Is WordPress a good choice for your next website?

WordPress, arguably the web’s most popular content management and blogging platform, has been with us since 2005. During that time it has gone through numerous changes, from its early days of supplying free, simple blogs for millions of users to update their followers, to its current iteration of providing complex websites for worldwide customers and established brands.

WordPress is the content management system (cms) I use exclusively, and have done for close to 10 years during my career in web development. I have my personal reasons for continuing to use WordPress, so I decided I would attempt to outline these positives to assist you in understanding why WordPress is a good choice for your next website.

WordPress is free to use

There are a large number of CMS’ available, so you are certainly not going to be short of choices when it comes to building your next website. Some of these are free, some offer a free tier with limited features for small businesses, and others are paid for.

WordPress is free. There are no varied tiers depending on your usage. It’s completely free and maintained on an open source licence by hundreds, possibly thousands of developers worldwide. These maintainers ensure the system runs as efficiently as possible, and introduces an ever growing number of features through a regular series of updates.

Why would this be good for you as a potential client? It reduces your running cost for your online presence. If you don’t have to pay a monthly fee, just for your cms, it means you can reduce overall operating costs. If you’re looking for reasons why WordPress is a good choice for your business, this is a great start.

A huge plugin library

One of the major plus points with WordPress is the number of plugins that are available to users and developers. 

You may be asking at this point, ‘what is a plugin?’

Put simply, a plugin is a package of ready-made code that extends the functionality of your WordPress installation. These can range from payment gateways, user account functionality, to increased security hardening. 

Many of these plugins are free and maintained on open source licences. Other plugins offer a ‘freemium’ model that introduces you to the basic features, allowing you to evaluate their product and decide if buying the full version is of benefit for your business.

What these plugins all do is greatly reduce the potential development time that would be required to introduce these bespoke features. If your website is already live, you will likely be charged for additional web development time on an hourly rate and, depending on the task, this could run into many hours and quite a high development invoice.

This reason alone could be used to justify why WordPress is good for your business, but there are more positives than just this.

Excellent documentation

WordPress has millions of users across the world. That number not only confirms that it is a trusted content management system amongst its users and developers, it also has a treasure trove of knowledge and documentation that goes along with it. 

I’ve used content management systems in the past that are the new kid on the block. It’s all developers talk about and anyone using the older CMS’ are considered out of touch or not progressing their work. There is an unspoken problem with the newer technology, and it’s quite an issue when you run into the inevitable development problems. A severe lack of documentation and technical articles.

So what makes WordPress good for your business? That is supported with hundreds of pages of official documentation and technical articles from their official website, countless blog posts highlighting new techniques and how-to’s that enable developers to get the absolute best out of the platform, numerous videos on YouTube that offer in-depth information…

The web is absolutely full of information about WordPress. This extensive documentation means that should you look to move your WordPress site to another developer, as long as they are competent and able to read the documentation, they can take on your site and continue the development or your business.

Regular, free, security updates

The web is an ever-changing beast that requires constant attention to protect users and websites from people looking to exploit weaknesses. Unfortunately, it’s a side effect of the web we all have to live with. You’ll struggle to find anything that is 100% secure. Once something is online, there will always be that possibility the security will be compromised.

Thankfully, WordPress offers regular security updates that do their best to remove any exploits before they are found by hackers. Some of these can be delivered automatically so you’ll know your website is protected against the most recent security vulnerabilities.

Going back to the paid-for content management systems, what happens if you are no longer subscribed to their service? Does that mean your website is no longer getting security updates and therefore exposed to potential attacks? It’s not something I would be happy living with.

By choosing WordPress for your next business website build you can ensure that security fixes are handled quickly and minimal downtime.

Easy to use

Why is WordPress good? One reason could be that it is so easy to use. 

When choosing a CMS it’s simplicity and user friendliness should be high on your list. One of the great things about WordPress is how easy it is to use. Because it is so easy to use, many businesses have chosen it as their preferred content management system. This has meant there is no end of people who have worked with the platform in the past.

Why might this matter?

It makes updating and maintaining your website a much easier task. If your employees have to use a CMS they are unfamiliar with, it can mean updating content can take longer than usual, or they may be unable to find the part they are looking to modify. Which means contacting the company that developed the website to ask them to change it. Depending on how large the work involved is, you could be charged for those modifications.

That’s obviously not an ideal situation and almost defeats the purpose of having a CMS-controlled website if you are unable to make the changes yourself.

WordPress will help you and your team manage your company website effectively, save you time, and save you money in additional development time.

To conclude

These are just a few of the reasons why I believe WordPress is a good choice for you business website. If you’re looking to get started on a new build, and have decided to choose WordPress, get in touch and we can discuss your options.

Categorised under