An idea for alternative to WordPress

So.. 99% of gambling affiliates use WordPress for their websites, and it's a great CMS - there are plenty of themes and plugins available, however it comes with some drawbacks too, specifically
- it is hard to optimize for speed - for various reasons - even with caching plugins enabled;
- it is hard to pick a theme (too many options in general, but only a few high-quality gambling-related themes are available);
- page builders like Elementor are too bloatedcomplex;
- needs hosting (not all hosting providers are happy with gambling content, also there are speed issues);
- security - loads of hackers and bots are trying to hack wp-admin folder day and night;
- update hell - constant updates of WP itself, themes and plugins can break things.

Then there are other website builders like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace etc., but those are barely usable at all for gambling affiliate websites.

I like to make fun projects on the web, so I have this crazy idea - should I make a website builder specifically for gambling affiliate sites?


Here are key concepts of this thing in my mind:

- all-in-one platform for building and hosting gambling affiliate websites;
- themes with customizable blocks;
- easy to use editor;
- page types homepage, casino review, slot review, bonus, blog post, etc.;
- optional auto-import of basic casino data and images (basic data for casino review pages);
- optional auto-import of basic slots data and demo games (basic data for slot review pages);
- works as a static website generator (hereby sites are optimized for lightning speed, clean code);
- websites are optimized for SEO by default;
- GEO targeting by default (choose to disable whole website or exclude restricted casinos from showing in selected GEOs);
- link cloaking (for pretty affiliate links);
- lazy loading images;
- email capture via popups;
- custom domains;
- integrated analytics;

What do you think of this idea, guys? Would you use it?

Recent estimates peg wordpress at having more then 455 million installs.

Until some new latest greatest cms has a few million installs and thousands of developers looking under the hood and a LONG time frame of bug checking getting mass market acceptance there would be many reasons to remain skeptical.

Most of what you suggest in your concept list, wp already does much of that with the right choice of theme and a small number of plugins.

Wordpress is tried and tested over many YEARS and millions of installs.

Why re-engineer the wheel?

I personally think creating a wp theme that covers your list would have far more appeal.

Rick
Universal4

I agree with Rick :) Wordpress is hard to compete with because people know it and trust it.

The idea is good since almost all WP pages looks the same and some simple improvements could help to attract more traffic.
Maybe the better idea to create a new theme with build-in plugins. And if this theme will be successful to develop it to something bigger :)

Even if you would like to create a gambling affiliate oriented page builder, you might as well build it on top of WP. Would probably save you some work and time.
If that's coupled with a custom created theme designed specifically for your page builder - I can imagine it would be a rather cool thing to have.

Won't the continued development of the new WordPress page builder and the use of custom blocks be the demise of standalone page builders?

You would need considerable resources and budget to maintain a bespoke CMS platform with all those functional features. I think it would be near impossible to compete with what Wordpress has to offer.

WP is constantly evolving, for instance themes will be a thing of the past soon as WP is headed towards full site editing features. It seems as if third party bulky page builders and themes won't be needed much in the coming years. The focus will be on blocks, plugins.

To find a hosting server with better server response time and server side caching is no an issue and it dose not cost expensive any more, let me know and Ill help you if about the wordpress if you need it.

About the WP alternative, Im interested to support you to make it happen, the idea is a good one.

People are making very limited gambling WP themes at Envato and making 5-6 figure profit in a year, imagine what your custome CMS can make, but also it will bring huge headaches.

I found the replies to my post very interesting! Here are my thoughts on some of them.

On building (a potential gambling theme or site builder) on top of WordPress:
- To be honest, it will be easier for me to build my idea from scratch because I don't want to learn ins and outs of WP theme development, and to achieve absolute site speed, it is essential to make this a static site generator that outputs a clean and optimized code, which is impossible in WP.

Why re-engineer the wheel?
- I like challenges! And, because a better wheel can be made for specific purpose! :) Example: WordPress is good for publishing, but look what Ghost (ghost . org) has done - they made an open source WordPress alternative, which is cleaner, more polished and catered to a specific audience, and their product is really successful.

On clunky website builders
- In my experience, all page builders built on top of WordPress are clunky, I have tried quite a few of them. It can be done much, much nicer.

So here's what I have decided to do:

- I'm going to make a MVP (minimum viable product) gambling affiliate site builder and offer it for testing to a limited number of GPWA members for free in order to receive feedback;

Please send me your e-mail address in private message if you want to be a tester :) Feature suggestions are also welcome!

