So when finally you have decided to create a Website for your business or a blog, you got to know about WordPress. Here comes the great confusion why should I use WordPress for my Website? What are the Advantages of Making a Website on WordPress? You can’t move ahead before getting an answer to these questions.
Why Should You Use WordPress For Your Website?
Though most of you know that WordPress is a powerful platform and is most widely used. Still, we need complete satisfaction before starting our long journey of creating and managing a Website. Also, sometimes there is a situation before the developers to convince their clients for WordPress, which sometimes becomes a mountainous task. Here I am aggregating the benefits of Using WordPress to build a website.
Benefits of Using WordPress For Your Website :
1. First, it is Free to use – WordPress is an open-source CMS and absolutely free to use to any extent. Even if your website makes millions, you don’t need to pay a penny to a WordPress company. There is no license fee or support fee. One disadvantage of being free is that nobody is legally liable if WordPress stops providing updates and support.
2. Most popular CMS: Join the league – WordPress is the most popular CMS on the planet. Almost 50% of all websites are running on WordPress. It is extremely popular among bloggers due to its inbuilt blogging system. Join the league to become part of such a vast community.
3. Quick installation – WordPress is extremely easy to install. Its biggest benefit is its popularity that it comes with also all script installers like Softaculous etc. If you have cPanel based hosting, you can definitely find Softaculous or any other script installer using which you can install WordPress with just a few clicks. In case you don’t have cPanel based hosting, you can also install WordPress manually without much hassle in the following steps :
- Just download the latest version of WordPress from WordPress.org
- Upload it in the root folder.
- Then create a database and keep its username and password safe.
- Now open the website URL and see the WordPress installation window.
- Follow the steps and enter the required details. And done.
4. Entry-level skills are low: Fast learning curve – It is very easy to learn to work on WordPress. Basic internet skills are quite enough to start with it. If you have worked with MS Word, you can easily create and manage a WordPress page/post. Installing a theme or plugin is a super easy task. Unless you need any specific customization in the theme, you don’t need to know any coding.
5. Ease of manage and use – Admin panel of WordPress is so creatively designed as any novice user can easily manage the website. Creating/editing a new page or post is a cakewalk. The process of installing themes and plugins is very simple as compared to other CMS. If you open your website while you are logged in to the admin panel, you will see a toolbar with frequently needed options.
Techcrunch, The Newyorker, BBC America, Bloomberg, Sony TV, MTV News are some Websites using WordPress. By looking at this list you can easily conclude why you should use WordPress for your Website
6. Huge Availability of themes – As WordPress has a huge community of developers, they keep contributing new themes to the WordPress repository. Most of them provide it for free of cost. Some charges for premium features. Looking at the huge opportunity some companies also come into th business with offering free as well as premium themes. Some of them are ThemeForest , Colorlib
7. Extending functionality by adding new plugins – If you want new functionalities to be added in website except the default ones, there is a plethora of plugins available. You name the function and you will find it in WordPress repository. Again thanks to the wide community of developers and companies making plugins for profit. Find here the list for must have WordPress plugins
8. SEO Friendly – WordPress is quite a magnet to Search Engine. As it is the most reliable CMS and is there around since quite a long time. Google and other search engines are quite familiar with its structure. Also there are a number of plugins available to boost the SEO of your WordPress website.
9. Fully Customisable – WordPress website is fully customisable as you become the complete owner of the website and have access to the source code. Though you can make a number of customisations from admin panel itself, if you have a basic knowledge of coding also you can customise it to a greater extent.
10. Easily Transferable to New Server – Due to a very clear file and database structure, it is really easy to transfer the WordPress website to a new server. Just transfer the files & database and fill in the database details in wp-config file. Done.
It is so easy that you can do it with very minimal knowledge about hosting. Even there are few plugins available which makes this task even more easier. In this fast changing online world easy transferability is very useful as you might want to start your website with minimal server resources and will go for higher hosting once you start receiving traffic.
The biggest advantage of WordPress is that you instantly become part of a largest online community. Though it is mostly unorganised but is bind by the thread of common motive.
11. Minimum use of server resources – WordPress uses quite minimal resources on your server. So you can run a WordPress website even from a shared hosting from any generic hosting service provider. Even WordPress specific hosting are also available which are optimised for running WordPress websites. The CPU & bandwidth usage are very minimal for a WordPress website.
