Hey everyone,
I'm the owner of a well-known Polish press website where we cover news, reviews, and hardware tests. The site has gained quite a bit of popularity, but unfortunately, the system it's built on is very outdated, hard to maintain, and full of bugs. We're looking to completely rewrite the site but want to keep the layout quite similar since we're concerned about SEO—especially avoiding a total overhaul that Google might not favor.
Right now, our site is built using PHP and a custom in-house framework that's become pretty old-school. I know there are many technologies out there for building a new system, and I could use some guidance on choosing the right one. Here's what I was thinking:
* **PHP + Symfony**
* **PHP + CakePHP**
* **Modified WordPress — is this still a good option for 2025?**
We need a system that's easy to use and maintain—nothing too complex that would require a lot of advanced features. I have experience in PHP, CakePHP, Symfony, JavaScript, and the MEAN stack, but since I want to preserve the layout, I'm leaning more towards PHP. I plan to handle the development myself.
Thanks for any help you can offer!
2 Answers
If you're looking for something that's both user-friendly and effective, I'd suggest considering WordPress. It's a great platform for managing content like news and reviews because it comes with a lot of built-in features. However, if you're after more control and don’t mind spending a bit more time on the project, then Symfony might be the way to go. In my experience, it’s very developer-friendly and can be tailored to your specific needs.
Deciding on your tech stack really comes down to a few factors: what features you need, who will maintain the content later, and how you plan to structure that content. Most tools allow you to mesh with your existing URL structure, set up redirects easily, and use canonical tags for anything you change.
We mainly need basics like news and reviews. My team will consist of editors, not programmers. And content will be mostly articles with images and some videos.
I'm worried about WordPress updates breaking things. Have you experienced that? And what about customizing our BBCode-based tag system? Can that work with WordPress?