Starting an online business is not easy, and since the initial investment is important, you may be tempted to try your luck instead of working with professional web designers.
Even if professionals make your website, if you plan to manage it yourself when it is ready, you will have to make some decisions using a content management system (CMS).
Why? Because this decision will affect your website, its speed, presence, and functionality, and your activity. From this point of view, experts recommend WordPress.
History of WordPress
In 2001, French programmer Michel Waldrigi launched B2-Cafelog as a blogging platform using PHP and MySQL. 2 years later, Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg took over development and eventually co-founded the WordPress platform.
WordPress 0.7 was created in May 2003. For 2016, WordPress 4.5 (Coleman) added responsive previews to inline links, new formatting shortcuts, and customizer features. WordPress has been growing since its first release, and with good reason.
Who is using WordPress?
Today WordPress is used for 31.9% of all websites, 59.4% of the CMS market.
Any content developer or marketer knows that there are many options for web design and blogging platforms. There are so many website options, both paid and free, that it can be challenging to find the right one for your needs.
The last 15+ years have been a time of positive growth in blogging and web design, and these statistics support this:
- Four hundred million people monthly host 24 million pages on WP.
- Seventy million new posts and 47 million comments are posted every month.
- WordPress blogs are maintained in more than 120 languages, including Spanish and Dutch.
- WordPress Users: CNN, TED, UPS, and CBS Radio.
Over time, according to Google Trends, interest in WordPress has exceeded interest in Blogger, SharePoint, and Drupal. Apart from blogging, WordPress is also great for social networking, a full-featured intranet, and an online business card theme.
And with tons of tools, plugins, and flexible features, WordPress is the best web design publishing platform in the business.
Let’s take a more in-depth look at what WordPress has to offer your business.
16 Benefits of WordPress
1. Simplicity and ease of use. This quality has helped WordPress perform better, such as Drupal or Joomla. It eliminates the need for HTML, CSS, PHP, and other complex technologies to become the preferred choice of web developers worldwide.
If you don’t want to, you won’t have to do the coding. You can choose one of the WordPress website templates or work with a professional web developer if you need a more personal and unique web design or require specific features.
This reduces the time you spend learning website design and can give you time to develop other business areas.
2. Sustainability and innovation. Like your phone, WordPress is always up to date with the latest technologies, trends, and user needs.
Regular updates mean that the CMS is updated, issues are addressed, and new useful and exciting features are added regularly.
3. Attractive Design Options. WordPress comes with thousands of unique themes, many of which are free, allowing you to customize and personalize your creation as you wish.
4. Flexibility. You can choose from over 22,000 plugins and thousands of themes to give your site a new look or adapt it to the ever-changing trends in online media. For SEO, install the Yoast SEO plugin. Or maybe you need Facebook remarketing; PixelYourSite may be a plugin for you.
With other CMSs, such specialized equipment can be complicated to install. WordPress has a library of plugins for various purposes that can be installed within a few minutes.
Be sure to read the reviews and regularly update them before installing them on your website.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). WordPress simplifies search engine optimization making it easy to use H1, H2, and H3 tags, using keywords in your website URL, and SEO Ultimate, All-in-one-SEO-Pack, Platinum SEO Pack, Yoast WordPress Support plugins. SEO, etc.
And if you are going to spend time building a website for your customers, you need to make sure that they get it right?
6. Structure. One of the features of WordPress for SEO is its structure. Sites with clean structure load faster, while sites with fast loading attract visitors.
WordPress then lets you create XML sitemaps to create Google bots where your website pages are and have to be crawled. This will save you a fortune on web design SEO services.
7. Simple Content Management. Content management has never been easier, and you can make it even simpler by appointing editors, writers, administrators and limiting their independence.
If you can edit a Word document, you can edit the content on your WordPress website.
8. Community. WordPress supports membership-based communities and websites and does not require specialized knowledge such as proprietary software and other website designers’ tools.
9. Sharing. Sharing is easier than ever in the vast WordPress community. You have social media widgets, plugins, APIs, and everything you need to connect your social media accounts to your site and share your content across multiple platforms.
10. Open Source. Open-source software is software whose source code is available for modification or correction by anyone. As open-source software, WordPress is being improved daily by thousands of developers around the world.
This prompted developers to introduce new features to the platform. These developers have created a flood of new plugins that make WordPress more useful and useful every day.
If your site has any functionality, chances are there is a plugin in the WordPress directory that can do this.
With a strong community of leading developers, WordPress websites can be as unique as those that use them.
11. Responsive. This CMS is your best option if you want your website to be compatible with the device accessing it and provide an unforgettable experience to your visitors, whether it is from a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer.
12. Functionality. While most HTML website builders only include basic functionality, WordPress takes the concept to the next level with themes and plugins that make it easy to customize your website and improve the user experience.
When you register on a WordPress website, you can use various plugins and themes without restrictions. With a range of modern themes, virtually anyone can create a website for any business, including:
- Ecommerce
- Retail companies
- Professional blogger
- Job Listing
- Nonprofit
- Small business
13. Application Programming Interface (API). Provides social media APIs that allow third-party services to be integrated with custom websites. WordPress provides thousands of APIs, allowing you to integrate external resources into your website.
14. Scalability. If you initially want a fast-loading, functional website, this can change as your business grows and develops.
Web developers everywhere will confirm that WordPress allows you to quickly and easily build your website’s network, saving you time and resources.
15. Support. The WordPress community consists of thousands of technical professionals and volunteers who offer advice and support for free on various forums. All you have to do is post your question, and you will get the answer in no time.
16. Speed and efficiency. As hard as it may be to believe, WordPress allows you to build your website in just one day, requiring only images and content.
Many might argue that there are other proprietary software options out there, and some of them offer the above benefits, but none of them offer everything at once. None of them provide the value, flexibility of WordPress. And does not increase efficiency.
If you need more information about WordPress or website design services, contact Thrive. One of our web experts would like to tell you more about the features and benefits of WordPress.