With over 32% of the world’s websites powered by WordPress (WP), there is no doubt to believe that it is the most popular platform for building websites and publishing content. The two main factors that work in its favor are its adaptability and the ability to function as the backend for blogs, static web pages, and e-commerce websites.
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that is available free of cost for anyone to download and install. It provides the tools required to build a website from scratch. The learning curve for mastering the basics of WordPress is not very steep.
Here are our 10 reasons you should choose WordPress to power your website.
1. It is simple to use
One of the reasons for the huge popularity of WordPress is its simplicity. Users do not feel intimidated by this software. It is not just reserved for people with technical expertise; it accommodates the non-tech savvy people too.
You don’t need to hire a web developer or have coding knowledge to get started on your online dream or hobby. Even a seemingly complex task like setting up an e-commerce site for a small business is made easy by WordPress. Almost all features are built-in, and for the ones that are not, you can install simple plugins to do the job. All you need to do is add and update the content on your website.
WordPress has a lot to offer even to an experienced coder. It gives them a foundation that they can scale quickly and efficiently. It reduces the time required for building a website from scratch. Many WordPress hosts, such as Asura Hosting, offer a single-click install feature that makes it even simpler to use WordPress. Here at Asura Hosting, we use Softaculous.
Once you get started, you will notice immediately that the entire process of content creation is pretty straight forward.
Also, after the content is published, it is easy to edit and update the content using the built-in visual editor.
2. It has a huge community of users
A major benefit of using WordPress is you get access to its large pool of users. So if you encounter a problem while using WordPress, it is highly likely that someone else must has faced the same issue before you. Therefore your problems can be easily resolved by merely searching for solutions on Google.
The various WordPress forums help users to reach out to fellow users, thus creating a vibrant and dynamic user community that is always bustling with activities. The users share their experiences and know-how about solving issues they might come across while using WordPress.
These folks put their minds in developing and testing new features, fix bugs as well as check if the latest release or update lives up to the expectations of its users. The community is extremely useful for beginners and developers who require a helping hand.
The discussions revolve around many topics such as troubleshooting, coding tricks, and tips, how to run a small business using WordPress, etc. You will receive a response to any question posed at a lightning-fast speed. The solutions provided are effective and are offered with a courteous and positive attitude.
There are several dedicated resources available online that will guide you in the process of learning about the nitty-gritty of the platform. You can check out blogs, guides, YouTube videos, webinars, and tutorials to get your doubts answered. You can always also contact us if you have any questions with regards to WordPress or web hosting in general.
3. It supports self-hosting of sites
WordPress requires its users to host their websites. You can either self-host or choose a WordPress hosting service. Self-hosting is usually a favorable option for advanced users who are aware of the technical know-how and do not want to be tied down by any restrictions. If you choose self-hosted WordPress, you will have 100% control of your website.
You will be responsible for all activities, such as the development and maintenance of the site. Updating the themes and plugins will also be your responsibility. With self-hosted WordPress, you get to make the decisions regarding the use of premium or free plugin, enable ads, customize the look of the website, tweak the database and also add codes to your files.
So if you are a well-experienced webmaster with good knowledge of site maintenance, you can go with this option.
However, if you are a newbie who is just testing the blogging waters or taking baby steps towards building an online business, you can outsource the development and maintenance activities to any WordPress hosting service provider such as Asura Hosting.
It is highly recommended to go for a dedicated WordPress hosting service instead of regular shared hosting. Although the latter might be cheaper, choosing the former makes sense as you will get access to operating systems and servers that are configured to maximize the functions and performance of WordPress on any kind of website.
4. It’s plugins and themes add functionality and enhancements
The plethora of plugins and themes WordPress offers is the jewel on its crown. While the plugins add functionality, the themes enhance the look and feel of the user’s websites. Users can choose to install from a range of free as well as premium plugins developed by independent developers and private companies.
You will notice that many of the free options are quite suitable for taking care of your needs. This is in stark contrast with other content management systems where the best choices are often hidden behind the paywalls.
Every theme and plugin that is displayed on the WordPress gallery comes with user reviews. This helps to give you an idea about how they both will function when you use it for your site. Apart from checking the reviews, you can also check the date when the theme or plugin was last updated. If it’s not been updated for more than a year, then you should keep looking for better options. The flexible framework of WordPress allows people with coding experience to make changes to the existing code and modify the application and layout.
While a majority of the plugins available are suitable for blogging platforms, it can be customized to fit the need of any business or organization ranging from a social networking community to an e-commerce store. You can also scale your website with the help of these plugins. Creating a contact page, improving the SEO, creating landing pages, adding a checking system, or an additional layer of security can all be accomplished in a few clicks.
5. It is built for SEO
After building your website, you typically want as many eyes on it as possible, and this is where SEO comes into play. It is a collection of techniques and strategies that is used to help place a page higher than others in a search result. This increases the website’s visibility and attracts more traffic towards it.
WordPress was born for SEO. It has many SEO friendly themes that were built with features to improve the website’s performance in search engine results. There are also dedicated SEO plugin such as Yoast that add several features designed to optimize the user’s site. While the free version is great, the paid version gives you access to features such as internal link suggestions, insights on keywords, content, and phrases; notification on time elapsed since the last update, ad-free experience, and much more.
