When it comes to choosing a Content Management System to build and manage your website, the choices available might seem a little daunting, especially to a novice just trying to get their feet wet. Indeed, there are hundreds if not thousands to choose from, many geared solely towards professional designers who have the ability to code and who most likely have a strong background in website building and administration. But just the same there are lots of CMS platforms promising all sorts of wonderful things, from being easy to learn to easy to edit to having a nice cheap price tag. But as the old saying goes, buyer beware: many CMSs are long on promises but short on delivery.
Not so with the behemoth of the Internet, WordPress. Today nearly 75 million sites are constructed and managed on the WordPress platform—which first debuted in 2011—and there are some very good reasons why. The CMS has shown itself to be easy-to-use, safe and secure (as much as it can be from the constant onslaught of myriad hackers) and it offers a nice price point for every budget.
Here are the top five reasons while WordPress is a no-brainer choice no matter the vision you have for your website.
Staying Power
While many CMSs come and go, for more than five years WordPress has shown itself to be a reliable—and therefore lasting—platform for web design. And it’s for this reason that it’s a great choice: because it doesn’t appear to be disappearing any time soon—and many other platforms tend to do—you can assured that, if you build your site with it today, it will still be available in the near and indeed distant future. If you need more proof that it’s here to stay, consider this: many of the world’s top site designers now work exclusively with WordPress, which means the professionals trust it undeniably, and so should you.
An Open Book
One of the most laudable attributes of WordPress is that it’s an open-source CMS: there’s an entire community of users backing it up and creating thousands of plug-ins—beyond the basics that come with the starter version of the platform—that make it faster, prettier and more efficient. And that same community is constantly on guard for security flaws, viruses with component parts etc. Which means that when there is a problem—say, perhaps, with a certain plug-in that contains a leak that can be exploited by hackers—there are people recognizing said leak quickly and offering patches and fixes for the problem.
Money Talks
Because of its open-source nature—the code to run the platform is available to anyone and everyone—WordPress comes in at a very attractive price and is extremely flexible depending on a user’s specific needs. In fact, there are free versions you can use (although they won’t come with much in the way of template choices or add-on enhancements) as well as versions that are very, very affordable. Of course to add various plug-ins and design templates you may have to shell a few bucks, but the majority of them are surprisingly cheap and give you nearly unlimited design options for everything from seamless editing and content upload to fresh imagery and fonts to the ability to install forms galore.
Easy to Learn, Easy to Use
Even someone with the most basic computer software knowledge can pick up the fundamentals of WordPress design quickly. The platform is intuitive and made to interact with users in ways that are familiar from other well-known programs such as the most common word processors, design editors etc. And as so many industry gurus consistently reinforce, everything is organized in a logical manner for the layman to navigate. From editing pages to uploading images to managing users and the backend administration processes, everything is nicely front and center and you don’t need a history of coding skills to get up and running—and stay up and running—with ease.
Simple Versatility
Although WordPress was originally created as a blog publishing platform (and some people still think of it as solely that) in reality you can create any type of website you want. Whether it’s an eCommerce site for your products or services, the portal for your non-profit organization, a photography or video page or more, there’s a host of simple ways you can customize your site to make it exactly as you want it. And, as that Holy Grail of the Internet—Google—has said in recent months, WordPress sites are nearly 100 percent search engine optimization (SEO) friendly. This means that, as long as you fulfill certain parameters—such as using proper keywords and tags—you can expect to rank well in search results and get yourself noticed. And, although that SEO function comes standard with the WordPress platform, there are also tons of plug-ins you can install to ensure your site appears favorably amongst the litany of pages out there in the virtual world.
