WordPress: when it fits, install and care

When WordPress fits

WordPress is the default answer for blogs, company sites and small shops: huge theme and plugin ecosystem, cheap hosting everywhere, and a client can edit pages without calling you.

It stops fitting when you need a real catalog with custom warehouse logic — then look at OpenCart or a framework instead of bending WooCommerce past its limits.

Install in five minutes

The famous five minutes assume LAMP is already running: create an empty database, unpack the archive into the web root, open the site and follow the wizard (database name, user, password, site title).

On shared hosting it is usually one click in the panel installer — just make sure it installs the current release, not a two-year-old bundle.

Care and feeding

Three routines keep a WordPress site alive: update core, themes and plugins promptly (most hacks come through stale plugins), keep automated backups off the server, and install a cache plugin before the first traffic spike, not after.

Speed basics

Slow WordPress is almost always the same trio: no cache, oversized images, twenty plugins doing overlapping jobs. Fix in that order: page cache on, images through compression on upload, then audit plugins by deactivating in halves until the culprit shows. Measure with the same tool before and after, or every «optimization» is folklore.

Security minimum

Harden the four usual holes: unique admin username (never «admin»), login attempt limiting, file editing disabled in the dashboard, and uploads restricted by type. Most hacked sites the author has seen fell to one of these four, not to zero-days.