Why use WordPress for your website?

WordPress is the most popular open source Web Content Management System used by 27% of the entire Internet. It is free, extremely easy to use and provides thousands of plugins and themes to create a compelling user experience with a limited investment.

You’ve been warming up to the idea of a website for your business for a long time, but there has always been something stopping you. Finally, you’ve decided to create your own website. You know what it will be about and you also have some content idea to start with, and yet you have a huge question mark hanging over your head: what CMS should I use?

If you are here, somebody probably suggested you that WordPress is a great platform to start with. But… is it going to fit your needs? Is WordPress the right choice for you? The short answer is: probably it is. Although WordPress is born as a blogging platform, nowadays it is one of the most extended and comprehensive CMS platforms and it is a good choice for any kind of website. And you know what the good news is? It is still a very easy starting point for beginners.

We asked to Luca Sartoni, an Italian blogger who is now working at Automattic as a Growth Engineer, a few good reasons to choose WordPress for your first website. Here are his hints:

 So, in a nutshell, with WordPress you can maximize your output and minimize your risks, thanks to a strong and active community which contributes to the CMS in many different ways.

Excellent! Also, I have my own list of good reasons for you – and I’m pretty sure you’ll love them.

1. It’s free to install, maintain and upgrade

The cost voice is always such a pain, and any way to spare some money feels like a great relief. So, yes, you can spare on your website budget just choosing WordPress. If you choose WordPress, designing, developing and – especially – maintaining your website is going to cost you way less! How? Well, basically thanks to all the reasons below. ?

2. It’s open source – and here is why you should care about this!

Let’s start from the beginning: what does open source mean? Literally, open source means that the source code is free to use, to study and to change. This is not just something developers should care. In fact in the case WordPress, there are a lot of benefits here for you:

1. The CMS comes for free. Forever. Anyone is free to install it, use it, and adapt it to his/her needs, for any kind of website with or without commercial purposes. And it doesn’t cost a penny.
2. It keeps growing thanks to a large community of contributors who constantly work to build a better software (see the fourth point to know more about this).
3. No vendor lock-in: if this is your first website, you’ll need a web agency or a freelance to design and develop it. In a few years, you may choose to change your vendor and rely on another one for several reasons. Well, thanks to open source, you won’t have to start from the beginning to project your website: any other freelance or agency which works with WordPress can take it over and update, upgrade or change your website according to your needs.

In short: with WordPress you are choosing a free CMS which is always up-to-date and has no vendor lock-in.

3. It’s extremely easy to learn, I swear!

Once the website is up and running, it’s incredibly easy to create and publish new content. You just open your WordPress back-end, create a new page or article and add any picture, video, or other media. Then you click publish and your new content is online. Not happy with your output? You can still go back and change it. That’s it, really. Anyone that can use a word processor can use it. No technical skills required. Just try and then tell me.

In other words, WordPress’ learning curve is so easy and comfortable, that you will be able to add content by yourself, without asking it to some dark technical figure (coff coff – just joking, uh?) to add new pages or to update the old ones.

4. It has thousands of themes and plugins to add new features in a snap

Since WordPress was born as a CMS for blogs, many people are worried about the customizations: is WordPress the right choice for an e-commerce? Will I be able to add a stunning design to my web pages? Can I do this and that? Yes, you probably can. While the core source of WordPress gives you already most of the things you need for a good basic website (or blog) which is responsible and SEO-friendly, you can explore a whole bunch of new opportunities by adding:

• Plugins: to have more features and expand your website turning it into an e-commerce, an online community or whatever you have in mind.
• Themes: you can choose from thousands of different designs and apply them to your website. To make the most out of them you can also heavily customize most of the themes, building a website fully consistent with your brand.

Once you discover the large family of WordPress plugins and themes, you’ll understand that you can do whatever you need just installing existing and tested resources. And the best thing is: many of them come for free. Just a few examples of websites using WordPress: Microsoft News Center, AMC (yep, those of Breaking Bad and Walking Dead), The Herald Sun, The Walt Disney Company, Quartz, Facebook Newsroom… I’m sure you’ll notice two things:

1. There are a lot of big enterprises which are trusting WordPress
2. You can build a wide range of different websites.

So… apparently, there’s no reason to think that WordPress would not fit your needs. Is it?

In a few words: since there are lots of ready-to-use resources, you can spare on web design and development, because customizing a website with WordPress is way faster, easier and cheaper than starting from a blank page.

5. It’s powered by a massive, supportive, awesome community

This is one of the coolest benefits of using WordPress. Anytime you need some help, advice or support, you’re just a question away from your solution. You can ask your question on any forum or social media group to the community members and receive valuable and actionable information. And it happens quickly! You may ask: why? Well, WordPress is adopted by the 27% of Internet websites and many web designers, developers, and content creators feel so much committed to it that they want to share value with the community and to see it grow.

The graphic above shows how popular WordPress is in the World. Source: W3Techs – April 2017 And you?

Well, anytime you have a cool idea, you can start working on it and share it, for the benefit of all the community. There’s wide space for the contribution and the cooperation of anyone with anyone around the world.

Let me put it this way: you can ask the help of the community to overcome any obstacle – so, less money spent in consultancy if you just have the patience to ask and learn.

In a few words: why do you have to start from the beginning if you can just jump on giants’ shoulders? ?