An online, open source website creation tool, written in PHP is what we call WordPress. Yet from the perspective of a non-IT person, WordPress is probably the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) today.
It is one of the most popular content management systems in the world. However, before selecting the WordPress platform to use for the business website, we must know a bit more about why it is so popular.
In this blog, we will discuss all the points that will clarify what is WordPress, its advantages, and its popularity as well. So, let’s start with the basic idea about WordPress.
An Overview of WordPress
As we mentioned earlier as well, it is the world’s most popular tool for creating websites. It is capable of creating any style of the website, a simple blog, or a full-featured business website. Also, we can create an online store using WordPress.
One of the best features is we don’t need any coding or design skills to create a professional looking site with WordPress. It even has thousands of free site designs to choose from (called “themes” in the WordPress world).
What All Can WordPress Do?
No doubt, it is an excellent website platform for a variety of websites. Also, it is a versatile CMS with a range of utilities, from blogging to e-commerce to portfolio websites.
Here are some of the types of websites we can build with WordPress:
- Blog
- E-commerce
- Business
- News
- Photography
- Music
- Membership
WordPress is Free to Use and Download
Yes, you’ve read it right! It is free in both terms, free to use and free to modify. So, we can dig further and make WordPress do just about anything we want it to do if anyone likes to tinker with code.
Additionally, it does not lock us into some proprietary service like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace. It is possible to host our website anywhere. Also, it gives the flexibility to move our site to another hosting service anytime we like.
26 Compelling Reasons to Choose WordPress for Website Development
Now, here are some reasons which specify why we should choose WordPress for developing our website:
1. Huge Community
Currently, there are around seventy-five million websites in the world powered by WordPress.
It includes many world-renowned businesses and names; for example, BBC America, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Canadian Olympic Committee, and others.
There are some celebrities as well who use WordPress, such as Katy Perry, Snoop Dog, Usain Bolt, and many others.
2. No Cost to Use
WordPress charges no penny, neither for a commercial website nor for a personal blog. This could be a major reason to use it. Even if our site starts to get more traffic than we anticipated, they don’t charge.
WordPress is also open source, in addition to being free. That says we can alter or improve its source code how we like to customize our website’s functionality or look-and-feel.
3. Amazing Support
Since there are so many websites using WordPress, it is very easy to find the great support that can help you with your needs and concerns, or answer any questions you may have.
We have so many YouTube channels that focus on WordPress, and blogs, forums, and websites which can help us with any problems we may have. There is a great chance that we will always find a solution.
4. Open Source Platform
As we mentioned earlier also, this platform is open source. It says it’s free for the most part. And, one other appealing factor is that the web developers are free to change the code and make upgrades on their own.
That’s why WordPress has so many themes, different versions of plugins, and improved over time. Moreover, it allows us to hire a third party to design a custom WordPress theme or features.
5. Ready to Use
Once we install it, we can start using it. Besides the customization we give our theme as well as the plug-ins that suit our needs, there is no configuration required.
There are many things which already come with the installation, like the integration of social media feeds, comments, and many more.
6. Search-Engine Friendly
There are some search engines like Google and Bing that rank websites using WordPress higher in comparison to those that don’t.
The reason behind this is the CMS framework makes it easy for the search engines’ spiders to crawl. Also, the head of Google's Webspam team personally endorsed WordPress in 2009.
7. Easy to Edit
Before Wordpress, the partners and clients generally complain that they were unable to edit their blog content themselves. And, when you want to re-purpose your content on your own, you need this feature.
So, now WordPress solves this problem. We can easily do this with WordPress, even with basic knowledge.
8. High Adaptability
It is very adaptable. So, it is flexible enough to accommodate all needs through its extensions and plugins.
9. Highly Secure and Safe
The developers of WordPress take a few security measures to preserve the trust of its users. It could be another reason why WordPress is so popular.
Along with the plug-ins that integrate with it, the WordPress staff constantly updates the CMS. However, while directly logged into WordPress, users should use caution and only download plugins from trusted sources.
10. Simple to Use
The simplicity of WordPress attracts users. By simplicity, we mean that the CMS is as user-friendly as it gets. For newbies, it's very easy to learn. Apart from that, the platform is very intuitive.
