Want to Edit Your Website Yourself?
While creating a professional website requires skills that the average person doesn’t have, ANYONE can edit and maintain a WordPress website.
Fortunately, there’s a publishing platform available with the right balance of functionality, flexibility, cost, and support to match any other available solutions. That platform, of course, is WordPress!
In this post, we will look at six reasons why WordPress should be the go-to publishing choice for your website, but first of all, let’s look at exactly what WordPress is, along with a little back history.
What is WordPress?
WordPress was first launched in 2003 by two developers who wanted a better solution for publishing their blog content (Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little). 13 years later, WordPress has now grown to power over 30% of the internet – with high-profile users such as TechCrunch, the Washington Post, and BBC America, to name a few.
Its humble beginnings solely as a blogging platform are still present, but constant development has meant WordPress has evolved into a full-featured Content Management System (CMS).
Sooo WHY should you use WordPress?
- WordPress Is Open-Source and Free Forever
You may have heard the term ‘open-source software’ bandied around, but might not know what it means. Quite simply, open-source means anybody can contribute to the software in question, and is why it’s FREE!
- There’s No Coding Required to edit WordPress!
There are a multitude of ways in which WordPress’ design makes it easy to add pages and content. This gives WordPress the functionality of software like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, meaning styling your text with bold & alignment, for example, can be done directly within the editor.
- Lots of Themes (Layouts) to Choose
WordPress includes several default themes designed to show off its core functionality. While these themes perform admirably, there are 1000’s of other themes to choose from, all completely free, within the WordPress Theme Directory.
Because they’re free, you’ll find that the quality of themes varies. However, the Theme Directory includes a five-star rating system, awarded by users, to help you make an informed choice. Some of the free Themes also have upgrades with more functionality you can add if needed.
There are also some developers who offer premium themes, i.e. ones with a cost attached. Normally $60 is the most you’ll pay – and just one time. These Themes are generally more committed development program with dedicated support. ThemeForest is by far the best site for purchasing premium Themes.
- E-Commerce Is Easy With WordPress
Unlike a hand-coded website, setting up an e-commerce solution on your WordPress website is easy when using one of a number of available plugins.
One such example is WooCommerce – the most popular e-commerce solution available. Its strengths lie in how fast it is to set up a store and its support from all major payment providers.
- All WordPress Websites are Mobile-Friendly
Google recently updated Search Engine Rules and will rank sites based on their whether or not their website is mobile-friendly first. The goal is to “help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly”.
- Google likes WordPress!
If you want your website to list high in search engine rankings you should use anything Google likes. The coding for WordPress is very clean and suits Google’s criteria.
WordPress also comes with free SEO (search engine optimization) Plugins that make it even easier to assure you reach your market.
Conclusion
Choosing a publishing platform for your website can be tough and choosing the wrong one means wasting time and money later, when migrating to a more suitable solution. WordPress should be your first choice for publishing your website. In this post we looked at some of the reasons why. Let’s recap:
- WordPress will be free forever.
- Using WordPress is as easy to edit as using your favorite Word Processor.
- There are many free themes and very feature rich premium themes such as the Avada Theme (one of my favorites).
- WordPress can be extended with plugins to provide extra functionality.
- Selling products is easy, with several e-commerce solutions available to get started instantly.
- Google likes WordPress.
Thanks for your Wisdom Tom Rankin!