Building a workable theme for wordpress, you could have hundreds if not thousands of users you could scale up quickly.

A complete standalone alternative to WP, as others have said will be difficult hill to climb, it will have to be backend independant in that it will have to run on all flavors of linux, IIS and litespped (with obvious minimum requirement of php at a certain level a reasonable expectation)

If the entire codebase only needs php and nothing else, this should not be an issue on any server that can run php.

Good luck reinventing the wheel, but to truly gain marketshare, fighting directly against wordpress to do so seems short sighted, and you would need to change the mind of 450 million developers? (or at least thousands of developers in the affiliate space)

However, developers have been know to take such a crazy idea over the years and re-engineer the way things are done, not everyone agreed that wordpress would ever replace drupal or Joomla.

Sincerely good luck.

Rick
Universal4

What's the better alternative? WordPress has lots of themes and plugins available and there are security/caching/SEO plugins to take care of everything you mentioned.

Nonsense, nobody wants that or need it.
WP is flexibility, speed, usability 100/100
You waste your time.
Even IF you would come with a all in one solution which works, I would avoid like plague to put all my business assets under one umbrella!

I feel it's mainly devs that used to/are bashing WP over the years, but it's quite a very long way now and is very hard to beat. The main drawdown maybe for WP is if you want to set up a multi-language site, and you need to use plugins for that it becomes cumbersome.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jay

I feel it's mainly devs that used to/are bashing WP over the years, but it's quite a very long way now and is very hard to beat. The main drawdown maybe for WP is if you want to set up a multi-language site, and you need to use plugins for that it becomes cumbersome.

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You shouldn't use auto translation plugins anyway.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pokeraussie

You shouldn't use auto translation plugins anyway.

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Nah it's not that. Content should still be translated by a native speaker.
What I mean is the 'best' plugin for a ML setup is probably WPML, and it doesn't work very well in terms of setup, as well as slowing down sites significantly

WPML is heavy. I also tried TranslatePress quite lightweight but it blocks the development of the site and over time working with it becomes a torment even though it seems fast and simple at first.
There is also Multilangual Press, based on a pretty separate WP installation.

I personally, after numerous tests, recommend Polylang. It's lightweight and gives freedom as to the translated pages that Translatepress, for example, does not.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jay

Nah it's not that. Content should still be translated by a native speaker.
What I mean is the 'best' plugin for a ML setup is probably WPML, and it doesn't work very well in terms of setup, as well as slowing down sites significantly

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by dannyx

WPML is heavy. I also tried TranslatePress quite lightweight but it blocks the development of the site and over time working with it becomes a torment even though it seems fast and simple at first.
There is also Multilangual Press, based on a pretty separate WP installation.

I personally, after numerous tests, recommend Polylang. It's lightweight and gives freedom as to the translated pages that Translatepress, for example, does not.

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Yep most language plugins are just not great for Wordpress. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give Polylang a try.

Quote:

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- it is hard to optimize for speed - for various reasons - even with caching plugins enabled;
- it is hard to pick a theme (too many options in general, but only a few high-quality gambling-related themes are available);
- page builders like Elementor are too bloatedcomplex;
- needs hosting (not all hosting providers are happy with gambling content, also there are speed issues);
- security - loads of hackers and bots are trying to hack wp-admin folder day and night;
- update hell - constant updates of WP itself, themes and plugins can break things.

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Not a single point is true.
Cloudflare + Cloudflare plugin + a well coded theme = top speeds and not online on bs tests.

Themes, there are million themes that may not be gambling related but can be adjusted. Even in this niche there are at least 10 I can think of, from the top of my head and each can be customized to beyond recognition.

Nothing on the Elementor is bloated or complexed anymore. It took me a few months to move from html/js coding to the simplicity, but now it's a lot more efficient. Blocks have really made, creating a site a two step procress.

Anything needs hosting what are you saying, that point alone makes no sense at all. Free hosting is NOT having control over your website. Get a hosting company that's OK with gambling. Dozens of those around here. Afterall all of us are hosted somewhere you know, and none of us have to hide.

Again, tons of plugins like Wordfence, or anything else, combined with a cloud provider will give you the best possible defense. No site is unhackable, what difference does it make if it's Wordpress or simple .html as long as you have secured everything to the best of your knowledge?

Don't use a lot of plugins then if you don't want things to break. And even if you do, and they are some of the most main stream ones they are updated within the day.

So there, if these were your reasons to be looking for a Wordpress alternative, turn around and stop.