Hi,

You wrote a big letter. :) never mind.

WordPress is really good for simple blogs, one page, cms or so and so. But when it's come to enterprise level where you need take care many things like security, durability, scalability, speed, web services api and so on, in that case you need so reliable framework like Laravel, Phalcon, Zend or many are in the market.

You should choose Laravel because It's very easy to pick up and use Community is very big Yes you can get max of issues already answered over internet. You are completely free to develop any kind of web software/application. Secured web services. Moreover, Laravel 5.2 is fully compatible with PHP 7. This newest version of PHP language makes web applications faster and more secure, and it requires fewer servers to handle the same amount of requests per second (reduce hosting expenses). At the same time, most of the themes and plugins of WordPress are not fully compatible with PHP 7. Moving WordPress website from PHP 5 to PHP 7 can be a time-consuming thing to make.

and there are so so many advantages.

Thanks.

@abdulkhaliq : Thank you for your response. I really appreciate it.

I'm already building stuff with php7; and except for the theme; I don't use anything third-party. Would you mind explaining a bit more about security and scalability? WP seems to be quite secure and scalable as well. I'm wondering if scalability should be my priority just yet; I've a couple of thousand users which WP seems to handle very well for 2GB of memory.

At this time, my main concern is mostly about knowing the biggest advantages of switching over to Laravel because learning and converting my existing code to Laravel is going to take at least 3-4 months of time.

I would say the biggest advantage is flexibility and future maintenance. As the number of your apps grows, and your user base grows with it, you will have hard decisions to make about any breaking changes future versions of WP brings. This maintenance cost will become significant eventually. With a custom build like Laravel, there isn't such a need to update at every opportunity. With WP it is almost mandated that you must upgrade with every release, and you may be forced to fix your apps for compatibility at the time.

Wordpress security while OK, it is a platform that does attract a lot of attacks. Building in Laravel or any other custom framework will reduce these drive-by script-kiddie type nuisances. Also there are multiple security patches released for WP on a frequent basis which mandate an update (more maintenance and possible breaking changes).

I think you overestimate how long it will take to learn Laravel; if you already have a solid PHP foundation I think a month or less will be adequate. Why not give it a shake for a few weeks and see how far you can track.

In terms of community support, it's mixed. I think you won't know until you try it out, but as I said earlier, I don't think it will take you long to get going. If you understand data models and some basic database design, it will make your job easier.

I would not convert your existing code to Laravel; just code something new and see how you go. You might decide that a different direction or platform is preferable.

I don't think you need to worry about scale-ability just yet. "A few thousand users" while is sounds like a lot, is very low in terms of concurrent users, which is what matters. Once your sites are big enough to worry about load, you should be in a position to throw money at the problem ;)

It is always good to have many tools in your toolbox. Laravel should allow more flexibility than Wordpress. Ultimately you can only push WP as far as it's boundaries allow, outside of which it becomes harder and harder to fit your app into something that it wasn't designed for. Laravel (or any other framework that allows custom build) doesn't have this limitation. I'm not familiar with Custom Posts Types, but in terms of functionality, if it actually does what you need, then stick with it. If the WP functionality does all you need then the only reason to migrate to a framework is the ongoing maintenance costs that comes with being tied to WP which is constantly having updates.

M

Hi TheBigK,

I hope I am allowed to post links around here, I am new to the forum. Maybe this article could help you decide a little as well as it discusses WordPress vs custom coding (Laravel):

https://nerdcode.io/how-to-increase-your-productivity-by-being-a-lazy-coder/

Have a great day!