Some people think you need to be a ‘techie’ to build a blog or website. That may have been true in the past, but it is no longer the case. WordPress is now the leading software for building websites. With an estimated 75 million blogs and websites using WordPress, there has to be some rock solid reasons why so many people are using it and loving it. I’ll tell you below why WordPress is so popular.
First, a quick introduction. I’m no newbie to building websites. I built my first website in 1999 and I’ve have been building websites with WordPress for close to ten years. Before that I used Microsoft FrontPage, Joomla, and waaay back, before these other tools emerged, I built sites with raw HTML code.
WordPress first appeared on the scene in 2003. It was created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, with its roots in software known as b2/cafelog. It quickly grew in popularity and, as of December 2016, has 58.5% market share for Content Management Systems for websites. In a very distant second place is Joomla with 7.2 %. Dreamweaver and FrontPage have only 1.2 % and 0.8 % respectively.
In a fairly short space of time, WordPress has become THE tool to use to build a blog or website. Here are twelve of the top reasons why WordPress is so popular.
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WordPress is Free & Open Source
Unlike many other Content Management Systems, WordPress is both free and open source. Some people start a blog at WordPress.com, but I do not recommend that. Why? You need complete ownership and control of your website, and that means you should use your own domain on a web hosting service.
Instead of a website address like mysite.wordpress.com you will have your own domain such as mysite.com. I use and recommend Bluehost‘s excellent hosting service. They have multiple plans starting as low as $3.95 per month. You’ll be able to set up the WordPress software with just a few clicks, either when you sign up or from inside your Control Panel.
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WordPress is Easy to Use
It has a friendly dashboard interface where you can manage everything: posts, pages, media, comments, appearance and more.
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WordPress has a WYSIWYG Editor
WYSIWYG means “What You See Is What You Get”. The editor in WordPress enables you to easily create and edit content, while seeing fairly well how the content will look after it’s published.
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WordPress is Much More Than Blogs
WordPress is much more than a tool for writing blogs. It’s a fully-fledged Content Management System. You can easily build regular websites, eCommerce sites (with plugins like Shopify), and membership sites (with plugins like S2Member and Zaxaa).
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WordPress is Easy to Customize and Extend
There are thousands of WordPress themes (for design) and plugins (for functionality) and many of them are free to download and use. Some of the more professional theme designs come from companies or marketplaces like ThemeForest. You can even extend WordPress further by creating Custom Post Types and Custom Fields, which makes it possible to build websites like real estate sites and dating sites. One of my favorite tools for this is WP Types, now known as Toolset.
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There is Great Support
Since there are millions of WordPress users, there is great support through the official forums and also from Theme and Plugin developers. Whenever I have a question about something in WordPress, I search at Google and usually find an answer or solution within a few minutes.
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WordPress is Search Engine Friendly
WordPress has been designed to load quickly and is quite search engine friendly. However you can make it even better for search engine optimization with a plugin like Yoast SEO. It is a plugin that provides real-time page analysis so that you can optimize your content, images, titles, meta descriptions and more. It also provides XML sitemap functionality.
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You Can Add Multiple Users
With WordPress you can add new users and assign them a particular role with appropriate permissions. There are five user roles by default: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, Subscriber.
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Under Development
WordPress is improving all the time. There is a community of developers who are always adding new features, improving performance, and fixing bugs.
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Frequent Security Updates
Security is paramount these days. The WordPress development team release regular security-related updates.
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You Can Manage WordPress from Any Device
Since the WordPress dashboard is browser-based, you can log in to your website from any device, even a smartphone or tablet, when you need to add new posts or manage the site.
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Your Site Can Grow as Your Business Grows
WordPress is scalable, so your site can grow with your business. Want to add more content? Attract thousands more readers? No problem. You’ll just have to make sure your hosting service can handle the growth. With services like Bluehost, you can upgrade to a bigger hosting package when you’re ready. WordPress itself is already up to the job.
I think you can see now why WordPress is so popular. If you ever tried building a blog or website in the past and decided it was just for techies, then you should take another look. I’ve even written a tutorial on how to install and setup WordPress in a day.
Try WordPress. You’ll love it.
