WordPress website issues.

Hey there ROgerparker,

Good question, I definitely understand your concern about down time and ease of use of the admin functionality of your CMS. I’ll try to quickly address some of your concerns:

Is ExpressionEngine as flexible as WordPress: I’d definitely say “yes it is” actually much more so. That’s an easy one. You can build just about any type of website you want using eeCMS. It’s extremely flexible in what you’d be able to make your website look like, both in the website itself and the back-end admin or control panel area. If you’re working with someone who is able to code, they’ll likely be very happy about the new environment because it makes the process of building a beautiful and easy to use website a helluva lot easier and more sane. That’s definitely been my experience.

Now where EE is very different from WordPress is that there is no click to install theme network for adding functionality or changing the visual theming of the website and the focus is not on everything being free or cheap over quality. No one will be trying to gouge you, but folks generally want to be paid for the work they do. ExpressionEngine itself relies on you having a knowledgeable and capable team to build it. When all is said and done, you’ll end up with a website that works really well, is stable, secure, and reliable for years; which is a must if you’re website is integral to making revenue.

If a theme network is the biggest area of importance for you, it’s something that you won’t get with EE, so then maybe not the fit you’re looking for. Their plugins/addons are not 1 click installs….yet. However, not having that functionality has allowed ExpressionEngine to be much more secure and stable without the press worthy incidences that WordPress is known for - you don’t see instances of 100k plus websites being hacked because of exploits within those same plugins. #eeCMS definitely isn’t perfect (no solution is), but it’s going to be a great, and in my experience a much better experience than what I’ve seen from WordPress, initially and in the long run. EE is geared towards non-profits, businesses, and professionals and everything about how things are done within the CMS and the community reflect that. So, you’ll notice that the developers and agencies who work in the forums are professional and highly skilled, as they should be; and they work to provide quality solutions instead of focusing sole attention on creating the cheapest low cost fix that may not be the “right” solution for actually addressing your needs. If you have concerns, they’ve also got a Pro Network as well and over at Director-EE you can find folks who do work with ExpressionEngine too. So you’re likely not going to get a website built with ExpressionEngine in the hundreds of dollars price range as you’ll see claims for around WordPress, though most of those don’t usually end well and end up forcing you to get your site done and then re-done multiple times over; so you spend a lot, it’s just in stages…for something you’re likely not really even all that happy with in the end. Def keep researching like you are to find the best fit for your needs.

Support network: ExpressionEngine is different from WordPress as well in that you can get official support directly from EllisLab, the software company that creates it. Check out their support info here or click the “Support” button above, they are really great to work with. I’ve used both their initial free support as well as their paid support; well worth the money, and what you’re going to get from their paid support is leaps-and-bounds better than what you could ever expect in most free forums. They’re knowledgeable, patient and friendly, and you’ll get up-to-speed really quickly as they help you out with your website.

Downtime: Well that’s a tricky one. The way we personally typically work is to build our websites in a development area first. That allows the production website (your current site) to stay active and allows you to keep making money while the new site is being built. Once the new website is built then your developer will transitions from the old website (taking it down) and moving the new website from development into production. Some factors that are involved in that include copying the information from the WordPress database into the new database they’ll make for the ExpressionEngine website - syncing the data. That includes the articles, posts and other content specific information from your old site. They’ll also copy your assets over too - images and video. Like I had said, that’ll all be done before the switch over to allow things to be as seamless as possible.

One of the advantages you’ll have with ExpressionEngine over WordPress is that your database will be pretty clean because you won’t have all kinds of visual website layout code integrated into your database - which means updating your site’s design in the future is much faster and easier and will no longer require you to lose your content in order to do. ExpressionEngine is a “Headless” CMS - while WP mixes all of the code stuff (which you shouldn’t have to deal with) together with your blog posts and content. In my experience, I’ve noticed many website designs are changed frequently because finding a good fit is hard, working with a pro helps alleviate that.

Specifically how long it’ll take to move your CMS is dependent on your skills if you’re doing this yourself, or whether you’re having a developer help you out. If you’re getting help it can happen more quickly, but you will have some downtime it’s unavoidable; especially because you’re talking about syncing up the information from the old website with the new one and not wanting to miss any info. I can’t give you a specific answer cause it’s unique to each site.

Good luck! Reuben