Advantages of Powering your Website with WordPress
It’s nearly impossible to navigate today’s web without hearing mention of WordPress. Since its release in May 2003, the WordPress platform has become the most popular blogging system in use, powering over 23% of the Internet’s top 10 million websites, and amassing a running total of 60 million WordPress sites in all.1
So what’s all the fuss about? What features make WordPress such an attractive alternative to the tried-and-true static HTML site? Let’s find out!
Dynamic Content Management
Above all, WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS). In short, this means that WordPress provides a user-friendly interface for editing the content of a site without having to delve into the underlying code. Editing web code such as HTML or CSS can be confusing, slow, and error-prone for those who don’t work with code regularly, and so having a platform that allows non-technical contributors to avoid this frustration is really helpful.
Easy Web Administration
WordPress facilitates not only content management, but also website administration. In the old days of static HTML sites, tasks like managing user roles and protecting your site from spam comments required a good deal of technological prowess. With WordPress, administration tasks are straightforward and easily accessed through the same web interface used for content management.
Blogging Comes for Free
Blogs, whether as standalone sites or as supplementary features of larger sites, have become a mainstay of today’s Web. From its very inception, WordPress was developed for blogging, and this focus is reflected heavily in the platform’s architecture. If blogging, syndicated news, or multi-user contributions are important to your site, then WordPress may be the way to go.
When WordPress Might not be a Good Choice
Like any other good thing (e.g. mozzarella sticks, zombie movies, alternative rock), WordPress isn’t for everyone.
Here are a few circumstances in which WordPress wouldn’t be a great fit:
- Your site is too small and/or too static: If your website is very small (between 1 and 3 pages, give or take), or if pages on your site are very rarely updated, then WordPress might be overkill. A small and/or static site is often easy enough to build in raw HTML, as the overhead associated with maintaining content is quite low.
- Your site requires functionalities that aren’t yet supported by a WordPress plugin or theme: WordPress is an open-source project, meaning that anyone can download and contribute to it freely. This philosophy has spawned a multitude of well-designed themes and plugins that support a wide range of cool features, from e-commerce and inventory management to Google Maps integration. Admittedly, however, there isn’t a WordPress plugin for everything. If your new site absolutely needs a feature that isn’t yet implemented as a WordPress theme or plugin, or that is better implemented by another CMS or web platform, then WordPress might not be your best option.
The best way to decide for sure if WordPress is a good choice for your site is to simply talk to your web developer or consultant. Any web guru worth their salt won’t push a solution that isn’t appropriate; if WordPress isn’t the answer for you, they’ll figure out what is. That being said, if WordPress works for nearly a quarter of the top 10 million sites on the web, it’s pretty likely that it’ll work for you as well.
Take the First Step
Interested in a WordPress site? Need help with an existing WordPress site? Let’s talk!
