Top Reasons for Using WordPress for Your Website
Some folks say that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the #1 reason to use WordPress.
We wouldn’t necessarily agree that SEO is the primary reason to use WordPress for your website, although it is one of the top reasons you should use WordPress.
Here are what we believe are some of the Top Reasons for Using WordPress for Your Website:
- Easy site editing by customers based on various assigned roles (this has been #1 reason our customers prefer WordPress).
- Tons of extendability through ‘plugins’ make it easy to add functionality to your website like web forms, ecommerce, social media integration, polls, post comments & ratings, and the list goes on and on…over 10,000 WordPress plugins available!
- Inherent content management ability (a.k.a. CMS) for easily adding, categorizing, and displaying of various data like pages, posts, images, links, photos, video, etc. (supported with Categories & Tags).
- World-class site management interface through the Admin Dashboard makes for a very short learning curve for the novice, yet provides access to code elements for the advanced user or developer.
- Integrated website analytics built right into the Admin Dashboard (Google Analytics and more).
- Great theme frameworks available that make building and maintaining a site easier to build and maintain, and are cost effective.
- Common code base makes making site edits quick and easy for any developer, and makes it easy for the site owner to move their entire website from one web host provider to another (most web hosts can install WordPress for you with a click of a button, and many web host providers offer some level of WordPress support).
- WordPress provides great inherent SEO benefits, including (but probably not limited to):
- The WordPress framework is known to be very SEO friendly, and was reportedly confirmed as such by Google.
- Page and article URL’s are canonical, making them very search engine friendly, especially when containing keywords.
- Page titles, article posts, and other content use inherent easy to crawl text and keywords.
- Plugins make SEO simple even for site owners to manage by adding page Titles, Keywords, and Descriptions right within the page editor.
- Plugins can automatically add ‘alt’ tags, page descriptions, keywords, and other stuff good for SEO (less manual work, or at least giving you something for each page until you can optimize them).
- Plugins can provide automatic ‘site maps’ that can auto-generate and submit to top search engines.
- Several millions of users and developers make getting support or additional customization readily available from the extensive WordPress community. In
- Built-in blog functionality makes it easy for multiple blog contributors and editors, and provides great SEO benefits.
- Sites can be built quickly within a few short hours (or even within a few minutes for a simple site) rather than months.
- Sites can scale to millions of users.
- With the Multi-site capability enabled, WordPress websites can scale to multiple websites (hundreds or even thousands) within one single Admin interface for easy management, editing, and maintenance of multiple sites from within one common interface, and resources like plugins, themes, users, and subscribers can be shared between sites and easily maintained.
- Plugins can create backups of your site data and store it on the server or even email it to you at set intervals.
- Easy to integrate Javascript libraries like jQuery and Mootools for even more extended functionality for things like sliders, photo galleries, and much more.
- WordPress is a highly optimized opensource platform that has a very robust and active community of users and developers that are constantly making improvements and developing addons (WordPress is managed by the WordPress Foundation, giving it much longevity into the future).
Hope this helps if anyone is in the decision process of considering using WordPress for their website, or migrating/converting their existing website to WordPress.
We recommend using the ‘self-hosted’ configuration of WordPress, which is what we use and support at SiteSubscribe.
WordPress Basics
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an opensource website development and blogging platform.
WordPress has emerged in recent years to become one of the world’s foremost website building and blogging platforms.
Whatever type of website you want, you can most likely build it easier and cheaper using WordPress.
You can run a free blog on WordPress.org, or build a professional website using WordPress as a hosted solution.
WordPress has many benefits for website owners and websites, from built-in SEO features to world-class website administration tools for easy drag-and-drop web page editing and website management.
The many thousands of (mostly free) ‘plugins’ that are available make adding website functionality a breeze…from ecommerce, to social networking integration, to photo galleries, to blogging, WordPress has something for everyone.
WordPress has a short learning curve for the novice to learn to add and edit pages, blog posts, links, photos, and even videos. Yet WordPress also has rich features for website customization, making it a great choice for website designers.
WordPress is supported by a huge community of developers and users. There are reportedly over 23 million WordPress users, many of them businesses, and many are professional and freelance website designers who have chosen WordPress as their website creation tool of choice.
