Holy Slow Website Batman!!
I really do love WordPress CMS (CMS = content management system)!! It is a fun, reliable platform to work with, and custom coding for WordPress is generally straight forward. But WordPress is not just awesome for developers, here are some reasons why WordPress is awesome for everyone- non-coders, business owners and the everyday John (or Jane) Doe.
1- It is FREE!! 100%, totally, free. They do not try to reel you in by saying it’s free and then charging you for every little thing later, the WordPress CMS is absolutely free, paired with free themes and free plugins, you could have a FREE website! Yes there are paid themes out there, yes there are paid plugins too, and yes there will probably come a time when you need to hire a developer, like myself, to help you with something custom or complicated, but WordPress is free, no gimicks, no strings.
2- Your website belongs to YOU! I know I have said this many times before, but if you pay Wix, Weeby, Squarespace, Strikingly or similar, THEY own the code that makes your site, if you leave, you do not get to take your website with you. So they have you in a sort of choke-hold, if you leave you have to start over, if you stay you are stuck with whatever rules and restrictions they have… YIKES! I already feel like I can’t breathe just talking about it… Your WordPress site is YOURS, you can do ANYTHING you want to it, you can take it with you wherever you go (to a new hosting company), you make the rules, you are the king (or queen) of your domain. That should be important to you, it is to me!
3- WordPress is easy to learn and use. Aside from the hundreds of tutorials on youtube and wordpress.org, you could figure out the basics of WordPress just by using it. Some plugins can get complicated, but I always tell my WordPress students, if one plugin feels too complicated for you, delete it and get another (or hire me to do it for you…) There is not just one e-commerce plugin for WordPress, there are dozens of excellent e-commerce plugins!! The same can be said for pretty much any plugin. Oh, it is good, so good, to have choices. Which brings me to the next reason WordPress is awesome with a capital “A”
4- WordPress has, literally, tens of thousands of plugins available to you. You want e-commerce, WordPress has it, you want Member Systems, Custom Forms, Payment Gateways, Donation Functions, Auction Sites, Dating Sites, News Sites, Portfolio Sites, Informational Sites… You name it, WordPress probably has a theme or plugin for that. All of these advanced features are usually things that only developers can make and implement, but with a CMS like WordPress, anyone can do it! (Yes anyone!!) I’ve worked with Joomla, Drupal and Concrete 5 a bit (all free CMS), they are not a bad platforms, but they just don’t have the amount of plugins that WordPress does, I often find myself stuck with only one plugin option, I just hate that. WordPress is the #1 CMS, no other CMS has as many plugins and themes, what does that mean??? You have options! It is a solid CMS! It is not going anywhere! It is actively developed! It is easy to find help!
Some developers refuse to embrace the awesome-ness that is WordPress.. And I get it, you can’t charge as much for a WordPress website as you can a from scratch website. In addition the client can probably handle maintaining their own WordPress website, or they can find a different developer to do it if they want to. Alternatively if a developer builds a site from scratch, the client is pretty much forced to pay that developer to maintain it… But I know I am good, and my clients keep coming back to me for a reason, I don’t need to trick or force anyone into coming back to me. I also believe that if someone needs an inexpensive website I would rather they know about Wordress than get roped into SquareSpace or some other awful website builder company. And the big names are realizing that WordPress is awesome too, so they will still need awesome developers to customize their WordPress sites, I’m not afraid, I embrace it!!
Speaking of which, don’t let anyone tell you WordPress is only for ‘small’ companies, or low traffic sites. Ever heard of Sony Music? The Walt Disney Company? Playstation? TechCrunch? Mercedes-Benz? Vogue? These companies (and many more) all use WordPress and they are big businesses, getting tons of traffic! View notable users here: wordpress.com/notable-users and a full list of big names using WordPress here: wordpress.org/showcase/archives
Many of my WordPress clients need help customizing something, some need help installing/setting up a new WordPress site, and some want me to do it all, knowing that a WordPress site is easy for them to manage once I am done setting it up. Whatever your needs are, let me highly recommend WordPress CMS to you. learn more at wordpress.org
Once more thing I forgot to mention, don’t confuse WordPress.Org with WordPress.Com — WordPress.com is a blogging platform, they make money hosting blogs, you WILL NOT have access to the tens of thousands of plugins, and it will not be YOUR website; make sure you are looking at WordPress.Org, that is where the good stuff is.
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