress

Conclusion

Weebly is a beautiful service more suitable for small websites. It is not an ideal solution to create a blog, or run an online store. The shiny design builder may look attractive, but not everything that shines is gold.

WordPress offers more tools, freedom, and flexibility. All of these things make it possible for you to build a website the way you want it.

We hope this article helped you compare WordPress vs Weebly and pick a platform for your next website. You may also want to check out our comparison ofSquarespace vs WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

ABOUT THE EDITORIAL STAFF

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi. Page maintained by Syed Balkhi.

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How To Hide The Fact That Your Website Runs On WordPress Monday, Dec 8 2014

Posted by KeriLynn Engel on Dec 07, 2014 09:00 am

Security is always top concern when you’re running a website.

But… sometimes all the hubbub over hacking seems a little over the top. All the scary stories about big businesses like eBay, Target, Adobe, Steam, and others who have suffered big data breaches can feel like fear-mongering. Surely hackers won’t go after your website when they have such big fish to fry?

The post How To Hide The Fact That Your Website Runs On WordPress appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

The data, unfortunately, tells us otherwise. Smaller websites are hacked just as frequently as big ones, with almost half of small businesses reporting being hacked, their resultant costs averaging $8,700.

And those are only the businesses who are willing to report being hacked. It’s probable that others keep their vulnerability a secret, not wanting their users to lose their trust in their ability to keep private data safe and secure.

Even if you only take into account reported instances, tens of thousands of websitesare hacked every day, and many of them don’t even know they’ve been hacked and that their websites are being used to spread malicious code.

As a WordPress user, you’re using one of the most secure content management systems available. But no CMS is 100% invulnerable, and hackers are evolving their methods just as fast as developers can patch vulnerabilities.

You may have heard that hiding WordPress is the best way to keep your site secure from hackers and bots.

There’s actually quite a bit of debate among developers and security experts about this practice.

I’ll go over the pros and cons of both sides and the reasoning behind them, and leave it up to you to decide if hiding your CMS is right for your website.

Then we’ll talk about how you can obscure your implementation of WordPress.

Let’s get started!

Isn’t WordPress Secure Enough Already?

WordPress is known for being a very secure content management system (CMS). Security issues are a top concern of WordPress core developers, and the software is patched and updated regularly to address any vulnerabilities that arise.

The security of WordPress is one of the reasons for its popularity. WordPress is now one of the most popular content management systems on the web, used for tens of millions of websites around the world. Even big websites like CNN, The New York Times, eBay, and Mashable use WordPress for their blogs.

But just the fact that you’re using WordPress for your website doesn’t make your website invulnerable to hackers.

In fact, its very popularity is what makes it a popular target.

Hackers know that millions of websites that are using WordPress aren’t using the best security measures to keep their sites secure. Many of those sites are using weak passwords, outdated versions of WordPress with known vulnerabilities, or old and insecure plugins and themes. Hackers know there they’ll have plenty of targets out there once they discover those vulnerabilities and create a way to exploit them.

The most common ways that hackers attack WordPress sites are with brute force attacks or HTTP requests.

Brute-force hackers use software to try to gain access to your website by guessing at your password until they get lucky and break in. Often, simple countermeasures like requiring CAPTCHA or 2-step verification on login can easily stop brute force login attempts in their tracks.

Another common category of hacker attacks are specially-crafted HTTP requests sent to your server. These requests are designed to exploit specific vulnerabilities which are often caused by outdated or insecure software, themes, or plugins. Anything contained in your wp-content directory, whether active or inactive, can potentially introduce security vulnerabilities to your website that knowledgeable hackers can exploit to disable or gain access to your blog.

Why Hide WordPress?

Here’s where the debate comes in.

But first, let’s get our terminology straight: Sometimes people mean different things when they say they’re hiding WordPress.

What’s usually meant by “hiding WordPress” is that you’re attempting to obscure the fact that your site runs on WordPress from any person or bot that attempts to identify the CMS.

But hiding WordPress could also mean just trying to hide which version number of WordPress you’re using, or changing permalinks, file names, subdirectories, etc. to hide them from bots.

Is hiding WordPress worth the effort? Depends on who you ask.

The fact is, there’s no way to completely obscure the fact that your website runs on WordPress. A tech-savvy person who knows enough about WordPress will be able to detect your CMS using any number of means.

Even if you’re just trying to hide your WordPress version number, there are a multitude of ways to discover what WordPress version you’re using just by being familiar with the differences between versions.

And security experts warn that security through obscurity is a discouraged practice, since it can encourage laxness in addressing vulnerabilities if you think no one can find them: “The security of a system should depend on its key, not on its design remaining obscure,” security engineer Ross Anderson wrote.

Does that mean it’s a waste of time to hide WordPress?

Maybe, maybe not. It won’t help you to foil a dedicated hacker that’s targeting you specifically.

