I want to be upfront about something before this WordPress review gets started.
I did not come back to WordPress because I missed it. I came back because it was the right tool for a specific job. There is a difference, and that distinction shapes everything I am about to tell you.
As a working web designer, I have spent the last few years steering most of my clients away from WordPress. Toward Wix. Toward Squarespace. Toward platforms that are easier to hand off, easier to maintain, and less likely to result in a panicked phone call six months after launch. For most of my clients, that has been the right call.
However, when I decided to build The Designer Review, a content-heavy review and affiliate site that lives or dies on SEO, WordPress was the only honest answer. Nothing else comes close for what this type of site needs.
So after two years away, I came back. Here is what I found.
Why I Chose WordPress for This Project
The decision was not complicated. I needed a platform that could support a large blog, rank well in Google, and scale over time without hitting a ceiling. When those are your primary requirements, WordPress wins by a significant margin.
The SEO plugin ecosystem alone makes the case. Tools like SureRank and All in One SEO give you control over your content optimization that no other platform offers at this level. Additionally, WordPress gives you complete ownership of your data, your code, and your hosting environment. There are no artificial limits on how many pages you can publish (a true pain point with a current client), how much traffic you can receive, or how deeply you can customize the technical SEO of your site.
For a review blog with ambitions to rank for competitive keywords, this matters enormously. Consequently, the decision was made before I even opened a browser tab.
What I Did Not Need WordPress For
It is worth being clear about what I was not trying to do. I did not need a visually stunning, award-winning design. I needed something that looked clean, professional, and credible and then got out of the way so the content could do its job. So if you look at my website and think “who would ever hire her for design?” Now you know why.
This distinction matters because it changes how you should evaluate WordPress for your own situation. If your primary goal is SEO and content scale, WordPress is unmatched. If your primary goal is visual design or client simplicity, it may not be the right fit at all.
Coming Back After Two Years: What Actually Surprised Me
Re-entering WordPress after two years away felt a bit like returning to a city you used to live in. The bones are familiar. However, you have forgotten where everything is, and some things have moved while you were gone.
The first thing that struck me was how many different places you can edit the same thing. This is simultaneously WordPress’s greatest strength and its most persistent frustration.
For example, when I decided to use Elementor as my page builder, I quickly discovered that the settings live in multiple locations. You edit your header and footer in the Theme Builder. You set global fonts and colors in Site Settings. You manage individual page templates in the WordPress page editor. You control theme defaults in the WordPress Customizer. And when something looks wrong, it is not always obvious which of these four places is responsible.
Furthermore, there is no way to preview what a template will do to a page before applying it. You select Elementor Canvas, Elementor Full Width, or Default Template and then discover what it means by looking at the result. For someone returning after a break, this requires either a good memory or a lot of trial and error. I had the latter.
The Three Window Problem
In practice, building this site has required keeping three windows open simultaneously at almost all times. The Elementor editor for design work. The WordPress dashboard for posts, pages, and plugins. And the theme or customizer settings for global style changes.
This is not a dealbreaker. However, it is a genuine inefficiency that more beginner-friendly platforms handle much better. Wix, for example, keeps almost everything in one unified interface. The cognitive load of jumping between environments in WordPress is real and should not be underestimated.
The Elementor Learning Curve
I want to give Elementor a fair assessment here because it deserves one.
Coming in fresh, Elementor is not immediately intuitive. The widget system makes sense once you understand the mental model. Containers hold columns, columns hold elements, elements have content and style settings. However, getting to that mental model requires time.
In the early days of this project, I asked AI a lot of questions about where to find specific settings. That is not a criticism of Elementor. It is an honest reflection of any complex tool’s learning curve. Moreover, it got easier quickly. By the end of the first week, the interface was starting to feel natural.
The One Thing That Still Drives Me Crazy
Elementor does not remove the default WordPress block editor as an option. This means that occasionally, usually by accident, you end up editing a page in the wrong editor. The result is a page that looks completely broken. Elements out of place, styling missing, the whole thing appearing wonky and unfamiliar.
This happens because the block editor and Elementor are fundamentally different systems. Content created in one does not translate cleanly to the other. Therefore, every time you open a page you have to make sure you are clicking “Edit with Elementor” rather than the default edit option.
