Why choose WordPress for your website

Why choose WordPress? Fairly often new users wonder, which platform they should choose for their website. Many ask why WordPress is so often recommended. Some even advise to move from another platform to WordPress. If you ask yourself similar questions, then this article is for you. We will try to explain in simple phrase what are the benefits of this platform and what is it suitable for. We will also help you to choose a theme for your website.

Why choose WordPress

Most people think that WordPress may be used only for blogging. Even though it had been initially created exactly for this purpose, it evolved and became versatile CMS. Now you may create virtually any website using WordPress: from shops to journals and learning platforms. Blog is still available, though, so you shouldn’t worry.

Many serious companies choose WordPress due to its solid features. I bet you use websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, eBay and Google every day. Guess what: all of them are based on WordPress. Surprised, hah?

So, let’s get back to WordPress benefits.

Free use

WordPress is free. You may download, install and set it up as you wish. WordPress is based on open-source code that you may edit. You only need to buy a WordPress theme. Luckily, you have plenty of options. If you don’t want spend money, you may consider free WordPress theme.

Since WordPress is an open-source system, it has large community. It exists due to a big number of volunteers who are interested in WordPress development and are highly experienced. Any user may contribute by making corrections, answering users’ questions, creating plug-ins and templates, and translating and updating documentation. By choosing WordPress, you become a part of this community. You get absolutely free support and may install free themes and plug-ins.

Ease of use and learning

WordPress is a very simple system. It is suited both for new and experienced users. If you don’t have any programming skills or just don’t want to dig in code, this platform is exactly what you need. Millions of people around the world choose WordPress for different kinds of websites. This is in mainly due to its simplicity. You only need to create a domain name, choose a good web hosting company, install WordPress, install theme and set it as you wish. After that you may start filling it with your content. All this is done in a matter of minutes.

Adding new content is especially convenient and easy. Intuitive admin panel interface allows you to create new articles, add multimedia files (pictures, diagrams and video) and publish new articles in a few clicks. If you are on the run, you may quickly log in to admin panel from a smart phone and add your thoughts and ideas for a new article in a draft, from which you will easily create another cool article.

Massive collection of themes and plug-ins

Most WordPress users almost have no skills in web design and programming. You don’t need to hire a web agency or designer, paying hundreds of dollars to create a WordPress website. Why paying over and regretting, when you have such a great choice of themes for different purposes. With them you may choosing the design you like and adapt it to your needs and taste. There are themes for photographers, freelancers, small to big businesses, magazines, blogs and even online stores. All themes feature an options panel, which allows you to change colors and background, add amazing sliders and parallax effect, and many more. By setting these parameters you will make your website special without writing a single line of code.

Why choose WordPress? WordPress features are greatly expanded with plug-ins. Many of them are included in themes. For example, Visual Composer lets you choose the elements you like and add them in your own way. Slider Revolution allows adding cool sliders to make your website’s appearance more elegant. One of the WordPress honors is WooCommerce. Millions of e-shops are created based on this plug-in. You may also use different blocks like shortcodes that let you add buttons, galleries, etc.

Search engines focused

WordPress uses highest quality code and amazing markup, due to which your website becomes more appealing to search engines. Coming back to plug-ins, you may use Yoast to improve your SEO scores. Having added it to your admin panel, you will see the block that will tell you how good is your article in terms of SEO: was the keyword used before, how often was this keyword used in this article, is the volume of the title and description within the limits, etc. To check how unique is your text or whether meta tags are filled in correctly, you may install PrePost SEO. Mind that the number of free checks is limited, but you may switch to quite affordable plans.

Ease of update

WordPress admin panel integrates the possibility to update templates and plug-ins. As soon as a new version of WordPress is released, you see a notification. Updates allow decreasing the vulnerability of your websites and providing new features.

Security

WordPress has been developed with security in mind, so you won’t regret by creating your website on this platform. This doesn’t mean that everything is so perfect. Internet is an unsafe place and you should always use additional security measures. There are lots of hackers who attack websites, putting them out of order or stealing information.  Special security tools may prevent this. There are third-party solutions like Sucuri, as well as WordPress plug-ins, such as All in One WP Security & Firewall. The latter will help you to avoid spam, protect from brute force attacks, turn on firewall, and many more. We have also prepared an article on protecting a WooCommerce shop, but it is relevant for all WordPress websites.

To secure your content even better, you may switch on and set regular backups. Try using paid BackupBuddy plugin or free solutions like BackUpWordPress and WordPress Backup to Dropbox.

Different media support

When you work with WordPress, you are not limited to just writing content. This platform supports many types of objects: images, audio and video. Using easy-to-use buttons on toolbar, you may upload and add pictures in a certain place setting their SEO parameters at the same time. WordPress supports embedding video from various popular websites like Vimeo, Youtube, Coub and many others.

Social networks support

Why choose WordPress for your website? WordPress allows connecting your website with all well-known social networks. You may do it by using special social blocks with links to communities. One may also integrate posts from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. WordPress enables social buttons, using which your readers may like or share articles on Pinterest, Linkedin and many other websites, apart from the main social networks. You may go even further and add video support in comments with oEmbed in Comments.

Areas of WordPress use

Blog and magazine

WordPress is best suited for both personal and professional blogging. And it’s not only because it has been created as a foundation for blog. WordPress simply provides everything you need for this purpose: posts, different formats support, ease of use and update, comments, social networks integration, responsive design and many more. From this point of view, it is also cool for any type of online magazine. Here is our collection of blog and magazine WordPress themes.

Online shop

Yes, you may and should create online shop based on WordPress. WooCommerce provides huge possibilities for this purpose including cart, products sorting and comparing, and payment options. Choose an online store theme from our collection that you like the most.

Portfolio and startup / Business

It doesn’t matter if you are a photographer, freelancer or own a design studio: you may create your own WordPress portfolio. There are many portfolio templates with modern design.

This platform also supports wonderful business templates for creating a professional website for companies that are engaged in different kinds of business.

Affiliate programs

You may earn money not only with a blog or by providing professional services. Affiliate programs have recently become trendy. With them you may advertise products of other companies and agencies, getting rebate. For instance, with Amazon Shop you may join the famous Amazon program.

You may also create gallery website, forum, catalog, job offers website and even website for property search.

Versatility is an important WordPress advantage. Many suggest using WordPress, and it’s hardly surprising, since this platform dominates in use comparing to other CMSs.

CMS global usage statistics. The picture has been prepared here.

As this diagram shows, 51% websites are WordPress-based. The #2 platform is Joomla, which is used by 8% of all of the websites.

WordPress capabilities are in fact unlimited. Taking into account the simplicity and security, this platform is a perfect choice for creating a website. If you want to share your opinion on this topic with us, leave a comment below.