12. Fast Performance – WordPress is made upon PHP and with MVC structure. Though it is general perception that WordPress websites are a bit slower than general HTML & CSS websites. But if you look at the functionalities and security aspects comes with WordPress. It will not feel slow. If you plan to make a custom website with similar security and functionalities, it is going to be super slow and will need multiple iterations and man hours to reach optimal performance.
13. Low Investment – It doesn’t need any special type of server resources and high level skill to create or manage a WordPress website. So the starting investment is very low. In case you are not looking towards a very high traffic or additional functionalities, you can continue to run a WordPress website at low investment itself.
14. Infrastructure Cost is Low – The infrastructure required to run a online business is usually lower than a Brick & Mortar store. With WordPress it will be even lower as you. You will not need any specific hardware or software to run a WordPress website. Even the general PC / Laptop and a basic internet connection will be enough to work with a WordPress website.
15. HTML Editor not required – WordPress has inbuilt HTML editor, so you will not need a separate HTML editor as you might need to work with any framework or coding language. Though this thing is common among most of the CMS but WordPress is quite unique in its editor structure. It looks really simple and works in both mode Visual and Text. In visual mode you can use it as you work on MS Word. You can add images using the Add media button and format text and images with available options. While in text mode you can write general HTML & CSS code.
There are so many benefits of WordPress that it has found specific place in every professional developers portfolio.
16. FTP Client not required – You can edit most of the stuff on WordPress from admin panel itself. Even some HTML, CSS & PHP files can be edited from admin panel itself. You will not need to get into the file system of your website to edit the files. So you will not need to learn to work with FTP clients. You don’t need to provide access to FTP account or file manager to your website administrator.
17. Complete control – WordPress is opensource and also you put it up on your hosting. You get complete control of the website. Any troubles with WordPress will not affect your website unless you try to update it. The same is with the plugins and themes.
Once you install a theme or plugin on your website you can use them forever. Even if it is a premium one you don’t need to renew your license unless you want to update it regularly.
18. Blog is built in and ready to use – In todays content centric online world, everyone needs a blog on ther website. WordPress comes with a in-built blog. WordPress was initially created with a blogging platform ifself. It is considered to be the best platform for blogging and as a result most of the bloggers create their blogs in WordPress itself.
WordPress blog is fully equipped with all blogging features like tags, categories, comments, pingbacks, RSS feeds, featured images etc.
19. Easily Scalable – WordPress websites are easily scalable to bigger website as WordPress is enough capable of handling big amount of data as well as visitors traffic. If you keep your server resources upgraded to handle the load, your WordPress website will never ditch you.
WordPress is updating its core regularly as well as themes and plugins author are also updating their stuff regularly to cope up with the ongoing challenges or online environment. Thus your website will never be out of date.
20. Strong Community Support – There is a big community build up around WordPress because of its popularity. If you face any trouble while working on WordPress you will never be alone. Someone somewhere would have faced the same problem before you. And people would have already found a solution to it.
The user base of WordPress is so large that no other CMS will reach near to it, not in coming 10 years. Surpassing Advantages of WordPress is quite difficult for any existing or new CMS.
You can always feel secure when you are with WordPress. Even you can find solution to lot of your problem on our websites errors and virus section. As an active user you should also try to become part of this community and share your experiences whenever you find an opportunity.
21. Can be managed by multiple users at the same time – Multiple users can manage WordPress website at the same time without interfering with each others work. When one user is editing a page or post, other users see it locked and can’t open it for editing.
22. Multi Level Role allocation is possible – Different users can be allotted different roles based on their requirement. Admin, Author, Editor, Contributor, Subscriber are the different roles available for allocation to users. Various roles have different level of authority over the content and settings of the website.
23. Can be managed from anywhere – The WordPress admin panel can be accessed from anywhere from any system with basic internet connection. So a WordPress website can be managed from anywhere. As we discussed earlier there is no specific software or hardware needed to manage a WordPress website. It is specially good for people who are managing a part time blog or website. They don’t need to manage any specific office or other resources.
24. It is Mobile Responsive – Websites made on WordPress are mobile responsive and perform quite well on mobile devices with small screen sizes. The themes comes for WordPress are also mobile friendly. It is very necessary for a website to be mobile friendly as most of the people are visiting your website on mobile phones. Also it is necessary for a website to be mobile friendly for SEO perspective.
