Wordpress Plugins vs Traditional PHP membership website

I want to create membership website, as a form of passive income and also a way of improving my skills (I'm a UI/UX designer and front-end developer).

The problem is that in theory, I would like it to grow to an almost 6 figure income per year and I don't have experience making these type of "complex" websites. My main fear is the website security.

I'm good at Wordpress, well to some extent, but I can't write complex PHP websites with all those login and membership systems.

So, in terms of security, would it be better to use an already written Wordpress membership plugin (s2member for example) or take the time and learn how to build a more or less secure system in pure PHP myself?

Topic s2member membership Wordpress

Category Web

1
answered at

Even if you're skilled in "complex PHP websites" it's safer to go with something that's already built. If you code it yourself you're very likely to overlook security issues and you'd have to constantly be updating it. It's worth investing a bit of money in plugins up front (if necessary; you may well do fine with free plugins, just do lots of research up front to see how well supported the plugins are, how many active installs, all that type of plugin vetting you should do in any case) so you don't have headaches down the road. And if you're expecting triple-digit income please be sure to find solid managed WP hosting, your own VPS or something similar, so that if things go south you have someone to help immediately.

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