Laravel Vs. WordPress: What You Need to Know for Web Development

Are you a developer who is looking for a versatile framework that offers a unique blend of flexibility, agility, scalability, and convenience? If your answer is yes, you'd be surprised to learn that both Laravel and WordPress are excellent choices! 

Laravel is an open-source PHP web framework that supports cross-platform operating systems while WordPress is used primarily for content management. Both are free, highly reliable, and used by organizations of all sizes for software and web application development purposes. However, each has different use cases and is ideal for various projects.

Let’s dive deep and explore them below.

Laravel vs WordPress: A Side-By-Side Comparison

Here’s a comparison of Laravel and WordPress at a glance.

Laravel is considered remarkable among developers due to its extensive documentation, refined syntax, and active community. It is a great choice for those who want multi-level customization and an adaptable framework. WordPress was originally developed as a blogging platform but quickly turned into a comprehensive content management system. More than 40% of websites around the world are built using WordPress CMS and it has a solid reputation due to its enormous library of themes and plugins. WordPress is great for small business owners, startups, and individuals who do not have extensive coding expertise but rapidly want to launch and deploy their websites.

Additional Key Differences Between Laravel and WordPress: 

1. Laravel supports code reusability as applications or websites grow and the code is automatically kept well-organized. In WordPress, the developers are responsible for code maintenance and execution.

2. Laravel’s community offers limited support and there are not many resources available. The WordPress community is highly active, and friendly, and offers plenty of walkthroughs and tutorials that help new developers get started.

3. Laravel provides various features for security like authorization, authentication, inversion of control, etc. Every update introduces new releases and includes bug fixes. WordPress security is confined to the use of well-established plugins and authentication is a trade-off if they are not regularly updated.

4. Laravel SEO defines customized routes that require to be taken care of. WordPress handles all the SEO basics and optimizes web pages automatically for the best site performance.

5. WordPress does not require the use of databases as it uses static data mostly. Laravel lets developers use databases in their ways.

6. Laravel uses an MVC-based architecture which splits the application into three main components – Model, View, and Controller. This approach isolates data from the application logic and makes it easier to do maintenance over time. The controller communicates with the model and the model links with databases and retrieves requested data. WordPress architecture is primarily based on plugins and additional features can be added, thus offering a high degree of customization. The CMS can be used on its own as well. Keep in mind that WordPress plugins can only be used with self-hosted WordPress websites and not all plugins can be freely added or embedded. The good news is that users can install appropriate plugins to meet business requirements and add galleries, widgets, SEO optimization tools, and other functions.

Laravel vs. WordPress: Key Features

Key Features of Laravel

1. Laravel lets users create as many routes as they want and configure them. It also offers the ability to protect routes with middleware, limit HTTP requests, and enable continuous monitoring.  Laravel queues can launch multiple jobs as application tasks and complete them in the background. It offers unified API queueing for multiple queue backends like Redis, Amazon SQS, and other relational databases.
2. Laravel prevents cross-site scripting attacks and generates secret tokens for all users during each session. Any request made to applications will be cross validated with the tokens and invalid tokens are automatically rejected. Malicious applications will not be assigned tokens and Laravel safeguards applications from cross-site request forgeries too. The sessions store information about users across multiple requests and the framework supports several session backends which can be accessed using the Laravel API.
3. Laravel offers seamless database migrations and enables teams from different platforms and domains to share similar database structures. It provides many helpers global functions to use its fundamental features and can dump the contents of variables to web browsers, thus aiding in debugging and preventing malicious script executions.
4. Laravel mitigates performance-related issues for websites by applying regular caching. It is set up to use the default file cache driver and provides out-of-the-box support for famous caching backends like DynamoDB, Memcached, etc. 