The recently introduced heading tag option in WordPress is extremely useful as it lets the search engine bots, also known as crawlers to scan the content of the site. These are formatting options that can be found in the WP editor and are labeled as Heading 1, Heading 2, and henceforth.
Apart from this, you can also try the Google XML Sitemaps to up your SEO game. Websites built using WordPress can easily integrate this plugin and develop a sitemap in XML. This is a very useful feature as it makes it easier for Google to scan a site and push it higher on search results.
6. It helps secure your website
Content management systems are not 100% secure and are susceptible to online threats. As hackers find new ways of wreaking havoc, it is important to use a platform that can ensure the safety of your website. This is why it makes sense to use WordPress to build your website. It was built keeping high-security standards in mind, and it, therefore, makes it easy to keep data thieves and hackers out of your site.
WP security team works round the clock to provide vital security updates and patches. You can either choose to update these automatically or handle it yourself. By ensuring the installation of the latest version of WordPress files and extensions, your website will be equipped with all the security patches required to secure it. To update the themes and plugins, click the checkboxes that appear next to the items you want to update and press the update button.
In addition to installing updates, users can secure their site by using strong passwords and employing two-factor authentication (2FA). You can also install a security plugin to keep your data safe in case of a cyberattack. These plugins help protect a site against attacks from hackers and malware. However, take due diligence while installing 3rd party plugins as it may expose you to security threats.
You can also secure your website by using a reliable WordPress hosting service that manages security and backups. We (Asura Hosting) run mod-security on our servers, which bans all IP address that threatens any WP-login pages.
7. It is the most dynamic CMS
The WordPress blog editor has many useful tools. You can use them to create a simple single author blog or build an entire magazine, it is entirely up to you on how you would like to build your WordPress blog or website. That is what makes it so special. It is also an ideal platform for blog administration as it allows the user to assign a different set of permissions to different people. For example, you can give access to a person to create a new post on your blog but restrict them from publishing it before you consent to it.
WordPress offers plenty of themes you can choose from based on the blog category. Themes are available for fashion blogs, health blogs, tech blogs, and any other category that you can think of. Most of the themes are free and have robust functionalities and design.
Whether you plan to host a business or personal blog, there are many choices available to make it truly unique. The blogging options available with WordPress are much better than the ones available on other platforms.
8. It supports many file types
For a modern website, it is essential to have a mix of media content and text based content. Thankfully WordPress supports multiple media formats. The image formats it supports are .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, and .png. If you want to upload a video file you can do so in .mp4, .m4v, .wmv, .mov, .avi, .mpg, .3gp, and .3g2 formats. The file formats supported for documents are .doc, .pptx, .ppt, .ppsx, .pps, .odt, .xlsx, .xls, and .pdf. The formats available for audio are .ogg, .wav, .mp3, and .m4a. These image and video formats give you sufficient freedom in terms of what content you want to put up on your site, and it also serves the requirements of most people. (Especially the young!)
However, there are certain file types like SVG that are not supported by WordPress. In such cases, you will get an error notification saying, “[filename] has failed to upload” or “Sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons.” You can get around this problem with the help of a free svg plugin or by adding a small piece of code in your website’s wp-config.php file. By doing this, you can lengthen the list of permissible file types and upload content in any format.
If you are not able to use the file type even after trying the above methods, check the size of the file as WordPress places limits on the maximum upload size.
9. It can be integrated with social media
There are billions of active users on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and their likes. It is crucial to reach this audience to ensure the success of your website. Social media has also become an important marketing tool. It is, therefore, necessary for any CMS to be able to integrate social media into its platform. It is a lot easier to achieve this using WordPress.
Apart from sharing the content, your readers can also share any post they like with a click of a button. Additionally, WP also has the option of making all the comments received on your blog to automatically appear on your Facebook page as well. This helps to increase the reach of your site and drive traffic towards it.
This social media integration feature saves a lot of time. For example, by integrating your Instagram with WP, you can share some of the pictures on Instagram automatically with your website instead of manually publishing on both platforms. You can integrate social media either manually or by using a reliable 3rd party plugin such as Social Media Widget.
10. It is mobile friendly
People surfing the net have a concise attention span. You just have about 5 seconds to impress a prospective user. So if your website is slow or does not load soon enough, you can say goodbye to that user. This is why it is imperative to make your websites optimized for mobile users.
It is also worth noting that websites that are not mobile-friendly are often ranked lower in search results. If you use WordPress to build your site, you do not have to worry about overhauling your site to make it compatible with smartphones and tablets as most of the themes and plugins are by default mobile friendly. For the that are not, WP offers the “mobile view” option.
To check if your site is presently mobile-friendly, use the mobile-friendly tool from Google. If the results show that the design of your site is not mobile-friendly, install a WP mobile responsive plugin right away.
Conclusion
Anything that you want to accomplish for your website can be done using WordPress. The flexibility of WP is not confined to its features alone; it also applies to its users. Developers, newbies, and anyone in between the two can use WordPress with ease. How you want to use it or what features you want to use is completely up to you.
It is the best choice for bloggers and e-commerce owners. It gives you complete freedom to control your site and take advantage of its free tools, themes, and plugins.
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