25. Schedule the blog posts – You can also schedule your blog posts on WordPress. It will help you to regularise the blogging process for your blog. Search engines loves the website which are being updated regularly. Your reader will also keep getting a regular dose of your writing.
Using WordPress for a website for your business or Blog is so obvious choice unless you are expert in any other technology.
26. Social networking friendly – A number of social connection and sharing options are available in WordPress. Some themes comes inbuilt with these options. Also there are several plugins which provide options for social sharing.
Social login options also can be inserted with some plugins. By use of widgets and shortcodes you can also display these social options at various locations on your website.
27. Membership site can be created easily – As WordPress comes with inbuilt login and register functionalities you can create a membership site with it quite easily. Also there are several plugins available to make this process more interesting and customised as per your business or community idea.
28. Easily convertible to E-commerce website – Online selling is the new fashion. By using Woo-commerce you can easily convert your WordPress website to a E-commerce website where you can sell any type of products or services. You might be a blogger and later you want to sell a ebook or you are a business and later you want to sell your product or service online.
Woocommerce equips your website with all necessary tools for an E-commerce website – Inventory management system, Order management system, Cart System, Wishlist, Online Payment gateways, Email alerts, Guest checkout, Reviews and ratings, shipping rate options etc. There are also supportive plugins available for Woo-commerce which can be used to add additional functionalities like SMS alert, product comparison, quick view and a lot others.
29. Very secure – Here again there is a misconception that WordPress websites are not secure but only if you compare it with highly managed custom built websites. If you make a custom website with 100 times of the budget as needed for a WordPress website, still it will not be as secure as WordPress is.
WordPress’ parent company as well as the community continuously looks for new threat perceptions and releases it solutions in form of updates or plugins. Also if you follow proper security measure in your website, it will become a hell of a job for the hackers or spammers. It is only if you leave loopholes in the security, hackers exploit it and damage your website.
30. Regular Update – As I discussed I last point, WordPress continuously looks for new things in the online world and keep updating their core. Minor updates keep coming every now and then. Major updates comes once in a while only.
Also the plugin and theme authors keep updating their stuff to keep it in sync with the new WordPress version.
One Advantage of WordPress is that skills you learn while Working on WordPress will also be useful when you start working with other CMS
31. Continued Support – Though WordPress doesn’t give you any commitment for support. But still its execs will reply to your queries if you ask it via mail or forums. Also you have huge active community which is ready to reply to all your queries. So you will never feel alone in your trouble.
Most of the problems you might face are already faced by someone and solved. And if this person is genuine enough, he might have shared it already which you can find while searching on Google. Even if it is not put your query on any related forum or website. I never have to wait more than 24 hours for any answer I was seeking.
32. Easy to use & Secure comment process – Comments and reviews are important aspects when you want to establish 2 – way communication with the visitors. WordPress offers you an extremely easy to use and Secure way of comments / reviews. You can easily control what to show and what not to from your admin panel. Also you can send the comments with spam links in moderation automatically. It can be controlled as to who should be able to post the comments – only loggedin users or anyone and what information they have to provide compulsorily to put a comment on your website. You or other visitors can easily answer to these comments.
Commenting process looks so easy to the user. Also there are several plugins available to add more advanced commenting process like comment via Facebook, Discus etc. But I suggest you stick to the basic WordPress comment system as it is more reliable.
33. Increased Industry Authority – If you are in the blogging or news industry, the authority of your website increases if your website is made on a established platform like WordPress. Being on WordPress works as a sign of minimum required security of data.
34. Easy Menu Management – Managing the menu is quite easy on a WordPress website. There is a special sub-section in the Appearance section where you can manage your menu items in a very easy drag and drop fashion.
You can even create new menu and fix their locations. Depending on the theme you are using you will have several options for menu location. Also there is a custom menu widget which you can use to put up a menu in your desired location like sidebar, footer etc.
35. URL structure is easily manageable and customisable – You can easily manage the URL structure of your website. Again there is a special sub-section permalinks under Settings section. You can mange your URL structure easily from this section.
There are several pre-built options available. You can choose from them by just clicking buttons. There is also options for custom URL structure, which you can use if you are an advanced user.
