CMS Development

MNand
Member

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

Hello
Please guide me on how can I change the CMS of my website. Actually, I have a website named apkquirk on CMS WordPress but the speed and performance of WordPress are to much slow. So, that's why I want to migrate from WordPress to Hubspot. 

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Anton
Recognized Expert | Diamond Partner
Recognized Expert | Diamond Partner

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

@Ntbrown: Here we go again.

Interpersonal relations are not one of your strengths, right? If a user has made his coice to switch from software a to b - why do make him insecure with such a unqualified and false statement like "...poor coice..." or "You should also take any advice on this forum with a large grain of salt".

Really man, get your facts right and think about "non-developers" who most likely don't even know how to optimize a page.

Also: If you haven't noticed: This is a HubSpot specific Board. Of course everybody will say "HubSpot is better". Just as it would be in a WordPress/Joomla/Drupal/Typo3... Community/Board. Everybody says that the software which the Community/Board belongs to is better than the other(s). 

 

An old and bloated WordPress install is most likely the reason why a WP page is slow - sure - but don't tell the user to "clean it up" if he already made his decision to leave his WordPress behind. 

Speedwise HubSpot is by default better optimized than WordPress and can be optimized way better without writing tons of lines of code, installing plugins(which will bloat the install again). Just one small example: if you shouldn't know it - HubSpot got a build-in CDN which (like every CDN) and on CMS enterprise you can even controll a ton of settings without the need of - again - develop alsmost neverending lines of code. 

 

And since it seems that you're a number-guy:
Here's a screen of a GTMetrics comparison of a client project I've optimized for page-speed

image.png 

Left and right are two GTMetrics runs of HubSpot - center the original page which is based on Ruby done by the clients developers a while ago.

 

Furthermore: You say that "There's a reason the vast majority of "HubSpot" agencies have WordPress websites.". Maybe that's the case sure. Have you ever thought about that there are a lot of HubSpot partners out there who most likely don't have own HubSpot developers and don't offer development jobs. That's why they're sticking to WordPress because "Everybody can build and maintain a WordPress site". There is no need for highly skilled developers or something like that.They're aiming for the best possible marketing/sales/service consulting solution and don't want to automate/personalize everything. You buy a theme, you install it, you build your page. Done. And if you need a specific function there is a plugin. Wow! Such development! Much great! Wow! 

That's most likely the case why most pages are based on WordPress. Not because of great performance or ease of optimization.

 

HubSpot was (and most likely will be) always "marketers first". They've done an awesome job with developing a piece of software which makes everybodys lifes easier. The marketer can't "destroy" the page and can build quite fast new pages and the developer can easily create new functions.

You should try to think as somebody who doesn't even know how to paste the text from google docs/word directly into a rich-text module correctly and don't understand why the formatting is broken. (I'm facing such client questions at least once a week).

 

@dennisedson have you grabbed some popcorn yet?

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Ntbrown
Contributor

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

@Anton You spent 60% of this ^ re-affirming my point(s) and the remaining making other points that also confirmed my previous statements. So, again, much like your other post - do you have a point of actual substance?

 

If a user has made his coice to switch from software a to b - why do make him insecure with such a unqualified and false statement like "...poor coice..." or "You should also take any advice on this forum with a large grain of salt".

That's hardly an unqualified statement or false. It has nothing to do with making someone "insecure". And everything to do with making someone carefully think about what they're about to do before they inadvertently shoot themselves in the foot as their migration clearly has yet to be completed.

 At which point if they've weighed that and want to proceed they clearly can however they wish. I'd bet they migrate things look good and they eventually go "wait how do I manage my sitemap, do SEO ops, ..." which is a common pain point very unique to this platform excluding performance entirely.

You should also take any advice on this forum with a large grain of salt".

As anyone should on any forum / piece of advice.

 

Again, re-affirming my point:

 

Also: If you haven't noticed: This is a HubSpot specific Board. Of course everybody will say "HubSpot is better". Just as it would be in a WordPress/Joomla/Drupal/Typo3... Community/Board. Everybody says that the software which the Community/Board belongs to is better than the other(s).

For this...

 

Speedwise HubSpot is by default better optimized than WordPress and can be optimized way better without writing tons of lines of code, installing plugins(which will bloat the install again).

I never said otherwise. What I did say is that on WordPress you can write tons of lines of code if you want and push the envelope of performance not to mention it's easy integrations with SSGs etc that HubSpot is simply lacking in, because nobody cares about this niche CMS to where those are currently available. Whereas on HubSpot you simply cannot. The structure of the platform itself prohibits it.