11. Customizable
It gives the flexibility that we can make our WordPress theme look the way we want. We can buy one of the various premium themes developed by the third parties and also we can use one of the many it provides.
Moreover, we can add and extend certain features to make the website function and perform.
12. Sources of Support
At times, if you get stuck somewhere, a simple Google search for WordPress and the problem you’re facing is likely to pull up guides and tutorials to help you solve your problem.
There is ample help to be found online. Apart from that, some forums permit users to help each other by creating a very interactive community.
13. Mobile-Friendly CMS
As we know, Google is penalizing sites which aren’t mobile-friendly. Google ranks them lower on their result pages. With WordPress, most themes are automatically responsive.
Therefore, we don’t have to overhaul our entire site to make it accessible on tablets and smartphones. Also, for themes that aren’t responsive, it has an option for websites to be viewed in “mobile view.”
14. Multimedia Support
Some websites get the lowest bounce rates with plenty of multimedia. So with WordPress, we can easily integrate video. There are two ways of it. One is by uploading our own, and other is by adding embeddable code through the HTML areas.
Also, we can add audio files, imagery, and other forms of media to make people interact with your site.
15. Top Brands are Using WordPress
Some of the world’s most well-known brands are powered by WordPress with millions of page-views per day. For instance, Mozilla, Mashable, Nasa, Coca-Cola, the Wall Street Journal, and many more. In all, we can consider WordPress as a serious business website solution.
16. Easy Integration
To make our website more modern, WordPress allows us to integrates with many popular third-party platforms. It has various plugins that let us send out newsletters and email campaigns easily.
Also, there are plugins which permit us to accept credit card payments for an e-commerce site. Moreover, there are plugins for just about every kind of function we want to add to our site.
17. Easily Manageable
As we know, for security purposes, WordPress is integrated with an automatic update. Similarly, when new updates are available for plug-ins, the CMS also notifies us. In all, we’ll always have the latest and safest platforms to keep our site safe.
18. WordPress is Much More Than a Blog
Initially, WordPress was only an ideal platform to blog, but now, many businesses use WordPress as an obvious CMS. It features both post and page structure. By using it, we can post regular blog articles, even without affecting your static pages.
19. Facilitates Social Media Marketing
By using personal social network accounts, anyone can easily post comments on our site. WordPress makes it easy for people on social media to find and interact with you by using accounts they already have established.
20. No Fixed Hosting Provider
It is not complex to move from one server to another while using WordPress.
21. Revamping Look of Website Quite Often
By any of the free or premium themes available, we can change the look of our site. It has a great advantage that a refreshing appearance keeps our company fresh in the eyes as well as the minds of our customers.
22. Multi-User Capability
WordPress makes it simple to assign different access roles for different people, in case you are not the only individual running your website.
The plugin “WordPress Codex” offers:
- Super Admin: One has total access to website features.
- Administrator: One has access to administration features.
- Editor: One can publish their posts and approve or remove the posts of other users.
- Author: One can manage and publish their posts.
- Contributor: One can manage and write their posts, but only the administrator can approve of them.
- Subscriber: One can view and edit their profile
23. Immediate Publishing of Content
We can easily publish content even with a click. And even WordPress app is also there, so we can publish our post from anywhere, anytime.
24. No Need to Learn HTML
While using WordPress, we can easily create pages and posts without having to know HTML.
25. DashBoard is Universal
It is one significant benefit that WordPress dashboard looks the same on every platform. Moreover, we can add things to our dashboard like lists of new posts, daily stats, recent comments, as well as news updates.
26.WordPress Comes Up with Frequent Updates
As time goes by, WordPress keeps improving. This update could be anything, whether the WordPress staff are adding new features, coders have programmed new features to customize your site, or developers are creating new plugins. It keeps evolving for the better.
Conclusion
As we know, WordPress has been around for over a decade. The CMS has attracted a thriving, secure, flexible, functional, passionate community, and stays up-to-date as much possible.
Among thousands of themes and plugins available to extend the platform and its key features, there is so much you can do with it. Hence we can say, WordPress is the right choice for designing and developing your website!
