In 2021, the exploitable vulnerabilities of WordPress have increased by 142%: more than double compared to 2020, reports the team of researchers of the cybersecurity company RiskBased Security. This data puts the famous content management system (CMS) back in the spotlight, raising a fundamental question: should we look for an alternative?
WordPress, the most famous CMS, but also the most attacked
This system, which was published in 2003 and was designed for the creation of blogs and news sites, has become the most popular when creating any website: from corporate websites to online stores. Its versatility and fame is due to the number of "plugins" (additional code) that add new features, its large community and the fact that is open source.
However, sites created with WordPress suffer more Cross Site Scripting (XSS) related attacks than any other content manager, as mentioned by Imperva in its 2014 report. Such attacks take advantage of certain vulnerabilities to add code and steal information or hijack user sessions. With the rise in vulnerabilities in recent years, these attacks could increase significantly, compromising the security of at least 455 million websites.
In addition to this data, there have been numerous discussions about the drawbacks of using this CMS that seems to be increasingly unstable: from the potential complexity for the user when implementing advanced solutions... to web loading issues due to the enormous amount of resources that some plugins can consume.
But if you do not use WordPress, what other alternative can you choose?
Odoo, a complete and intuitive alternative to Wordpress
The truth is that there are many alternatives to WordPress, such as Joomla or Ghost. However, Odoo is one of the ones that offers the most features and the best performance.
Odoo Community is an open source software system that has no license fee. With it, all the processes of a company are integrated: can you imagine having your online store integrated with your billing without having to use two different programs? With Odoo, it is possible. The system has by default a lot of its own applications, so there is no need to install any additional third-party code: billing, human resources, customer management, e-commerce, website, project management, accounting, inventory...
Although it has so many functionalities, it is not necessary to install them all, so if we just want a simple and corporate website, we can do it without any other functionality. Therefore, this system serves both small projects and larger ones.
In fact, there are several advantages that make Odoo one of the most used systems for almost any project. 7 million users around the world already trust it.
3 advantages of using Odoo in your company
The reasons why this system may be ideal for you (and why it is ideal for so many users) are plenty, but we highlight 3 that place it above others like the aforementioned WordPress:
1 - Everything is connected and in one place
In Odoo, all applications are connected to each other and you will have them all available without having to open other programs.
We are talking about something as simple as not having to look up a customer's contact details in your address book, but adding them and having them in your Odoo database. What if you want to send them a bill later? You will simply have to put their name and the system will fill in the rest of the data you had previously entered. It seems simple, but when you have several programs you often have to enter the same data over and over again.
And if you just want an e-commerce website, forget about integrating any additional program to register payments or an inventory system: if you wish, Odoo will take your inventory into account when offering products and, when a purchase is made on the website, it will generate the register of the payment.
You will be able to check the information of one application in another whenever it is necessary and you will only enter the data once and use it as many times as necessary. Everything at your fingertips.
2 - It uses Python
This fact is more important than it may seem... Python was considered in March 2019 by a study by Mend (formerly WhiteSource) as one of the safest programming languages, above others like PHP.
The latter (PHP) is another programming language used by WordPress and other web applications and also one of the most popular. Although it has some security, a Veracode study published in December 2015 indicated that approximately 86% of the applications programmed with this language presented, at least, an XSS vulnerability, which we have already mentioned.
Python has some features that give it a great ability to reinforce security and, for this reason, many banks trust it.
Besides, the European Union (EU) has recently shown its support to promote the improvement of possible vulnerabilities that may exist in Open Source systems such as LibreOffice, Mastodon and, in particular, Odoo. The choice of these programs (and not others) is due to the fact that they are the ones being used by EU public services, as reported on Joinup, the EU official website dedicated to IT-related issues.
3 - It has his own CMS
When creating a website in Odoo you use its own content manager that will make it easier to provide images and texts or change any element.
It is a visual editor which uses blocks, so you just have to drag the block you want to add to the website. If, for example, you do not like your text and want to put another one, then just click on the text you want to delete, delete it and add your text: you will see the change instantly.
On the other hand, we must make a special mention of its ability to be accessed from anywhere, at any time and on any device. With your username and password you can have all the information you need whenever and wherever you want.
If all this sounds good to you and you would like to start using Odoo for your website, to digitalise the processes of your company or to enjoy all of its functionalities, do not hesitate to contact us!