But the majority of hacking attempts are made by bots, and you may be able to foil hacker bots by obscuring your WordPress installation. Just by changing some default permalinks, you may be able to protect your website against things like brute-force attacks, SQL-injection, and requests to your PHP files.

Other WordPress Security Measures

Hiding WordPress by obscuring a few permalinks and files can be a good security measure, but it’s not your only option, and it shouldn’t be the only action you take to protect your site.

There are some basic WordPress security tips you can easily follow to keep your site more safe from hackers, without hiding WordPress:

• Always use strong passwords.
• Always keep your WordPress core updated to the latest version.
• Keep all your themes and plugins updated, delete inactive themes and plugins, and stop using any themes and plugins that are no longer being updated.
• Consider protecting your login page from brute force attacks by requiringCAPTCHA and/or 2 factor authentication.
• Consider installing an all-in-one security plugin like iThemes Security or Bullet Proof Security.

(If your website’s already been hacked, check out this great guide by Nathan B. Weller here on ElegantThemes to find out how to fix it: “Oh Sh*#! What to Do When Your WordPress Website Has Been Hacked.”)

How to Hide the Fact You’re Using WordPress

So you’ve decided you still want to try to hide the fact that you’re using WordPress from your visitors as well as potential hackers and bots.

How exactly do you go about it?

There are plenty of tutorials out there for hiding just your WordPress version number, but I’m not going to rehash those for a few reasons:

• If security is really your goal, you should always be updating to the latest version anyway.
• The WordPress version number shows up in a multitude of places in various files, so it can be difficult and time-consuming to obscure them all, and not worth the effort, because…
• Even if you do manage to erase every mention of your WordPress version number, there are still plenty of ways someone can find out what version of WordPress you’re using.
• Obscuring your version number won’t protect you from bots, either. Bots don’t generally check to see what version of WordPress you’re using; they just go straight for the vulnerability they’re targeting. If you keep your WordPress core updated, they won’t find it. And if you’re using an old version of WordPress, theywill find it regardless of how well you try to hide your version number.

Still determined to hide the fact you use WordPress? It could be that you have a client demanding you hide WordPress for them, or maybe you think that your business looks unprofessional using blogging software to run your website.

In that case, I recommend a premium plugin called Hide My WP, available on Code Canyon. It works well as a general security plugin, and will hide the fact that you’re using WordPress by changing your permalinks without making changes to the actual locations of your files.

Hide My WP has a number of features that improve your WordPress security:

• Changes permalinks of files (like wp-admin) to obscure them from bots
• Removes meta info (like version number) from your headers and feeds
• Controls access to your PHP files
• Changes the default subdirectories of vulnerable folders like wp-content
• Changes query URLs to protect from SQL injections
• Hides files that can give hackers information about your WordPress installation (like readme.html or license.txt)
• Gives you the option to disable specific archives, categories, tags, pages, posts
• Notifies you of security risks with the new “Intrusion Detection System”

Hide My WP is also compatible with many other popular WordPress security plugins. It’s rated 4.5 out of 5 stars on Code Canyon, and the plugin author is very timely to respond to support requests.

Are You Hiding Your WordPress Installation?

Back to you!

After reading the pros and cons, are you determined to hide the fact that your website is powered by WordPress? What steps have you taken to obscure your CMS, and how well have they worked for you? Share in the comments below!

By KeriLynn Engel

KeriLynn Engel is a freelance business writer and professional blogger with a passion for WordPress and all things Internet. She writes about technology, women’s history, and other topics for a variety of websites & businesses.

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Automatic WordPress Updates: How to Turn Them On or Off and Decide Which is Right for You Tuesday, Dec 2 2014

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Posted on December 2 by Nathan B. Weller in Tips & Tricks |

One of the fundamentals of running a WordPress website is knowing how and when to update the core files, plugins, and themes that comprise it. In the past updating WordPress, while still relatively easy, had a bit more guesswork than it does today.

Since WordPress 3.7 was released automatic updates for minor and security releases have become standard. It is also now possible to receive major or core updates without the site admin doing anything. This of course takes the guess work out updating WordPress for many users; an undeniable benefit. However, auto updates for WordPress are not the right solution for everyone.

In today’s post I’m going to weigh the pro’s and con’s of enabling automatic WordPress updates and then show you how to configure them to best suit your needs.

The Pro’s & Con’s of Automatic WordPress Updates

The benefits of automatic updates seem pretty obvious. If they just happen, in a stable and secure way, then that’s one less vital aspect of managing your WordPress site that you have to deal with or worry about. So what about the potential negative scenarios of automatic updates for WordPress? What are they and who do they affect?

Basically, if you fall into one of the following groups, you may want to hold off on automatic updates:

1. If you’ve made customizations to the core of WordPress. Any automatic updates to those core files will override and erase those customizations.

