When we develop new websites, blogs, products pages, or other online resources for our clients, we almost always use WordPress. What is it, and why do we use it? Here’s a bit about our love affair with WordPress.
WordPress is just software
If you’ve never heard of WordPress, don’t be concerned. It’s not another complicated piece of technology that you’ll have to fight with; it’s just some software we’re adding to your site. It makes it easy for you to use your site. That’s right: YOU. With WordPress, you can have more control over your website. If you want to change some text, add some pictures, revise a link — you can. In other words, you don’t have to call your web developer up and pay for every little change. (Of course, if you want us to manage your site, we’ll be happy to. It’s just nice to know you have the option, right?) WordPress is software that makes it easy for you to login, review, and edit your own site content.
With WordPress, you’re not alone
Source: http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/27/19-percent-of-the-web-runs-on-wordpress/
WordPress is used by more than 22.0% of the top 10 million websites as of August 2013 (W3techs). It’s used by small business and Fortune 500 companies, meaning it’s powerful enough to be used by Best Buy but user-friendly enough to be used by your favorite local coffee shop (WordPress).
WordPress can do a LOT
There is a saying in the WordPress community “There’s a plugin for that.” If you want your website to do something, like accept credit card payments, or share your recent Tweets, or show a slideshow of pictures, then we can find a plugin to help. WordPress has many open-source plugins that can assist you in making WordPress look however you want it to look and do whatever you want it to do. And because we can use these existing plugins to add onto your site, we can save you lots of time and LOTS of money.
Standard Web Compliance
WordPress have gone to great lengths to make sure every bit of the generated code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. This is important for cross browser compatibility, usability, and SEO as well. If those acronyms don’t mean anything to you, don’t worry! We’re just saying — WordPress is web friendly, meaning your site running on WordPress will be web friendly.
Security
WordPress comes built in with very robust security tools. We can also add on additional tools to make your site even more secure.
FREE
The final and best reason? WordPress is open-source freeware. It’s 100% free for us to add onto your sever, and it’s 100% free for us to use. There’s some cost involved with setting it up (time for installation, for example), and some of the add ons will cost money (if you chose to integrate a plugin, for example), but the actual WordPress software is completely free.
And there you have it! WordPress isn’t a perfect fit for every project, but it’s a great tool in the right situation. So next time you hear us mention WordPress, just know that we’ve made a conscious decision to use a tool that provides YOU with a user friendly, secure, web compliant site.