Key Features of WordPress

1. WordPress.org is free, open-source and self-hosted. It offers countless customization options and lets beginners install and use the platform as a part of their website. WordPress.com is a premium and paid service that allows users to launch small websites and sell products online. It is not as scalable as WordPress.org.
2. WordPress allows contributors to publish content on websites and offers high engagement. User management features enable developers to assign custom roles and export or import capabilities using CSV files. WordPress has a fully functional media management system that lets users store and share text, images, captions, videos, and other media. There are several built-in image editing tools included for optimizing website images.
3. WordPress is compatible with modern web browsers and its CMS core is compliant with the latest W3C standards. The platform has a built-in commenting functionality, can easily filter spam, and lets users create forums on their websites.
4. When it comes to content publishing, WordPress gives developers full control and creativity. Users can make unlimited post revisions, drafts, and edits, and publish them. They can also toggle the privacy of posts and pages and choose to make them public or private. There is an option to password-protect WordPress publications too.

Laravel vs WordPress: Use Cases

1. Laravel offers unparalleled customize and a wide variety of features that make it suitable for designing highly complex, scalable, and customizable applications. It can build enterprise apps from scratch, design billing systems, project management solutions, customer support features, etc. Businesses can manage application workloads, remove bugs, and push frequent updates. WordPress makes constant improvements to its functionalities and has evolved over the years to become more than a blogging platform. It is suitable for designing community websites, e-commerce websites, business websites, and membership websites.
2. Laravel’s authentication system is simple, effective, and offers strong security. Laravel can secure against cross-site request forgeries (CSRF), and SQL injection attacks, and provides cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) support. WordPress is not secure by default but has several security plugins which can enhance security and extend its features.
3. Laravel is completely free to use but requires an experienced PHP backend developer to write code and build web apps. It can be expensive to hire Laravel developers as they will need to design web features and site functionalities from scratch. WordPress is not completely free because users still have to pay for the themes and plugins. However, in the long run, it saves money since users don’t require any coding expertise, thus making it less expensive than Laravel development services.
4. WordPress is simple to understand, and beginners can start building a new website in just 10 minutes. WordPress was made for non-developers and has a rich library of educational tutorials and resources. Laravel is meant for experienced PHP developers and although it has a simple syntax, the learning curve is steep and complex. Developers with no prior coding experience cannot use the Laravel framework.
5. Laravel projects take longer to complete on average than WordPress projects. WordPress has pre-built themes which speed up project development. Laravel doesn’t offer built-in SEO features and users need to rely on external packages to improve SEO performance. WordPress websites come with built-in SEO optimization and rank well on search engines. Yoast is a popular WordPress SEO plugin and there are many other similar SEO tools available to download.

Conclusion,

Whether an organization chooses to use Laravel or WordPress for website development will depend on its size, budget, and individual requirements. To use Laravel, developers need to know how to write code using Object Oriented Programming languages. Although Laravel and WordPress are both written in PHP, the key distinction is one is optimized for web development while the other can be customized to fit versatile requirements. 

Laravel can be thought of as a toolbox with different features and resources included. It is more costly than other frameworks and requires a good amount of coding experience. WordPress applications are ready-to-go and projects can be deployed or scrapped instantly. It is harder to scale WordPress websites since it requires rewriting projects using different web frameworks to make them more secure and scalable. Laravel reuses the code for existing projects and updates automatically as websites scale up, which is another huge advantage.

Both Laravel and WordPress have their pros and cons, but we can safely say that they will continue to be used in the future. It is always better to learn how to code, upgrade your existing skills, and take advantage of these frameworks. For those who want to get a headstart, Clarion Technologies helps build offshore technology teams and hire Laravel developers. Whether it’s building custom web applications, integrating APIs, or designing dynamic user interfaces, the company’s Laravel development services are top-notch and streamline agile development. Clarion Technologies also offers exclusive WordPress development services. Users can build progressive web apps, SaaS solutions, and e-commerce portals for their businesses. To delve deeper into the latest enhancements and updates in Laravel 10, please visit this blog. If you're interested in exploring Laravel development services or wish to hire skilled Laravel developers, don't hesitate to reach out to the Clarion Technologies team today to kickstart your project.