WordPress is, as of this writing, the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. It accounts for a nearly 60% market share, making it 10 times more popular than the second ranked CMS, Joomla. It’s no surprise to see why WordPress is so popular. It boasts more features, functionality, and flexibility than almost any other CMS available today, not to mention having the single largest user base of any CMS. So before you build your next website you have to ask:
Is WordPress right for me?
The short answer to that question is, YES! WordPress can be used to build just about anything. This is because it has so many people working on it, and that’s all thanks to its open source nature.
Open source means having code that is made freely available for modification and redistribution. WordPress, being open source, has a large community of people who work to enhance and update its core code. Rather than a company working behind closed doors to review and update code, WordPress is open to the entire world. The platform is updated by thousands of people, and each line of code is reviewed openly to make sure it meets the standard that the community of contributors sets for it. But what does that mean for you?
Open source provides you with three main advantages that proprietary CMS platforms do not. First and foremost, there is no expensive licensing fee. That means more money can be spent on development and you won’t have to pay huge amounts each year for updates. Secondly, because it’s open source, anyone can develop for WordPress. This gives you access to thousands of amazing third party tools. And lastly, open source means more frequent updates. When you decide to go with WordPress, your platform will be continually evolving and getting better for you year after year, free of charge.
If that wasn’t enough to convince you of the power of WordPress, it’s functionality certainly will. WordPress is a fully featured CMS, which means it doesn’t do just one thing. At its core, WordPress supports management of pages and blog posts, allows for commenting, has a fully formed media library, tools for content creation, a user management system, a front end customizer, and a straightforward and easy to use administration panel. WordPress also allows for the use of themes and plugins (many of which are freely available) that extend your site’s functionality.
With the addition of a single plugin, WordPress can go from a fantastic informational site to a fully functional ecommerce store with inventory management, shopping carts, tax and shipping rules, and payment gateways built in. That’s just one plugin. There are plugins for just about everything you can think of. From event calendars, to forums, to custom contact forms, there’s a plugin for that. With so many plugins available sites can be shaped to fit your needs no matter what they are.
Beyond plugins WordPress also uses themes to customize its look. By adding a new theme, you can completely reshape the appearance of your site. If you’re looking for a specific layout, there’s likely a theme out there that can handle it, but the theme is just the starting point. With customization and a good developer, you can shape a theme to convey your brand and message perfectly.
With all these options available, WordPress is more than just functional, it’s flexible enough for any business. When you need a solution that works for your business, a plugin might not be available for your particular needs. That’s not a problem with WordPress since anyone can develop for it! If you need a specific functionality, the right team can usually build it for you. But with its huge library of plugins available major functionality gaps are usually rare.
Beyond the ways that WordPress can meet your website’s functional needs, it also lives up to its reputation for being one of the easiest to manage CMS platforms in the world. While you might want to rely on developers for managing your site’s code updates, you won’t need to be a developer to manage your content. The site’s backend is well organized and designed with ease of use in mind. If you need to update your content, you don’t need to worry about any technical knowledge; the backend editor makes it easy to go in and make tweaks to your pages or simply publish new content on the fly; No additional coding required.
When it comes to website development, WordPress is leading the way and it’s easy to see why. More people choose WordPress than any other platform in the world, so what are you waiting for? From form to functionality, WordPress has everything you need to make your next site.
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