So you want to build a new website for your business, or maybe you want to start a blog or a personal portfolio to show your cool work. That’s great!
But what platform should you use? After all there are a lot of CMS (Content Management Systems) out there, like Wix, Joomla, Magento, and so on.
As a Full-Stack Developer, I already tried multiple CMS for my clients and also for my own personal projects. And I must say that WordPress, in my experience, is a great choice in most scenarios.
Why?
1- It’s Free And Open Source!
WordPress.org is the open-source version of WordPress that allows you to build your own website based on the WordPress framework. You can use it and modify any way you want, doesn’t have any commercial restrinctions…
In other hands, you have full control over your Website. And you won’t need to pay a dime for it!
As a web developer, I really value open source software since you won’t get any sort of limitation on the development side, unlike other cloud-based solutions.
Being free to build anything the way we wish to build is the way to go!
2- The Base Framework Is Really Good
The WordPress platform as it is without any kind of addon or theme is already really powerful. It is build with security, SEO and mobile friendliness in mind, which is great for any website.
With the relatively recent addition of Gutenberg into the native build, the page creation and blog post creation process became even faster and easier.
Now you can drag and drop blocks capable of adding the designs and/or functionalities that you need in order to build great looking pages without knowing CSS or HTML5.
2- The WordPress Community
The WordPress Community is huge, and it is always there to help you find a solution for your problems. Really, it’s only one Google Search away!
It’s really interesting to see how healthy and supportive this community became over the years, and how many WordPress meetups are organized during the year.
Also, there are a lot of people invested on improving WordPress by developing tools to ease everyone’s experience. The absurd amount of plugins and themes available to you is proof of this.
3- WordPress Is Flexible And Customizable
WordPress is not only a blogging platform anymore. Nowadays, it’s easy to pick WordPress in order to create a personal portfolio or even a complex e-commerce store.
In fact, you can build pretty much any kind of website with WordPress, due to the extensive amount of plugins, themes and documentation available to you. And most of these resources are free or freemium!
Believe me, the amount of customization on WordPress is insane! When I started working on WordPress, I was shocked when I picked up a theme that allowed me to choose the exact shape for the website’s buttons!
Until then, I always had to make ajustments in CSS to ensure that the website’s design was perfect. In a way, I felt useless as a coder, but it sure speed up my work a lot.
4- It’s Easy To Update Content On WordPress
WordPress’s backoffice is quite easy and intuitive to use, even for beginners. Every section is well structured and easy to understand.
This allows you to make changes to your website quite easily and to push new content with great ease.
Plugins like Elementor, WP Bakery and the native Gutenberg will help you change your page’s design quickly and easy with drag & drop features and with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) preview.
Also, WordPress themes usually have a customise feature that empowers you to change and preview some of your website’s design and functionalities.
5- It’s SEO Friendly
Believe me when I tell you that implementing SEO manually on a website can be a very time-consuming process. I had to do this multiple times on websites unstructured websites and it’s an hassle.
Thankfully, WordPress solves a lot of SEO related issues right out of the box. And with the addition of Yoast SEO, this process becomes even easier, and it’s free(mium).
One of the most interesting features of Yoast for me is the SEO customization for each page with live suggestions to create your perfect SEO-optimized page.
6- Low Maintenance Required
Your WordPress website won’t require much attention from you to stay updated. The framework usually auto-updates itself, unless it is a really big update.
Themes and plugins might auto-update as well, but even if they don’t, you’ll just need few clicks in order to update them all.
7- It’s Mobile Friendly
In this day and age, everyone uses phones in order to do whatever they need to on the internet, so it’s imperative for your website to be responsive.
WordPress is built with mobile in mind, so this aspect won’t be a problem! Almost every theme is mobile ready, and WordPress has a mobile and tablet preview on it’s customization mode, which allows you to check how your website will behave on other devices.
Conclusion
WordPress is a really powerful tool and this might be the platform you are looking for in order to start building your website.
I’ve been doing a lot of work with WordPress lately, and I must say: it’s been a lot of fun. The fact that you have a lot of themes and plugins out there makes things different and interesting every time. And it seems that you can always find a solution for your problem, which is great!
Granted, not everything in WordPress is that intuitive for beginners. Installing WordPress might be a bit difficult for those who are not used to host management.
Of course, there are some services out there like Bluehost, which allows you to quickly setup your WordPress website on their hosting.
Even though Bluehost is an option, I still believe that knowing how to configure you website on your host is a valueable and easy skill to learn. For that, I’ll create a tutorial on how to setup WordPress on your hosting.
Stay tuned!
I really hope this article was helpful to you and that you give a try at WordPress.
If you have any question or feedback, let me know in the comments!
Until next time!