WordPress Event Ticketing

If you hang around WordPress Forums, Facebook groups and other places one common recurring question is "How can I hide that my site uses WordPress?". There is always a range of answers, but the real answer is you are wasting your time.

Hiding WordPress so your client doesn't know

If you want to hide the fact you use WordPress, so your client doesn't know, you are most probably in the wrong game. As a developer, designer or "website builder" it is your responsibility to pick the platform most suitable to your client's website. If you only work with WordPress that isn't a bad thing, most people pick a platform and stick to working with it. But be upfront about it. WordPress for all its flaws is still an excellent piece of software. Something that should be embraced not hastily hidden because you didn't tell your client you were using WordPress to build their site.

Hiding WordPress to charge more

This is almost related to the above, a common reoccurrence is to try and hide the fact you used WordPress to make it look like you built a custom CMS (Content Management System) that you can charge tens of thousands of dollar for. Guess what? You can charge tens of thousands of dollars for a WordPress project as well.

 

Just because WordPress is free and open source, it doesn't mean you should charge peanuts.

 

Many very talented developers spend their time shaping completely custom WordPress builds using a range of technologies. If you want to hide WordPress so you can add some extra dollars. Instead try educating your client on why they should go with WordPress. The benefits it offers and what they can do with this powerful piece of software.

Hiding WordPress for Security Purposes

Hiding WordPress for security reasons is completely unnecessary. Many people believe that by hiding the fact is somehow makes the website unhackable or improves their security ten-fold. None of which is correct. It's true it may stop some very large automated attacks from occurring. On the whole, though it'll do very little. There are many tells on a WordPress site about what makes it a WordPress site, removing these tells without advanced technical know-how would be nearly impossible.

Some plugins claim to hide the fact that you use WordPress. While they do work to a degree, just like doing the work manually they are completely pointless and won't improve your security or anything else as they try and rename files, paths and other aspects of your website. By using such a plugin, you introduce a lot of technical debt that can cause more issues than it would ever have tried to solve, costing you time, money and potentially lost revenue and readership.

Don't hide WordPress for fear of being seen as cheap

You shouldn't try and hide the fact that you use WordPress for fear of being seen as cheap or unprofessional. Quite the opposite in fact.

Some people in life think you should buy the most expensive version of everything, cars, clothes, food, technology. There's always that saying "You get what you pay for." That isn't entirely true though; you might pay a lot of money for someone to build you a site and end up with a load of crap. Then, on the other hand, you might pay someone a few hundred dollars and end up with something much better. Just because something is cheaper, it doesn't make it inherently worse. After all, if you are developing custom theme or certain functionality specifically for the client's needs, that surely qualifies as legit custom work.

Hiding WordPress for customer confidence

You shouldn't need to hide the fact that you use WordPress for customer confidence. However depending on the type of website your running, if it handles sensitive information, is for an instruction such as a bank or something along those lines. While you don't need to hide the fact you use WordPress, it may not be something you want to shout from the rooftops. In those instances, you could just remove any front-end mentions of WordPress such as in your themes footer and modify the login pages to a front-end login on a different login URL from /wp-login.php and not letting users access the WordPress dashboard.

Why You Should want to show the world you use WordPress

WordPress is the most popular online platform powering 28% of all websites on the internet. A huge number.

By using WordPress, you are using software that powers websites for some of the world's largest companies including eBay and Twitter. You are using software that has years worth of combined development experience from hundreds of contributors across nearly every country in the world. Can there be anything cooler than that? To think that people donate their time and companies donate employee time for free to work on a piece of software that thousands upon thousands of people use to make their living. Whether it's as a consultant, a developer or a website owner using WordPress. WordPress is one of the most diverse communities in the world and all the better for it. People overcome language barriers, fears to come together and create the world's most popular open source software. Can your web platform claim to do that?

You still want to hide it?

If you still want to hide the fact you use WordPress you can, you really shouldn't. But you can, there's nothing stopping you and you are fully entitled to do such a thing. Be aware though that by trying to remove all instances of WordPress from your site, re-writing paths, files and everything else you may cause incompatibilities with other plugins, themes, and support teams may refuse to help and assist if the issue has been caused by you modifying WordPress in a way that wasn't intended. You have to remember plugins are written to work on common configurations, rather than specific configurations.

 

Whatever you do, you should never, ever, ever, rename or modify the WordPress core.

 

WordPress comes with one of the best API's around to modify the platform and bend it to your will. Use that. Don't cowboy code your way to what you want to call a completely custom website. If you are uncertain how things work or don't feel comfortable with this but still want it to be done, hire a professional get them to help and assist you.

Conclusion

There's no real reason to hide the fact you use WordPress, and it's advisable that you don't try and hide that fact. Overall though it is a personal choice and an opinion of which everyone is entitled to their own. So have you ever hid that you've used WordPress? Maybe a client wasn't happy that you used WordPress for their website build? Let us know in the comments below.