If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of WordPress and are probably thinking about switching to it from a different platform.
If you’ve been contemplating this, then, you’ve come to just the right place. In our review today, we’ll be looking to share 5 important reasons on why you need to adapt WordPress when building your site. Our analysis will also review the various types of websites that you can come up with using WordPress.
First things first, many people tend to only think of WordPress as a blogging platform. While it may have started as a blogging tool, it has quickly evolved over time to become a robust website builder featuring a powerful content management system (CMS).
Importantly, WordPress just happens to be one of the most user-friendly and flexible platforms out there. You can come up with various types of websites with great ease. As such, it’s little wonder as to why WordPress has become so popular in the current internet scene. There’s an actual survey that shows that WordPress actually powers about 32.3% of all websites on the web. An impressive stat by any standards.
Other than its powerful functionality, some of the top websites using WordPress include The New York Times, Facebook, Disney, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, and Target.
Having pointed all that out, it’s now time to get to the meat of it all.
1. WordPress is Free
Yes, you read that right. WordPress is a free software. Essentially, this means that you have the liberty to download, install, use, and tweak the platform to suit your needs and aspirations. Even better is the fact that you can come up with virtually any website using WordPress.
That said, it’s worth pointing out that while the software itself is free, you need to part with small fees for the domain name and web hosting.
If you’re not well versed with tech terms, a domain name refers to the address of your website on the web. This URL is what internet users type into their browsers in order to gain access to your website.
On the other hand, web hosting refers to your website’s house where all the important files are situated.
If you’re just starting out, we’d recommend checking out Bluehost. They’re highly rated and considered one of the largest hosting companies in the world. Other than that, they also come highly recommended since they’re officially supported as a WordPress hosting provider.
2. Easy Customization
Many people who use WordPress are not adept as web designers or programmers. In fact, many people who are new to WordPress usually have no previous experience in web design.
If you’re non-savvy, you can quickly get started with WordPress because there are numerous other customizable website themes and plugins that you can pick.
The reason why many of the templates are easy to customize is that they ship with their very own options panel. From there, you can make both major and minor tweaks by uploading logos, conceptualizing sliders, changing the background, and altering the colours.
The fact that WordPress supports plugins also means that you can add advanced features like a membership area, contact forms and analytics.
3. SEO Friendly
Search engines love WordPress because it makes good use of high-quality code capable of producing semantic markup. Because of this, WordPress sites usually rank higher other sites in search engine results.
Since you can use it straight out the box, you’re likely to waste time trying to figure out what everything really means. You can choose to make use of WordPress SEO plugins offered to boost your ranking.
4. Easy to Manage
WordPress comes with a pre-installed updates management system. This is quite important because you can update your plugins and themes on the fly from the admin dashboard.
In case there are new updates available, you’ll get a notification which prompts you to begin the update by simply clicking a button.
The designers at WordPress also went a step ahead by ensuring that their users are always shielded against data loss from accidents or hacking. They smartly came up with a WordPress backup plugin that automatically creates backups for file recovery.
5. Capable of Supporting Various Media Types
As alluded earlier, WordPress is more than just a blogging tool. This means it can handle various data types, not just types.
WordPress ships with a built-in media uploader. This allows you to upload files like video, audio, and images without much of a hassle.
Their embedding feature also means that you can embed YouTube videos, Soundcloud audio, Tweets, and anything you want to by simply inputting the URL into the post editor.
Once you decide on what theme you’re going to use for your website you should make a start on the digital marketing aspect of it and getting it ranked up on Google. No matter how great your website is, if no one is landing on it then it doesn’t have any value. Check out this article on why you should start investing in your digital assets.