For many online marketers, there’s no web development platform that’s as user-friendly, valuable, and adaptable as WordPress. The standard content management system for millions of websites, WordPress is one of the most praised and appreciated online development platforms out there.
However, there are still thousands of online marketers out there that don’t understand, or don’t see value in, a WordPress-powered website. Call it ignorance if you will — although in many ways it’s not — but the lack of WordPress love amongst some marketing communities is just downright difficult to understand.
Luckily, it’s very possible to turn things around. Here are five great reasons to use WordPress as your development platform of choice, each geared around the platform’s simple manageability. If you’re sick and tired of coding, scanning, and finalizing HTML, these five reasons could be just what’s required to help you make the jump to WordPress.
1) WordPress has style in abundance.
Need to make a business website today, a children’s website tomorrow, and an entertainment website the next day? WordPress can do it. Thanks to the thousands of user-created themes available for WordPress, creating a new website design is as simple as uploading a new theme pack to your server.
For the cheapskates out there, there’s no need to worry. While hundreds of paid WordPress themes are available, finding free themes is as simple as entering “free WordPress themes” into your next Google search.
2) WordPress isn’t complex.
To your average programmer, PHP is simple. To your average marketer, it’s not. WordPress is simple and far from complex. With almost all actions, modifications, and management tasks carried out from a single dashboard, making changes to your website is as simple as clicking a button.
3) WordPress is flexible.
How many content management systems can design a blog, a newsletter, a sales page, a community website, and an eCommerce store without any extra paid software or development time?
With a skilled operator behind the keyboard, WordPress can do all that and more.
4) WordPress is backed up by a huge user community.
Got a problem with your WordPress installation? Don’t fret and grab the telephone — check the software’s huge online database of troubleshooting and configuration answers. Can’t find any information in there? Don’t despair — check out the equally large WordPress developer, user, and designer community that exists out there. If answers aren’t available straight away, it’s very likely that they’ll be available with a few clicks, Google searches, and forum posts.
5) WordPress is fast, slim, and polished.
Few content management systems load as quickly as WordPress. An even smaller amount install as quickly. Fewer still can perform as effectively as WordPress on a low-power server. No matter what your technical concern, it’s very likely that WordPress is already coded, designed, and developed to take care of it. Leave your stress at the door and enjoy simple, stress-free, and hardware-friendly website management with WordPress.
Roko Nastic is a webmaster and blogger who writes for WebmasterFormat, a webmaster info website. He enjoys sharing his knowledge about SEO, web design, blogging, CMSs, writing and best hosting providers.
Good points, Roko. For many, especially those just getting started with a new business or who just need a simple Web presence, WordPress-based sites are indeed a great choice. Even if they don’t have strong design skills, much of the design is done for them via the WP templates, and the built-in Content Management System makes continuing maintenance a breeze.
It’s important, I think, to distinguish between WordPress.com-based sites and WordPress.org-based sites. The WordPress.com-based sites can be more limited in functionality and design flexibility, but are also the easiest of the bunch while still being professional (and there is no external hosting requirement). Because of these advantages, my service brand, Webpressive, builds and customizes WordPress.com-based sites for folks who want to keep things simple and ultra-affordable. Once you get into WordPress.org-based sites, there are hundreds of plugins to amp-up the power, but at the cost of a bit more complexity. You’ll also have to externaly host a WordPress.org-based site, so that adds to the cost. This distinction can be confusing (I wish WP had chosen a clearer brand differentiation, but that’s another story…). Again, thanks for the post and for letting me add this bit of clarification for those just learning about WordPress.
Hi Bob,
I agree with you that newbies to WordPress might get a bit confused about the difference between hosting a blog at WordPress.com versus hosting a blog on their own domain. idaconcpts.com was originally hosted at http://idaconcpts.wordpress.com but I needed to be able to do much more (e.g. installing a Google Analytics Java script) so I made the move.
I believe hosting at WordPress.com is a great beginning for newbies to blogging or to business that need an easy to maintain online presence.
– Damian, Founder and CEO, idaconcpts.com