For an experienced developer this is a minor annoyance. For someone newer to WordPress, it can be genuinely confusing and stressful.
The Client Handoff Problem: A Real Story
I want to share something that shaped my thinking about WordPress long before this project started.
A few years ago, a MedSpa client came to me wanting a WordPress site. I advised against it. She was a solo practitioner with limited technical experience, a busy practice, and no interest in learning a complex backend system. Nevertheless, she had heard that WordPress was the most reputable platform and that other builders were limiting. She wanted WordPress.
So we built it. The site looked great. The handoff went smoothly. And then, about six months later, she came back.
She did not want to add features or redesign anything. She wanted to rebuild the entire site on something simpler. The WordPress backend had become a source of ongoing stress. Plugins needed updating. Settings were confusing. Small changes that should have taken five minutes were taking an hour because she could not remember where anything was.
We rebuilt on a simpler platform and she has not looked back.
What This Taught Me
WordPress is not for everyone. In fact, it is not for most small business owners who want to manage their own website after handoff. The platform rewards people who are willing to invest time in learning it and it punishes those who are not.
As a result, I now have a very clear framework for when I recommend WordPress to clients and when I do not. Unless a client has a genuine need for advanced SEO, a large blog, or complex functionality, I steer them toward something simpler. Every time. That recommendation protects both of us.
Would I Recommend WordPress for a Review or Affiliate Site?
Absolutely, and without hesitation.
For this specific use case, a content-heavy site built to rank in Google, WordPress is simply the best tool available. The SEO capabilities are unmatched. The plugin ecosystem solves almost every problem you can think of. The hosting flexibility means your costs stay low even as traffic grows. And the platform scales without hitting artificial limits.
Additionally, for a site like this one, the client handoff problem does not exist. I am the client. I manage the backend. The complexity that makes WordPress difficult for non-technical users is manageable for a working designer who is willing to invest the time in learning it.
The Honest Tradeoff
That investment of time is real. Coming back after two years, I spent significantly more time in settings, forums, and AI conversations than I would have if I had built on Wix or Squarespace. Some of that time was relearning things I had forgotten. Some of it was learning Elementor properly for the first time.
However, none of that time was wasted. Every hour spent understanding WordPress makes the next project faster. Furthermore, the SEO foundation this site now has would simply not be possible on another platform at this level.
The One Thing I Would Tell My Past Self
Put a time limit on learning new things.
WordPress is vast. There is always another plugin to explore, another setting to configure, another optimization to make. Without boundaries, it is extraordinarily easy to spend an entire afternoon going down a rabbit hole that has nothing to do with your actual goal.
In the early weeks of building this site, I fell into this trap repeatedly. I would start trying to fix one thing and end up three tabs deep into something completely unrelated. Meanwhile, the actual work, writing articles, building the homepage, setting up affiliate programs, was waiting.
The fix is simple but requires discipline. Set a timer. Give yourself thirty minutes to solve a problem. If you have not solved it in thirty minutes, either ask for help or move on and come back to it later. The site does not need to be perfect before it can start working for you.
Have a Clear Vision Before You Start
Equally important is knowing what you actually need before you open WordPress for the first time. The platform will present you with endless options. Themes, plugins, page builders, SEO tools, caching systems, security plugins. The options are genuinely overwhelming.
If you go in without a clear picture of what you need, you will spend weeks making decisions that do not matter yet. Consequently, I would recommend writing down your five core requirements before installing a single plugin. For this site, mine were simple. SEO, blogging, clean design, affiliate link management, and contact forms. Everything else was secondary.
The Verdict on This WordPress Review
WordPress remains the best platform for content-heavy, SEO-driven websites. That has not changed in the two years I was away, and it is unlikely to change anytime soon.
However, it is not the right tool for every job. For small business clients who need a simple, manageable website they can update themselves, there are better options. For solo practitioners, restaurants, service businesses, and anyone who wants a website that just works without a learning curve, Wix or Squarespace will serve them better.
For a designer building a review site with real SEO ambitions? WordPress is the answer. It was the right call coming back. I would make the same decision again.
See how WordPress compares to other platforms →
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