Summary of WordPress Characteristics
Primary benefit provided by WordPress:
BLOGGING & WEBSITE BUILDING
- WordPress is an opensource platform, meaning it is licensed under the GPL (General Public License), essentially making it free to use (as long as you contribute any code improvements back to the community if you are a developer).
- WordPress.org offers free blogs/websites, but with many limitations, so to take advantage of WordPress you should use the so-called ‘self-hosted solution’ (we provide this).
- WordPress must be installed on a web server using a web host provider if you use the ‘self-hosted solution’ in order to take full advantage of WordPress features (we provide this, or most web host providers can install WordPress in minutes).
- WordPress features pre-built themes which provide layout and design for your website (there are well over 1,200 themes available).
- WordPress features drag-and-drop website editing.
- WordPress features a ‘rich text editor‘, making editing your web pages almost as easy as editing a Word doc.
- WordPress features a built-in ‘image editor‘ that lets you size, crop, rotate, and insert photos into your web pages easily.
- WordPress features many thousands of plugins for easily extending your website functionality for things like ecommerce, social networking, photo galleries, web forms, etc. (there over 11,000 plugins available, making this one of the biggest benefits of WordPress over other systems)
- WordPress features ‘Widgets‘ (powered by plugins) that provide drag-and-drop editing of website functionality into ‘widget ready‘ locations within your website.
- WordPress features an Administrative Dashboard where the Website Admin can log in to manage their website, and even view Website Analytics.
- WordPress features built-in world-class website editing tools.
- WordPress features a short learning curve for the novice to learn to add and edit pages, blog posts, links, photos, and even videos to their website.
- WordPress has evolved to become a powerful CMS (Content Management System) platform, rivaling other popular CMS platforms such as Drupal and Joomla, yet has more extendability (via themes & plugins) and has the shortest learning curve.
- WordPress features rich website customization options, making it a great choice for website designers.
- WordPress features built-in user role management, making it simple to administer who gets to do what with your website, from Administering, to Editing, to Contributing, to Subscribing.
- WordPress features easy theme switching for changing the design of your website from one theme to another.
- WordPress features websites that are very search engine friendly, and can easily be further optimized for search engines using plugins.
- WordPress features support for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for custom styling of your website.
- WordPress typically undergoes 2-3 upgrades per year to the core source code, and must be kept up-to-date (we keep them up-to-date for you).
- WordPress is supported my thousands of website developers all over the world.
- WordPress features a default theme that comes with WordPress (3.1), which is currently named ‘TwentyTen‘ (it’s a very good theme).
- There are over 1,200 Themes available from WordPress.org plus hundreds or even thousands more from other third party websites (we’ve pre-installed many of the best ones).
Have more ideas about WordPress? Submit them to us.
What is a WordPress theme?
A WordPress theme is essentially a design template that can be applied to your WordPress website to give it the look and feel you want for your website.
WordPress themes also typically come with some built-in value-added functionality like perhaps an adjustable header or switchable color schemea for example.
WordPress themes come pre-built with design elements, and can be further customized (by us or another WordPress developer) to further meet your design requirements…saving you lots of time and money compared to building a website from scratch.
Most WordPress themes also come with pre-defined ‘widget areas‘ that offer support for ‘widgets‘ within your website where you can ‘drag-and-drop‘ ‘widgets‘ into ‘widget ready‘ locations within your website, like a sidebar or footer area for example…(widgets are provided by some plugins).
A different WordPress theme can be applied to your website at any time. If any ‘theme customizations‘ were made to your website they would need to also be made to any theme you want to use (so be careful switching themes if you have made theme customizations…if you are unsure, check with us first before switching themes).
Every WordPress theme is unique. WordPress themes are developed by third party WordPress theme developers…some are better than others. WordPress themes can either be FREE or PREMIUM depending on the developer who makes the theme.
For best results we highly recommend you select a Premium Theme from StudioPress or WooThemes (see below for more information about selecting a suitable theme).
Summary of WordPress Theme Characteristics
Primary benefit provided by Themes:
WEBSITE DESIGN
- Themes must be downloaded and installed within WordPress (we pre-install them for you).
- Themes must be Activated (turned on).
- Themes provide design for your website.
- Themes come pre-built with design elements, and can be further customized (by us or another WordPress developer) to further meet your design requirements.
- Themes typically need to be configured by adjusting the settings.
- Themes may provide CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) configuration right from within the theme.
