Kleinburg Brewery
- design
- / web
I am a huge fan of WordPress. For the last several years, I’ve programmed 90% of my sites on the WordPress.org platform. WordPress enhances websites at every step of the process: save money, take control over their own sites (add/edit/remove content), incorporate advanced functionality (e-commerce, mapping, user submitted content, etc.) and get better search results. WordPress.org is simply a stroke of genius, and I take great pride in using it to make beautiful and powerful websites for my clients. Below is a list of the top 5 reasons I believe in using WordPress.org for your website. If you are interested in getting professional help setting up or optimizing a WordPress.org website, contact me any time.
1. WordPress is free and open source
Unlike other “free” and “open source” solutions that have hidden agendas, WordPress.org is completely free (learn more) for you, forever. WordPress doesn’t start charging when you hit a certain size, nor does it close off any of its code to you. This is one of the less tangible but probably most important elements of WordPress.org’s success. No fees, no gotchas, no nonsense.
2. Plugins give you more functionality
Plenty of platforms out there offer plugin functionality, but I’ve never seen a more smooth and thorough implementation than the plugin effort on WordPress.org. Plugins allow you to add great photo galleries, sliders, shopping carts, forums, maps, and more great functionality. There’s a searchable, one-click install directory of plugins (think App Store for WordPress). Their code is riddled with “hooks” that allow developers to add their code to virtually any aspect of WordPress without editing the core.
3. The visual editor and CMS are outstanding
The intuitive, user-friendly backend of WordPress is probably what made it so famous in the first place. I’ll never remember the relief I felt when I first installed WordPress after a few Drupal experiences. I always tell my clients, “it’s as easy as typing into Microsoft Word.” In fact, with the Paste From Word tool, that statement is more true than you would imagine (this article was written in Word). WordPress is continually improving its CMS, adding features such as threaded comments, galleries, revision history, trash, custom post types, and more. If you haven’t maintained a WordPress site yet, give it a look.
4. Easily add a blog to your website
How is this number 4 on the list you ask? WordPress really came to fame for blogging and is still considered by many to be a blog platform. Even WordPress itself seems to identify with blogging first, as the default configuration is for the home page to be a blog. Aside from the amazing advances in CMS (see #3 above), the blog functionality is still the best in the business. With categories, tags, threaded commenting, gravatars, easy theming, widgets, fantastic moderation controls, anti spam solutions, and plugin infrastructure, you can’t find a better blog solution. Adding a blog to a WordPress site is a great way to attract and involve visitors, and to keep Google paying attention. If you don’t need a full site, and just want a quick blog, check out WordPress.com.
5. Google loves WordPress
I focus on getting new customers for my clients via Search Engine Optimization. Ever since I started doing WordPress.org installs, I noticed a spike in search results. Over the years I’ve used many valuable SEO plugins such as the All-In-One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps. But even without these plugins, I always felt like the simple layouts of WordPress, the permalinks, and the easy linking in WordPress would be naturally attractive to Google. I even heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s “web spam team” spoke at WordCamp SF 2009 and said it directly – “WordPress is a great choice”. He goes on to gush about how much WordPress helps you get better results. I always recommend a conversion to WordPress when doing SEO.
Do you have anything you’d like to add to the list? If so feel free to comment, whether its a good reason or bad, let me know your thoughts!