 

Just one small example: if you shouldn't know it - HubSpot got a build-in CDN which (like every CDN) and on CMS enterprise you can even controll a ton of settings without the need of - again - develop alsmost neverending lines of code.

Clearly. A CDN isn't a selling point it's a pre-requisite for the modern web. Much like all "HubSpot features" it's just "good enough". And no it's not built-in it's just integrated with CloudFlare. Very difficult.

 

Left and right are two GTMetrics runs of HubSpot - center the original page which is based on Ruby done by the clients developers a while ago.

And a contrived example that does nothign but show the severely lacking skillset of developers with a lower level framework does what exactly? Ironically, Rust + WASM is one of the fastest ways to develop currently if you want near native performance.

 

Furthermore: You say that "There's a reason the vast majority of "HubSpot" agencies have WordPress websites.". Maybe that's the case sure. Have you ever thought about that there are a lot of HubSpot partners out there who most likely don't have own HubSpot developers and don't offer development jobs.

Clearly. They're marketing agencies. Not dev shops as I explicitly noted - again. Even if these marketing agencies DID try to hire a developer NO developer worth their salt would ever degrade themselves to this level and send their career to die with a marketing agency. So, because of a marketing agencies severely lacking funds and talent pool they have to hire dev/designer/marketer/seo bundles by people desperate enough to do that type of work.

 

That's why they're sticking to WordPress because "Everybody can build and maintain a WordPress site". There is no need for highly skilled developers or something like that.They're aiming for the best possible marketing/sales/service consulting solution and don't want to automate/personalize everything. You buy a theme, you install it, you build your page. Done. And if you need a specific function there is a plugin. Wow! Such development! Much great! Wow!

Obviously. Hence why I said I'm not a fan and why your WordPress is probably a steaming pile of **bleep** if you outsourced it anyone that "can build and maintain a WordPress website" which per my statement tends to be the $5/hr india sells or severely lacking talent.

 

At which point I explicitly noted I don't like WordPress. Leading into this statement....

 

Wow! Such development! Much great! Wow! 

At which point I explictly noted - again - I prefer lower level solutions with that control and implictly requiring better developers / skillset. Because, at the end of the day any CMS or "easy" solution glosses over what people don't know - per my statement - and there simply is not an easy way to encapsulate performant web development on this type of of a solution. Agan, you can get it "good enough", but that's not "performant" and doing a lot of "tricks" to make lighthouse happy is simply perceived performance and not true performance. There's nothing important about HubSpot's severely underoptimized bundles amongst many other things. I can make any website I want "performant" by throwing in a script laoder and deferring everything. Much wow!

 

At which point I explictly noted the problems with CMS' and other approaches themselves.

 

HubSpot was (and most likely will be) always "marketers first". They've done an awesome job with developing a piece of software which makes everybodys lifes easier.

At no point did I debate this. Sure it's "easy". Although, if I'm being a real curmedgeon that editing UI and overall UI is... dated to say the least. There are much better options on the market if people want an "easy" editing experience. Again, HubSpot tends to just be a poor mans way of doing things and bundle of things you have better options of elsewhere that looks like a "hot sell" to marketers - per my statement - again.

 

he marketer can't "destroy" the page and can build quite fast new pages and the developer can easily create new functions.

This is patently false and a ludicrous statement. I get what you're trying to get at. "If a developer has encapsualted X, Y, Z via modules / optimizations behind the scenes the marketers in theory can have easy editing / do what they want without screwing up.". But, that is entirely dependent on levels of complexity required.  

 

You should try to think as somebody who doesn't even know how to paste the text from google docs/word directly into a rich-text module correctly and don't understand why the formatting is broken. (I'm facing such client questions at least once a week).

Which again... as I noted is re-affirming just one more of my points. Per your own statement that "easy editing experience" inherently fails, because again people don't know what they don't know and inevitably just end up asking devs to the bulk of the work anyway, becasue they simply can't handle it. Whether it's lacking effort, critical thinking skills, etc you be the judge. Hence why I personally prefer platforms that are inherently restrictive and force people to take that route from the start so things are actuall done right to start with instead of a marketer trying screwing everything up and inevitably having to have someone fix it. Happens every single time.

 

There are some performance ops you simply can't encapsulate this way - you could.... were HubSpot a better platform. But, it's not - which again is my point here.

 

HubSpot was (and most likely will be) always "marketers first".

Which is exactly why it fails

 

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Anton
Recognized Expert | Diamond Partner
Recognized Expert | Diamond Partner

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

Hi @MNand

WordPress can be very slow because of:

  • to many (unused) plugins
  • to many (unused) themes
  • to many Javascripts
  • images that are not optimized for web(I consider images over 200kb not optimized) 
  • webspace on a slow server
  • old/wrong PHP version
  • and many other reasons

Migrating from WordPress to HubSpot is a great choice since you don't have to worry about to many plugins/themes and a slow server.

