What is WordPress?
WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system, and it powers more than 40% of websites. WordPress is 20 years old with a worldwide community of developers and an ecosystem of plugins, themes, and services, that provide a huge range of features for WordPress websites.
What is a content management system?
A content management system, or CMS, is computer software that helps you to create and update content on your website, without needing to edit code. In the case of WordPress, the CMS allows you to publish and edit different kinds of content, like pages or posts, manage media, such as images, videos, audio files, and documents.
Why should I choose WordPress?
Not everything popular is good, but the popularity of WordPress brings many benefits.
- Developing a WordPress website allows you to choose from thousands of free and paid plugins and themes, that provide advanced features for your website.
- There are WordPress website designers around the world, with development agencies, hosting companies, and freelancers, all specialising in WordPress. Finding help and advice, is easy.
- WordPress has been in development for 20 years. The software is open source, and people from around the world contribute to the development of the product, making sure that it is secure, reliable, and constantly evolving.
- WordPress is free. There are no ongoing fees or costs to use the software. You can modify it, build upon it, and use it however you like.
- WordPress is easy to use. If you’ve ever written an email in Gmail, or posted something on Facebook, you’ll be able to write a post on WordPress. The interface is constantly improving, making it easier than ever to edit your website.
I’ve heard that WordPress websites don’t have good…
Security?
People often complain that WordPress websites aren’t secure. That’s often true for old websites that aren’t maintained and updated.
Like any operating system or connected device, you need to make sure that your website is kept up-to-date. Modern WordPress versions have a robust auto-update feature that schedules regular updates of the core software and plugins, to ensure that security releases are promptly installed.
Also, as the largest CMS on the market, WordPress has teams of security researchers who help to identify and patch bugs and vulnerabilities in the core software, as well as in third-party plugins and themes.
Performance?
Website performance is vital. The chance of a user leaving your site increases by 32% when page load time goes from one to three seconds. And one in four visitors would abandon a website if it takes more than four seconds to load.
There is nothing inherently slow about WordPress websites; with quality hosting, a well-developed theme, and quality plugins, it is possible to achieve excellent page speed and load times.
SEO?
It’s easy to extend WordPress by installing an search engine optimisation plugin. SEO plugins allow you set default values, generate sitemaps, analyse the content on your website, and optimise every post and page on your site — all without needing to edit code.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all search engine optimisation solution. For some websites, you’ll want to focus on local search or eCommerce. WordPress provides flexibility that other out-of-the-box systems can’t match.
Would you like to know more about WordPress?
If you’re interested in finding out more about WordPress and whether it’s the right choice for powering your website, get in touch.
We can provide WordPress website design and development expertise, high-performance hosting, website audits, and training.