10 Reasons Why I Use WordPress

I have spent several years working as a web designer, and clients always ask me “why use WordPress for my website?” It’s a valid question – there are so many content management systems out there! Through the years, I have worked with many different content management systems from Drupal, Joomla, Squarespace to plain old HTML/CSS sites. I’m not here to tell you that if you aren’t using WordPress you should switch now because WordPress is the best. It is my personal preference to use WordPress for the reasons I will explain in this post.

1. WordPress is truly open source and free

WordPress started as an open source platform – meaning you don’t have to pay anything to be able to use it. You won’t be charged you when you hit a certain size or be denied access to any of the code. No fees, no nonsense.

2. You aren’t locked into one hosting company

You have the ability to choose which company you want to host with, and it’s easy to move your site to another hosting service if you decide you don’t like the one you are currently using. This is a great feature because it gives you the freedom to decide how much hosting you need and where you want to purchase it from.

3. Best content management system I’ve used yet

As I said earlier in this post, I’ve worked with a lot of content management systems. WordPress is by far the most user-friendly one I’ve come across. I love the community that has developed with this platform. If you are having an issue making your WordPress website, you can make a post about your problem on the WordPress forums, and your peers will help you find a solution! The forums are also a great place to look at other questions that have been posted, there’s a good chance that someone else has experienced the same problem. I’ve found that I can usually find the answer I’m looking for by looking at old posts.

4. User-friendly, even for those who don’t know web design

This kind of goes along with number 3. The backend of WordPress is user-friendly, even for people who don’t have any experience with websites. I tell my clients, if you can use Word, you can use WordPress. While there is a bit of a learning curve to learn the best ways to develop your site with this platform, updating content is really simple.

4. Your site can grow with you

I’ve seen companies outgrow their sites quickly, the content management system they started out on doesn’t accommodate for the site growing as fast as the company is. Sometimes it is a simple fact that the chosen CMS had a great price to start, but has now become really expensive to add new things to your site. I don’t believe that’s fair – you shouldn’t have to start from scratch somewhere else because of limitations or price! With WordPress I have found it easy to accommodate growth for websites without breaking the bank or competely reworking the website.

6. Plugins give you more functionality

Many platforms offer the plugin functionality, but WordPress does an exceptional job at having a smooth implementation. They also do not restrict who can create a plugin, which means you always have a lot of options! You can search the plugin directory based on what you want the plugin to do, and then compare them by how many installs the plugin has and read comments and ratings of the plugin!

Plugins allow you to add photo galleries, sliders, shopping carts, newsletter signups, forums, maps and much more.

7. Easy to keep your site secure

WordPress was developed with security in mind, making it by default a safe platform. When WordPress releases a new update, it generally fixes bugs and includes security updates. These changes make it harder for someone to hack into your site because the platform itself is always being updated. If security is a concern for you, it is easy to install plugins on your site to add extra protection.

8. Search engine friendly

The lovely people who created WordPress realized that search engine optimization (SEO) is important and added elements into the platform to make your site easier to optimize for SEO. Plugins make it even easier to take your SEO even further.

9.Easy to add a blog to your site

WordPress started as a blogging platform back in 2003 and has grown to be a robust content management system for websites. They never removed the blogging element of the platform, making it easy to add a blog to your website. Having a blog on your website instead of using another platform for your blog will increase your SEO. When you host a blog on a blogging platform, any traffic from your blog would go towards the blogging platforms traffic, not yours.

10. You don’t need to be a designer to create a nice website

While WordPress is a little more advanced than your traditional drag and drop platforms like Squarespace or Wix, you still can make your design yourself. You can pick a theme and then customize the colors, text, etc to your liking. Since not all themes are made by WordPress, some of the customizable features vary depending on who made it. You can get a theme for free or purchase a paid one. Paid themes generally allow you to customize more of the theme and come with support if you have problems.

If you already have an established brand, I would recommend having a custom design created for your website. This way you can make sure your website aligns with your branding. If you are starting a new website, customizing a template will be easier since you don’t have established brand styles.

Do you use WordPress for your website or blog? Or do you use another content management system? Let’s talk about it in the comments below!

*This post was not sponsored by WordPress. I truly believe it is a great content management system and wanted to share why I think it is so great with you!