When to use WordPress?
If you’ve been wondering whether to learn wordpress then my advice is, YES! DO IT!
You shouldn’t spend time creating sites from scratch when the solutions are already out there.
Patterns
WordPress sites follow a pattern and if your site doesn’t fit in that pattern then by all means avoid WordPress.
So for example, if you wanna create a small Table Reservation system for Fast Food Restaurant then it’s easier to just pick a WP Plugin and a decent theme to go with it.
There’s no reason to create something like that from scratch, building a proper Table Reservation system can definitely take very long.
(If you think what you’re building it’s not something unconventional then go ahead and use WordPress).
Plugins example:
Five Star Restaurant Reservations – WordPress Booking Plugin
For instance, Woocommerce plugin on WordPress is used to create an online store. It takes care of everything, the products, VAT, discounts, calculations, sending confirmatin email, Payments, shipping etc..
WHY would you create all that from scarch? all you want is a simple site that takes orders.
As mentiond it’s all about patterns with WordPress, a lot of the site will fit in that pattern.
So next time you wanna build a site ask yourself is there a Plugin for that?
Obviously that’s just a starting point and it’s good to know the possibilities.
As you get more experienced you’ll start noticing the pattern more clearly, the problems WordPress can solve vs the problems where you NEED to write solutions from scratch. For example, a data heavy system that NEEDS a proper relational database.