When you use WordPress, you will find that creating a breathtaking menu is so easy of a task that even a kid can do it beautifully.
36. Can handle multiple media types : Images, Audio, Video, Documents – WordPress can handle almost any type of media files. You can easily upload them to your media library from admin panel and use their link anywhere on your website as well as externally.
There is also a very easy to use Add Media button in the page / post editor section which you can use to add any type of media into the page / post directly at the location of the cursor.
37. Image editing options – While you are uploading the image, sometimes you might need to crop it or resize it etc. WordPress provides you with these options in media section.
You can open any image in media library and edit it based on your requirement. Also you can add caption, title or Alt attribute in Images.
38. Backup and Restore is very easy – Thanks to few plugins like BackupBuddy, it is extremely easy to take a full backup of your website and restore it. You don’t need to have any cPanel or FTP access for taking backup. It can be taken easily from the admin panel itself.
39. Its there since long time so it is Reliable – Longevity of anything gives it a credibility. WordPress is there in the market since a very long time now and there are millions of websites running over it. So it is considered very reliable in the website design industry.
40. Inbuilt RSS Feed system – As WordPress was originally created as a blogging system, RSS feed is inbuilt with it. RSS feed is a very important aspect of any blogging system as it gives you a tool to display your blogs feed on 3rd party site either of SEO or popularity purpose.
There is nothing better than using WordPress when it comes to blogs. Above 40% of the top bogs runs on WordPress.
41. Developer are easily available – Due to WordPress popularity and market potential a lot of people take WordPress development as career. There are companies working specifically on WordPress related website and tools. Finding a WordPress developer is very easy in case you plan to outsource the development work. It is also comparatively cheaper to get a WordPress development done when compared to other CMS or framework or core coding.
42. Creating Mobile Application is Easy (via plugins) – If you are planning to create a Mobile application also for your website. It is easily possible in WordPress at a very low cost. Few plugins are available which can be used to accomplish this task at a very low cost.
These plugins utilises the API provided by WordPress and create a Web View application which can fulfil your requirement to certain extent.
43. Easy Import and Export of Content – The content of one WordPress website can be easily exported & imported to another website. It is one big advantage of WordPress as it offers you freedom to create content on multiple instances and bring it together later. Also if you planning to completely rebuilt your website, it will be really helpful. Both Import and Export tools are available in the Tools section on your admin panel.
44. Monetisation Friendly – If you are creating a blog which you want to monetise with Ads or affiliate links. WordPress provides you ample space to put up your ad codes. You can put it in header, in sidebar, in footer etc. There are some themes which are specially designed with monetisation option for blog. Also there are few plugins using which you can put up the ads anywhere in the post or page and also can get a combined analytics. Geo- targeted ads can also be placed using some plugin like WP Ad Insert.
45. Custom php code can be added for custom functionalities – If you are a pro in php and want to add a php code to bring in a new feature in the website. You can add php code in the files of WordPress by getting into the File manage via cPanel or FTP. Also there are few plugins available which can be used to put php code in page / post editor. Usually WordPress doesn’t render any php code written on the page or post. It will show it as a text. These plugins you can make of short-codes and facilitate the insertion of php code in the page / post.
46. Custom layouts can be created using page builder plugins – Though WordPress themes are quite customisable in nature, you might still need to make some layouts which are not possible in themes. For this purpose there are several plugins available.
47. Specific WordPress Hosting Are available – Have you ever seen a Opencart hosting, Magento Hosting or php hosting but you would have definitely seen WordPress hosting as a separate section on any hosting company’s website. Even there are companies like WPEngine which are offering only WordPress hosting.
WordPress is so widely used in the website design industry that all hosting companies has to come up with specific WordPress hosting with WordPress specific server features. WordPress hosting will be a good idea if you have already planned to created your website on WordPress.
48. Specific Websites for WordPress Support and Updates – There are a number of websites which are offering help articles and support specially for WordPress. There are forums on WordPress related topics. You can easily find solution to all your WordPress related queries on these platforms.
49. WordPress API – Now comes the bomb, WordPress API. WordPress Rest API is really very potent and you can use it to create vast application.
Hope after reading this you would be clear that you are making your website on WordPress finally. Let me know if you have any more doubts in comments.