We love WordPress.
So much that we no longer work in any other content management system (CMS). So after over a decade of experience working with nearly every major content management system, what is it about WordPress that we (and our clients) love so much? What are the benefits of WordPress over other CMS options?
It’s cost-effective (free!)
There are no licensing fees involved in installing or updating the software. More importantly, a well-built WordPress site will be easy to manage so you should not need development or designer support to make common updates—saving you time and money. We can also take advantage of it’s 52k plugins (usually at little to no cost) to build advanced features that might otherwise need custom code on other CMS alternatives (more on this in a moment).
It’s time-tested and continues to improve
WordPress is a well-established platform. Its first release was in 2003, and it has been improved upon for nearly 15 years. The folks behind the platform consistently release updates and improvements and that will not change anytime soon.
It’s the market leader and trusted by names you recognize
Nearly 60% of all CMS based websites are built on the WordPress platform and nearly 28% of the entire web. These numbers are impressive and they mean you have more options on who builds your site and how they do it. If you need proof of its popularity (and how WordPress can be adapted to create diverse types of websites), there are some high-profile websites that run on WordPress including The New York Times Company, The Walt Disney Company, BBC America, Variety, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, many major foundations, and more.
It’s lightweight and customizable
WordPress is a relatively basic CMS when first installed. We build upon this platform by creating a custom theme and extending the basic features of WordPress to create robust, powerful websites that are tailored to your specific needs. See our post How Do you Customize WordPress? to learn about the many ways we strengthen the platform and make it fit the goals of each project.
It’s easy to use
We believe WordPress is the most intuitive and easy to use CMS available. A well built website on WordPress will allow you to focus on keeping your site fresh and relevant without needing a designer or a developer. You will have control of nearly every aspect of your site and can easily make updates and additions yourself.
It can change with you
We customize WordPress by adding powerful publishing tools like visual page builders, allowing you to create visually-rich, responsive layouts on the fly without being locked into page templates. These tools make updating your site easier, allowing it to evolve with the needs of your organization.
It’s scalable
WordPress can support websites of all shapes and sizes—everything from a simple blog to a massive information repository requiring hundreds (even thousands) of pages. It can also support e-commerce and web applications. In other words, there is really no limit to what we can create on WordPress.
It can be customized with advanced features
WordPress boasts the largest community of developers of any CMS platform. These developers create advanced plugins we can employ and customize to add enhanced (often complex) features to your site that would otherwise require custom code. Plugins we commonly use add social sharing features, email marketing integration, visual page builders, CRM support, security enhancements, donation forms, multilingual support, and the list goes on… See our post on how we customize WordPress.
It comes with powerful standard features
Out-of-the-box WordPress comes with some important standard features:
- Multi-user support: Give stakeholders unique user accounts with varying degrees of access
- Media management: Add media like images, audio, and video using the drag and drop interface
- Comments: Not everyone wants to open their site to public commentary, but if you do it’s built in
- Scheduled publishing: Schedule content to go live at specific times
- Intuitive user interface: Navigating WordPress and making updates could not be easier
- Mobile support: Manage your website from any device
It’s search engine friendly
The code behind a well-built WordPress website is very clean, making it easy for search engines to read and index your site’s content. It provides the food search engines love along with customizable descriptions for social media sharing. We build upon these basic features to give you even more control over keyword optimization and other important SEO considerations.
It’s secure
WordPress is an open source platform meaning that anyone is free to review the code. This helps ensure that security issues are found and fixed in a quick and efficient manner. We go to great lengths to extend the security features of WordPress to ensure your site is safe.
In conclusion
It’s been nearly ten years since we built our first website on WordPress and the ways in which we engage online have changed dramatically in that time. The open-source nature and broad support of WordPress has allowed it to keep pace and it continues to improve. There are many other CMS options out there (some are stronger than others), but in our view none present a compelling advantage over WordPress when weighed against the criteria we covered.
In summary, we can create a better website that is both easier to manage and more tailored to your unique objectives than we could on any other platform we have worked with. Our experience has given us a deep understanding of what is possible on the platform and we are constantly pushing ourselves and rethinking the experiences we can create on WordPress.
If you’re interested in learning more about WordPress and how it can be tailored to your needs, let us know.
