When it comes to building a new website, I believe that the best option is WordPress as it gives the resources and tools needed in order to create a solid foundation for all of your marketing needs. Before I get into some of the benefits of using WordPress, I want to give a quick explanation of what WordPress really is.
WordPress is an open-source content management system, also known as a CMS. A CMS is a program that makes it easier to edit the content of your website without needing a whole bunch of technical knowledge.
From the beginning, WordPress started out as a blogging platform but it has now grown into a full-fledged website creation platform where the possibilities are endless and the restrictions are minimal, making it the go-to options for most websites.
WordPress websites now account for ~30% of ALL of the websites on the internet! If we compare this to only other CMS’s, WordPress has a ~60% market share. Knowing thse numbers, you can see why I believe that WordPress is the way to go.
Some of the most notable companies and organisations that use WordPress include The Walt Disney Company, The White House, BBC America and Sony Music. As you can see, WordPress is versatile enough that it can be used for any industry, no matter how small or large the website is.
WordPress is Open-Source
One of the best features of WordPress is that the software is open-source, which means anybody is allowed access to the core files, source code and documentation. This means the community of developers is massive.
With such a massive community behind WordPress, there is a whole bunch of information out in the wild in terms of support, so support for nearly any conceivable issue is only a quick Google search away. Easy access to support is an invaluable resource when you consider the amount of time (and money) that can potentially be saved for troubleshooting and researching.
Another good thing about WordPress being open-source is that whenever there are vulnerability and security issues discovered, the community is fast to identify them and take necessary steps to create a patch and provide updates to whatever part of the website is at fault, whether it is part of the core of the site, your theme or any installed plugins.
WordPress makes it easier to grow your business
One of the best things about WordPress is plugins. Plugins are pieces of code that add a specific piece of functionality to your website. For example, if you need a form on your Contact page so your customers can easily send you a message, there are plugins for that. If you need to view statistics about your site such as how many people are visiting your site every day, there are plugins for that. Plugins allow for endless possibilities, and the best part is that most of these plugins are free. It may take some effort and time to set things up the way you want to, but plugins can give you a massive head-start and make things easier.
Not only are they easy to find and download, but most plugins also benefit from WordPress’ plugin downloader, where you can see how many downloads each plugin has, as well as it’s rating and when it was last updated. When you want to make sure you’re installing something with a good track record, you know you will have a much lower chance of potential issues down the line.
WordPress is great for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
A massive benefit of WordPress is that it is set up to excel on search engines. WordPress makes it easy to set up “pretty permalinks” which are prefered by search engines. Permalinks are the part of the URL after the .com or .co.nz or .nz. For example, the permalink for this page is “/some-benefits-of-using-wordpress/”
WordPress also has great organisation features such as categories for blog posts. For example, this post’s categories are “Blog” and “Web Design”. Also, with the use of SEO plugins, editing meta titles and descriptions is super simple.
WordPress has built-in blog support
From the very beginning, WordPress started out as blogging software and – to this very day – blogging is still a benefit of WordPress. The architecture and setup of WordPress’ blogging system is far better than any other software out there, making it so much easier to manage. Blog posts can be assigned different categories and you can attach tags to them for more layers of organisation. You can also add featured images like the one you can see at the top of this post. Featured images are important for if you plan on sharing your post across your social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else.
Having a blog is a great way of constantly adding fresh content to your website which is another thing search engines like to see as new content shows that your website isn’t just sitting there stagnant.