But you'll have to keep in mind that you either have to develop your own custom theme(best way to have only those options that you really need), buy a good premium theme from the marketplace(premium themes costs more than 500$ imo) and configure/modify it to your needs or use a default theme provided by HubSpot. They're great to quick start a HubSpot page and can be extended to your needs. 

If you want to go the custom theme route - you should start here and here.

 

best, 

Anton

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John
Top Contributor | Platinum Partner
Top Contributor | Platinum Partner

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

Our website, which runs ad tracking, gsap, live chat, and more get's green pretty much across the board in those links you provided and "isn't up to snuff"? Ok, well I guess business must be booming for you if you're doing better, so I'm happy for you. We'd all love for you to update your profile with your website – maybe we'd learn a thing or two.

 

I'd like to put things into perspective for Ascend's site, however. Our website is faster than apple's iphone 12 landing page on 2G – all while running animations and tracking.

 

And back to the main point – we've never had a customer want to go back to WordPress after making the switch. If there are any content creators who can't use HubSpot's "text editors" and have scaling problems, then perhaps their developers didn't set up their website, crm, and editing experience properly.



I like kudos almost as much as cake – a close second.

Ntbrown
Contributor

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

 

Our website, which runs ad tracking, gsap, live chat, and more get's green pretty much across the board in those links you provided" 

That wasn't my point - and no they're most certainly not green across the board unless you're looking at the little blocks at the top lol. Look at your actual metrics and measurements. I don't care if your scores look good on lighthouse on a speedy connection w/ all the modern web dev tricks to make metrics happy - which by the way you rmobile scores are quite **bleep** and moble is the real test. Desktop is not even remotely difficult to get good scores on.

 

I care about the poor practices prevalent, poor waterfall, missing optimizations, and again many accessibility problems as these are the things that show lacking thought processes. And again, yes, your scores are actually lacking in terms of pure numbers under any real stress test. The reason they degrade so quickly under this stress is due to the optimizations missing.

 

Per my other comment - you can make any website performant by loading strategies. But, that's merely perceived performance on tools giving metrics.  I can defer the loading of tens of megabytes of JavaScript and get perfect scores - but that's not "performant".

 

If there are any content creators who can't use HubSpot's "text editors"

See @Anton later point on the questions he gets - which I and literally every other dev in existence gets weekly - Tersely, most people are just not tech savvy I wouldn't go as far as saying "stupid", intelligence is very relative, but there are clearly lacking critical thinking skills here. A lot of people simply can't cope with anything tech much less managing a website or it's content effectively. IIt's our wheelhouse not theirs.  get what you're trying to get at - via module enapsulation, styling, theming, etc if it was setup "right" - but you're missing hte point with this.

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Ntbrown
Contributor

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

@tjoyce  Yes it is. Which was then refined over decades along with the PHP "language" to become more "full service". So, the fact it's a "blogging platform masquerading as a CMS" isn't the statement you think it is when it's still a better choice.

 

There are clearly many better options than either WordPress or HubSpot. But, again, between the two not a competition. My point was that on WordPress assuming you're not off-shoring to India for $5/hr you have lower level access and a programming language that provides far more development interoperability and design flexibility which inherently gives you the ability to achieve better performance without being severely limited that most programmers can achieve better performance with. Again: If you're using **bleep**ty page builders, etc obviously your performance will suffer at least that bloat isn't platform imposed and impossible to fix as it is on HubSpot along with many other similar comparisons. 

 

Not to mention the vastly superior local development worklows, automation processes possible, etc that you can't even being to achieve in HubSpot.

 

I'm hardly a fan of WordPress, actually don't like it and patiently waiting or better WebAssembly, but anyone pretending this isn't true is simply wrong.

 

Technically, anything that doesn't expose headers such as sending performance ops ahead of time and optimzing server configs is inherently "unperformant", but that's far beyond what most people want to manage. JSx, SSGs, blah blah blah in more modern contexts.

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Ntbrown
Contributor

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

@John  "We consistently see faster websites (even on WordPress sites coded "correctly" and free of plugin bloat) ".

