People often make the mistake of classifying WordPress as just a blogging platform. This idea is very limiting to the true power of WordPress. Sure, you can create a simple blog, but you can also use WordPress for your business website and never write a blog post. Ever. It's a versatile Content Management System which allows you to create fully functional websites and mobile applications. It's interesting to know that, among all content management systems, WordPress' market share is close to 60 percent and an even more impressive 26.9 percent of all websites on the web use WordPress. Knowing that there are more than one billion websites online today, you can do the math. The main reason why WordPress has grown so much in popularity is because it's an easy to use and flexible tool. Aside from the popular opinion, here is a summary of why we use it.
It's User-friendly
WordPress is based on WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) text-editors which makes it very easy to use. It feels like a normal word processor where you can select your custom markup, add images, audio and video's. No need to provide hours of training for our clients. After a website is delivered, we offer monthly support, but all content is managed by the client.
It's Extendable
More than 47.000 WordPress plugins exist for all different means and purposes. Whatever feature you desire on your website, in most cases a plugin can be found which can do just that, or, we can create a custom plugin. There's almost nothing that can't be created in WordPress, all you need is the idea, the concept. Some would claim that numerous plugins pose a security threat, however nothing is less true. The plugins we use are updated on a regular basis.
The huge range of plugins is what makes WordPress so efficient.
It's SEO-friendly
WordPress produces semantic mark up which makes your site not only user-friendly but also attractive to search engines. By adding Yoast SEO, possibly one of the most important plugins, one can optimise every page and post for optimal performance in search engines.
It's Mobile-friendly
The WordPress dashboard not only works on your desktop, but also on your tablet and smartphone, so you can access and manage your website from anywhere, on any device. The design of your website is made mobile-friendly by us!
Its integration with other platforms
Many service providers created integration plugins for WordPress. Integrations with payment environments (f.e. iDeal and PayPal), email integrations for MailChimp or Postmark and communication integrations like Zendesk or Slack are available. These are huge companies who see the advantages in creating a WordPress connection for their business, rather than losing clients.
You give the right access for everyone
Mostly, several people are working on a website, however, you don't want to grant everyone access to all features and it's network administration. By default, WordPress has multiple users; from an Administrator, to an Editor, Contributors or Subscribers. One can also create a new type of user and declare which features they can adjust and allow them access to only certain parts of the site’s backend.
It's secure and supported
Since WordPress is such a widely used CMS, it's also a common target for hackers. Luckily, the developers behind WordPress are aware of this, and release updates periodically to improve security features. Many plugins also help protecting your website's content.
It's Open Source
WordPress was released on May 27, 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. At this moment there are 6 lead developers, but, more importantly, it has a huge community who help develop and test WordPress. Errors are well documented, tested and quickly fixed. It's up to date with the latest technologies and they're open for suggestions.
Summing Up
WordPress is growing by the minute. The importance of the platform is increasing with every year as more and more people use it as a CMS for building websites. This means the community and the knowledge are growing, which makes WordPress better, safer and more extendable year by year. A senior Google engineer who endorsed WordPress publicly said that it solves a ton of SEO issues, which not only makes it faster to track down by search engines but also makes it more user-friendly for a diversity of people.
Bottom line ... If you ever want to invest in a (new) website, think about WordPress and its advantages.
