6 Important Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Website

If you are about to build a website, you have a decision to make. On which platform do you build? There are many options. If you have done any research at all, WordPress has likely come up as an option. In fact, worldwide, WordPress is the most popular website building software. Here are six reasons why.

1. Open-source and Free Software:  WordPress is free to download and has been an open-source project available to anyone since 2003. Typically, open-source projects have large user communities, and this is true with WordPress, including many beta testers and brand advocates.

You will also find free themes and plugins available through the WordPress repository. Premium themes and plugins are also available at third-party online retailers. These premium versions are often relatively low cost and usually worth the spend. WordPress site owners often pay for other services including freelance design services and/or developer services for tasks that may require more expertise or talent.

Many WordPress site owners keep maintenance experts or graphic designers on call. This depends on your website’s size, but again, costs for development are typically low and can be managed as you see fit.

2. Easily Customizable: You don’t have to be a tech genius to use WordPress. Many WordPress users start out without previous experience, either as programmers or web designers. There are thousands of free website templates or themes you can choose from, literally one for any type of business, blog type, or online store. These themes come with options panels that allow you to upload logos, customize colors and backgrounds, and more without writing any code.

You can also customize your site with plugins. Plugins are like apps that add other features such as contact forms, analytics, and more. Thousands of plugins are available, many of them are free and some are premium (and affordable).

3. Easy to Manage: WordPress is easy to manage. For one thing, it has a built-in updates management system that allows you to update plugins and themes directly from your WordPress administrator dashboard. WordPress will also notify you when it has a new version available. You simply update with the click of a button.

You can also protect your data from hacking with an easy-to-use WordPress backup plugin. Automatically create backups and store them remotely so if your site is ever hacked or stops working properly, you have a backup to restore your site to working order.

Finally, with WordPress mobile apps, you can manage your WordPress site from the road. These features all make WordPress one of the easiest to manage platforms on which to develop a website today.

4. SEO at Work: WordPress has SEO built into the platform and automatically creates meta descriptions and title tags for your pages and posts. This helps search engines know about your content which may get you moved up in rankings.

Just like everything else in WordPress, there are advanced SEO features with plugins and online tools. WordPress’ default SEO tools are great, but adding an SEO plugin, like Yoast SEO, can really boost your SEO.

5. Blog Like a Pro: WordPress started as a blogging platform. And it shows. Hobbyists may still look to choices such as Blogger, Medium and Tumblr but the pros go to WordPress. Why? Because WordPress blog functionality includes a remarkable set of tools. Seamlessly run a basic one-author blog by using the formatting and media tools. Or, build an online publication or magazine. You can set posts to run in advance with many user types including editors and contributors. The code stays in the background, and there are many options for editing and previewing. WordPress does it all.

6. Add Media: WordPress supports a range of media uploads including images, documents, audio, and video files. It is built with a media uploader for almost any file you can imagine including .pdf, .jpg, .mp4, .mov, .wmv and more. In addition, WordPress supports oEmbed enabled websites. This means you can embed Instagram photos, Tweets, Soundcloud audio, and YouTube videos simply by pasting the URL in the WordPress post editor. This feature makes creating beautiful and compelling content a no-brainer for any marketer, blogger or web designer.

While WordPress does support a wide range of media uploads, do remember to play by the rules. Use only your own media, and media available for free downloads and attributable credit.

Conclusion

It’s clear to see why WordPress has such a strong worldwide following. WordPress is a great choice for business owners, E-Commerce professionals, developers with clients, and bloggers. You maintain complete control over your site and have the advantages of plugins, themes, free tools, and full media support. Have questions about building your WordPress site? We can help. Contact us today.