 

Facetious advice and statement.  Considering your agencies own website isn't even up to snuff:

 

WebPageTest (2G / 3G unthrottled = vast majority of the world):

https://webpagetest.org/result/210602_AiDcR8_9a7130b1bf0338d77221155831b4cbf3/

https://webpagetest.org/result/210602_AiDcTA_b2801c0b84e46eebfdfda5b76b1b4bd3/ 

WebPageTest (4G = fast mobile devices / most popular mobile providers):

https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210602_BiDcEV_b4c829f6a0297743f2d1ba1c8bc4eb20/ 

WebPageTest (Cable = most business and consumer internet settings):

https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210602_AiDcE3_fc4fdb16e7e29baba38450267a38c438/ 

WebPageTest (FIOS = tech hubs, bay area, anywhere "techy" and top tier consumer internet packages):

https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210602_BiDcD4_e4f17ca40c4d97a4b721cd43516cf02c/ 

GTMetrix: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.ascendinbound.com/R5e8tVtj/

 

Not to mention the poor practices and accessibility problems.

 

I highly doubt that. There's a reason the vast majority of "HubSpot" agencies have WordPress websites.  Just scroll through the directory. My point wasn't that wordpress is better it was that hubspot scrapes the bottom of the barrel and is one of the worst CMS' there is for anyone that cares about their technical assets for the simple reason that it completely lacks being able to do lower level coding and any real amount of optimization / the vast majority of modern web dev practices. Not to mention the problems at the inrastructure level that inherently comes with the platform.. There are better choices than WordPress and HubSpot clearly. It's not even remotely a competition between the two in everthing from SEO to performance.

 

"an editing experience that content creators actually enjoy using".

 

Yeah... most people can't even use a text editor properly. And the ones that can think it's great until they realize HubSpot's "hot sell" will result in unmanageable problems at scale and performance problems across the board resulting in a website that is borderline unfixable or cost prohibitive to fix as marketers and content editors use the "editing experience" they can "enjoy using". Meanwhile, they've paid thousand a month for such a **bleep**ty deal. Great choice.

 

OP: You should also take any advice on this forum with a large grain of salt consider you're asking people with large amounts of bias filled with company taglines that exist to proliferate their **bleep**ty marketing business, because "street cred", being "bronze, ..., platinum" and other cheesy sells is the only real thing they have, because they most certainly don't have any technical skillsets. Marketing agencies != dev shops and web developers especially hubspot / marketing developers != developers and don't know what they don't know.

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John
Top Contributor | Platinum Partner
Top Contributor | Platinum Partner

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

If you're not a developer, then it sounds like you'll want to go the paid route. There are a lot of people offering migration services – you can even talk to a HubSpot rep and they can recommend the best course of action for your situation. 

 

We consistently see faster websites (even on WordPress sites coded "correctly" and free of plugin bloat) and an editing experience that content creators actually enjoy using. I've never had any content editor wish to go back to WordPress – not one single one.



I like kudos almost as much as cake – a close second.

DanielSanchez
Key Advisor | Platinum Partner
Key Advisor | Platinum Partner

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

Hi @MNand ,

 

Blog posts can be migrated automatically, but the structure of the blog and your website needs to be developed.

 

If HubSpot does not have the support to recreate your site, you will need a programmer. I work developing 100% customizable templates for HubSpot.

 

Here are some of my works in HubSpot:

 

Did this post help solve your problem? If so, please mark it as a solution.

Best!

Ntbrown
Contributor

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

"CMS WordPress but the speed and performance of WordPress are to much slow. So, that's why I want to migrate from WordPress to Hubspot. "

You want to move to HubSpot.... For speed and performance.....? Lol. Thats a poor choice.

If your WordPress site is slow it's probably because you're using some horrendous page builder, a thousand plugins, and other poor practices. Clean it up.

At least on WordPress you have the control and can fix those things. On HubSpot.... You're extremely limited in what you can do and stuck with horrendous product decisions due to lacking interoperability and no real programming interface outside of a contrived templating language. If you can even call it that.

Hubspot is nothing but a poor CMS and poor man's way of doing things that tried reinventing the wheel for their "products", is a half decade behind any competition, and instead of managing to improve anything whatsoever by reinventing the wheel they actually managed regression which is impressive.

Took the wheel and turned it into a square.

 

In other words, putting your technical assets in the hands of a *marketing* platform attempting to masquerade as a cms is probably not the best idea. Browse around this forum and see the level of quality you can expect for yourself.

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tjoyce
Recognized Expert | Elite Partner
Recognized Expert | Elite Partner

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

In other words, putting your technical assets in the hands of a *marketing* platform attempting to masquerade as a cms is probably not the best idea. Browse around this forum and see the level of quality you can expect for yourself.


Isn't wordpress a "blogging" platform, masquerading as a CMS?


dennisedson
HubSpot Product Team
HubSpot Product Team

How to change CMS from wordpress to Hubspot

Hi @MNand 

Are you a developer or do you need assistance?

@Anton , any advice here?