2. If your site depends on third party (non-official WordPress.or) themes/plugins to function properly. You don’t want to run the risk of your site updating beyond the compatibility of your theme and plugins, resulting in those things breaking. This can result in something as mild (but annoying and unprofessional) as features/functions breaking and/or on displaying properly. Or in the worst case, your whole site could go down and that’s not fun for anyone.

Those reservations (significant though they are) aside, there are still a few ways to protect yourself and automate parts of WordPress without opening yourself  up to much (if any) risk. However, it should be noted: whenever you are about to update your site, whether manually or via a plugin or service–you need to back it up. In order to accomplish this with automatic updates you may need to automate your backups too. For more information on WordPress backups check out our post 10 WordPress Backup Plugins You Need to Know About.

Once you’ve figured that out you can feel safe in putting the following automatic update solutions into practice.

How to Disable Automatic Updates for WordPress

So let’s say you fall into one of those two groups and you’d like to disable automatic WordPress updates. To do that you will have to either edit your wpconfig.php file manually or use a plugin. In this section I will cover the manual method and below I’ll cover the plugin options.

To manually disable automatic updates for WordPress all you have to do is add the following line of code to your wp-config.php file:

define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false );

While this will disable WordPress automatic updates, you will still be notified when there is a new version available. So you don’t have to worry about it resulting in no updates whatsoever. It’s just on your terms at that point.

How to Enable Automatic Updates for WordPress

vNow let’s say you do not fall into either of the two groups I mentioned above. You have a very basic setup with themes and plugins that are always kept up to date and compatible with the latest version of WordPress. In your case automatic updates, even major ones, are ideal.

To manually enable automatic updates for WordPress all you have to do is add the following line of code to your wp-config.php file:

define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', true );

This will enable all core updates. However, some people may not want nightly builds and development updates included–just the important security, minor and major changes. To disable those add the following bit of code to your functions.php file and you’re all set.

add_filter( 'allow_dev_auto_core_updates', '__return_false' );

The Automatic Updater for WordPress Plugin

Ok, so the manual solution will no doubt prove to be painless for many of you. However, I realize that not everyone is comfortable editing the files of their WordPress install–even if it’s just pasting in a line of code. Not a problem. One of the contributing WordPress core developers created a great free plugin called Advanced Automatic Updates just for you.

To get the plugin follow the link in the paragraph above, download it, and follow the installation instructions. Once installed, navigate to Settings > Advanced Automatic Updates and you’ll see a screen just like the image below.

With a few clicks you can choose to update WordPress Core automatically for major versions or minor versions. You can also choose to update your plugins and themes automatically. However, the theme update feature only works for themes obtained through the official WordPress theme repository at WordPress.org. If you’ve made a third party purchase, you’ll have to update the theme manually.

Other Automatic Update Options for WordPress

As is almost always the case with WordPress solutions, there are many ways to do the same thing. Automatic Updates are no exception. Below are the final three ways that you can arrange for automatic updates if the two primary/individual solutions above are not what you’re looking for.

Managed WordPress Hosting

There are a lot of options out there for managed WordPress hosting. Bluehost, WPEnginge, Flywheel, and others all offer great services for a wide range of WordPress users. The goal of this section is not to highlight each service and compare them, but rather to simply mention that for the vast majority of managed WordPress hosting services automatic updates are part of what you’re paying for. They will make sure that the core of your installation stays up-to-date and secure. Some might update your themes and plugins too, but because those can vary so much that’s probably not standard.

ManageWP

ManageWP is a plugin/service that brings the kind of integration and service features of a managed hosting provider or multi-site install to users who are managing any number of separately hosted WordPress.org sites. With their powerful dashboard you can access and updated anywhere from two to two hundred separate WordPress installs with a single click. Among many other awesome features.

WordPress Management Services

Not long ago I wrote an article here called How to Start a WordPress Management Business in Less than a Day. This post talks about how, using tools like ManageWP, someone with enough WordPress savvy could set up the basic elements required for that business in an extremely short amount of time and be up and running as soon as they could land their first customer.

If that is not you (and you don’t even like the idea of installing a plugin like the one above) then perhaps hiring a WordPress maintenance or management service is a step in the right direction. Any good service of this kind will make sure your site, themes, and plugins are always up-to-date and running properly.

In Conclusion

WordPress updates are such a fundamental part of working with this platform that it’s a good idea to figure out what automatic updating option works best for you. Whether that be major updates, security updates, minor updates, theme or plugin updates knowing that everything is current, secure, and functioning properly can provide a great sense of peace and calm. It will also make sure your site doesn’t break. Which is pretty important, wouldn’t you say?

Speaking of the things you say, we’d love to know what you’ve chosen to do for WordPress updates and which option you recommend. Let us know in the comments below!

Article thumbnail by phoelix / Shutterstock.com

By Nathan B. Weller  

Nathan is a professional writer and digital publisher. His work exists at the intersection of cosmology, anthropology, psychology, comparative mythology, storytelling and WordPress. Weird, right? Find him on the interwebs to learn more.

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