WordPress was launched in 2003 and now powers one-fifth of the Internet’s websites, making it the most popular content management system (CMS) out there. Although it started out as a mere “blog software”, it is now a versatile, all-purpose publishing tool.
1. WordPress is free and open source
This means that it costs you nothing to use. The way you want is free to download, install and use. WordPress costs you money when you hire a web developer to create a custom theme or custom feature for your website.
2. Easy to create and edit your content
One of the many reasons WordPress is so popular is its ease of use. WordPress is easy to use and easy to learn, even for beginners. As a non-technical person, you can edit your website content without paying a webmaster to do it. Gone are the days when you needed coding skills to make big changes. You can add, modify or delete content from your computer or even from your smartphone.
Almost every type of website possible…
- An e-commerce website (WooCommerce) such as eBay or Alibaba.
- A blog like Mashable or TechCrunch.
- A video website like YouTube or Vimeo.
- A service/appointment booking website.
- A photography website like Flickr.com.
- A directory website like YellowPages or Yelp.
- A listing website categorized as OLX.
- A membership website like Udemy.
- Qu Quora.com likes a question and answer forum.
- A wiki/knowledge base website.
3. Say goodbye to manual coding
WordPress is a standalone CMS (Content Management System) and does not require any additional HTML or FTP editing software. This is a great advantage for new webmasters. WordPress makes it easy to add new content, format blocks of text, and upload and edit media files. With WordPress, you don’t need any additional editing software. Everything is assembled by the system itself.
4. Easy to hire developers from all over the world
With WordPress, you’ll find a product coded by thousands of developers around the world who are constantly working to make it better. You can benefit from their work without having to pay a dime for it. This huge pool of talent behind the product is one of its greatest assets.
5. Offers a wide range of functions
In addition to basic features like blogging and commenting, WordPress gives you plenty of features through its many plugins. Plugins are extensions that provide additional functionality. As WordPress became so popular, developers created numerous plugins for it. You will be able to create video galleries and slideshows among many other types of content
6. WordPress provides a built-in blogging platform
WordPress started as an open source blogging platform and all WordPress sites have this blogging feature built in. Now, we know the importance of content marketing to build brand awareness and engage with your community and followers. Blogs are a great way to provide this value to your readers.
7. Easily integrates with any service/application
Default WordPress has many built-in features, but you can make it even more powerful with plugins. When you install plugins, you add additional functionality to your WordPress website. Some plugins are free and some are premium. Around 41000 plugins are available in the WordPress repository.
There are many features that can be easily integrated with WordPress. I like
1. Contact Form 7 – The contact form is one of the basic requirements for any website. Contact Form 7 is the most recommended plugin for WordPress. However, it has some limitations.
2. Email Marketing – One of the most important features of email marketing is staying intact with your customers. With the integration of email marketing services, emails collected through your website are automatically added to your mailing list.
8. WordPress makes SEO easy
Every website owner should keep SEO in mind when looking for a content management system. Right out of the box, WordPress offers several options that can help you get to the top of search engine results. Search engines like Google have a preference for WordPress due to its logical architecture and responsive design. Your code is clear and simple so search engine spiders won’t have any trouble trying to crawl your site. Every page and every blog post can get the keywords from your meta tag, allowing for more precise SEO. If you have no idea how to use meta tags, there are several plugins available that can handle them for you.
9. It is flexible and a lot of complement
As mentioned in the introduction, WordPress started out as a blogging platform, but it has become so much more. As a full-featured CMS, WordPress is used on more than 75 million websites worldwide. Sites vary greatly in their effectiveness and range from social networking websites to business and news sites. With the right plugin, you can even use WordPress to create a fully functional directory website, among other options. Since there are so many sites that use them, many popular and thoroughly tested plugins are completely free.
10. There are countless (free) resources
If you want to learn enough to be considered a WordPress expert, thousands of blogs with tutorials and guides are at your disposal. Whether you’re a beginner or have extensive coding knowledge, there are forums and other resources you can use to find help with answers to any questions you may have.
11. WordPress has a bulletproof reputation
At first glance, it might seem like WordPress is open source, which makes it more vulnerable to hackers because they have access to the code. However, the opposite is true. The reality is that you have a great security team that is constantly working to make your website more secure. The result is that if you use a proprietary CMS, your blog is less vulnerable to hackers.
12. Really customizable look
WordPress allows you to make your website look your way. Whether you want your site to look like a magazine or you’re building an eCommerce site, there’s a theme for every aspect. Also, you can customize the themes with your colors and images as many of them have their own control panels. You can change its background, font and color without any code.
13. Support multiple media types
WordPress allows you to get richer types of content than just text. You can publish your audio, video or any other type of media as WordPress has built-in support for different types of files. It is compatible with YouTube, Twitter and other websites that allow embedding content. You can even allow your viewers to post videos in their comments.
14. WordPress prefers multilingual sites
If you have offices in more than one country, you probably need your local site for each of them. WordPress sites are easy to duplicate and customize, so managing multiple sites in different languages and time zones is a piece of cake.
15. It is a universal platform
What would a standard website look like if it were different from its developer? In most cases, you have to start from scratch with a new developer. It can be expensive and time consuming. However, with a universal platform like WordPress, your new developer should be able to pick up the old one from where you left off without too much trouble. Anyone with a basic knowledge of PHP and MySQL will be able to start working on their WordPress website project even at short notice.
16. WordPress is mature
WordPress is over ten years old. It is bug free and will not crash your site or delete your data. Over the last decade, WordPress has been refined, tested, and improved. In the process, it has become a world-class web publishing system.
17. A great community helps solve problems
WordPress has a large community of active users and developers. Their well-maintained support forum contains millions of questions and solutions to solve problems. You can search your question to get the answer to the previous question. Feel free to post your question and you will get a 100% valid solution. In addition to their official forum, there is a dedicated WordPress forum for developers where you can ask questions and get solutions.