- Themes may provide value-added functionality for your website that may or may not be visible when looking at your website.
- Themes may come with support for ‘Widgets‘ by providing ‘widget ready‘ locations within your website.
- Themes can easily be switched from one to another at any time within the Admin Dashboard (or switched back to the original theme) (‘theme customizations’ [change made to the theme code] don’t translate from one theme to another without customizing each theme individually).
- Themes must be kept up-to-date (we keep them up-to-date for you).
- Themes can be either FREE or PREMIUM (we’ve pre-installed and paid for many Premium themes, and included many free ones too).
- Themes that are installed but not Activated will not slow down your website.
- Themes can be very good, or not so good depending on the theme (we can usually tell you which ones are best).
- Themes may be based on a theme framework, making theme updates and theme customization easier, and often adding much more value and stability to your website (we recommend Premium Themes from StudioPress or WooThemes which are built on some of the best theme frameworks available).
- The default theme that comes with WordPress (3.1) is currently named ‘TwentyTen‘ (it’s a very good theme).
- There are over 1,200 Themes available from WordPress.org plus more from other third party websites (we’ve pre-installed many of the best ones).
Have more ideas about Themes? Submit them to us.
What’s the difference between a Plugin and a Widget?
WordPress supports Plugins and Widgets. Here’s the difference between them:
Primary difference between Plugins and Widgets:
PLUGINS ARE WEBSITE EXTENSIONS THAT PROVIDE ADDITIONAL WEBSITE FUNCTIONALITY (MAY ALSO INCLUDE ASSOCIATED WIDGETS)
WIDGETS ARE DRAG-AND-DROP WEBSITE ELEMENTS THAT REQUIRE AN ASSOCIATED PLUGIN TO SUPPORT WIDGET FUNCTIONALITY
Summary of WordPress Plugin Characteristics
Primary benefit provided by Plugins:
WEBSITE FUNCTIONALITY
- Plugins are website extensions that add functionality to your WordPress website.
- Plugins must be downloaded and installed within WordPress (we pre-install them for you).
- Plugins must be Activated (turned on).
- Plugins provide value-added functionality for your website that may or may not be visible when looking at your website.
- Plugins typically need to be configured by adjusting the settings.
- Plugins may come with support for Widgets (drag-and-drop page elements).
- Plugins may or may not come with support from the developer (we support plugins for you).
- Plugins must be kept up-to-date (we keep them up-to-date for you).
- Plugins can be either FREE or PREMIUM (we’ve pre-installed and paid for many Premium plugins, and include many free ones too).
- Plugins may slow down your website if you have too many or specific ones that are slow.
- Plugins that are installed but not Activated will not slow down your website.
- Plugins can be very good, or not so good depending on the plugin (some plugins don’t even work at all) (we can usually tell you which ones are best).
- Plugins can cause conflicts with other plugins and adversely affect (even ‘break’) your website (always test your website after Activating plugins or changing plugins in any way).
- There are over 11,000 Plugins available from WordPress.org plus more from other third party websites (we’ve pre-installed many of the best ones).
Have more ideas about Plugins? Submit them to us.
Summary of WordPress Widget Characteristics
Primary benefit provided by Widgets:
DRAG-AND-DROP WEBSITE FUNCTIONALITY
- Widgets are drag-and-drop website elements for adding functionality to certain parts of your website.
- Widgets must be supported by an Activated plugin before it becomes available.
- Widgets can only be applied to a ‘widget ready‘ location within your website (like a sidebar or footer).
- Widgets provide value-added functionality for your website that will be visible when looking at your website.
- Widgets may need to be configured by adjusting the settings.
- Widgets come standard with most WordPress themes, while many more can be added by Activating additional plugins.
- Updating a Plugin automatically updates any associated widgets related to that plugin (we keep them up-to-date for you).
- Widgets that are installed via Activated plugins will not show on your website until you drag them into a ‘widget ready’ area of your theme.
Have more ideas about Widgets? Submit them to us.
Thank you for another great article. Where else could anyone get that kind of information in such a perfect way of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I am on the look for such information.
Interesting facts written on your blog, the majority of which I agree with. Remember viewing a similar blog which I will look to post. Definately will bookmark ofcourse I await your next insightful blog post
We've lately started the weblog, the info you supply on this website has solved the problem tremendously. Appreciate all your time and work.