WordPress has always been the undisputed leader when it comes to Content Management Systems.
According to the WordPress website, 42% of the internet is hosted using their platform.
An impressive number when you consider that there are well over a billion websites.
Why is the WordPress CMS so popular? Because it is secure, regularly releases updates, and has a vast community of users. The benefits of using WordPress are many and we take a brief look.
Top Ten Reasons to Migrate to WordPress
Scalable Architecture
From a two-page setup hosting a dentist’s website to a full-fledged online publication–WordPress is capable of accommodating size.
When a website expands, it grows literally. From a few hundred MB at the beginning, when you have ten products for sale, to several GB when your lineup expands to a thousand different offerings.
WordPress can scale up commensurately with your ambition while running on the same backbone. Sophisticated websites demand a sophisticated team handling the levers. That’s because WordPress is an ocean: you can’t simply leap and hope to stay afloat. You will need to hire a WordPress developer from an agency of experience and repute.
Completely Free
You read that right. It would not cost you a single cent to download the WordPress software and start using the package with no restriction.
There are no license fees for the core software and as a business owner that reduces the overhead.
As it is, there are plenty of recurring costs that you have to bear–hosting charges, SSL certification costs, website maintenance costs.
It helps if the CMS is entirely free to use. Among the many advantages of WordPress, this one is notable.
Plenty of Plugins
When you use WordPress to build a website, there are over 50,000 plugins to enhance your site.
Plugins are small pieces of code that can be added to the main platform and extend the functionality of a website.
For example, a mail management plugin can integrate an email with your online business. You can schedule the plugin to send automated mailers to customers reminding them about discounts, offers, new product launches.
Of course, a small fraction of these plugins are free. Most would require an initial investment followed by annual renewals. But in return, they bring features that make it easy to manage a website, perform SEO and perform a multitude of other tasks.
Excellent for Blogging
When it started in 2003, WordPress was intended as a blogging platform.
That lineage shows firmly in the latest avatar. From Blogger (now owned by Google) to Tumblr, many competitors have come and gone, but WordPress remains the numero uno blogging platform.
Why is that so important?
Most websites that want to rank high have a blog section for sharing articles and guest posts. It is in this section that sites host their inbound and outbound links as well as keywords.
Links and keywords drive SEO. A well-maintained WordPress blog with an update every few weeks assures that Google search would rank the website high in SERP.
Reliable Framework
It has a robust architecture and has evolved constantly for almost two decades. As a website owner, you need reliability from the CMS. It has to be responsive and perform without a lot of maintenance.
As a mature platform that is hassle-free and light on resources, you can host WordPress both on-premises and in the cloud.
WordPress is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database. From version 3 onwards, WordPress allows multiple blogs to be operated from a single installation, thus cutting down the complexity of hosting.
Versatile Platform
Not only is it free, but you can also make any type of changes and customize the site as you want.
This makes WordPress a powerful all-purpose CMS used by websites from The New Yorker to TechCrunch.
WordPress can not only be used as a blog but also for business, ecommerce, listing, directory, podcasts, and forum.
It is this adaptability to suit different end-user configurations that have made WordPress so popular.
There is not a single CMS, free or proprietary, that can manage this diversity.
Easy SEO
SEO makes a website visible. It is one thing to create a site and publish it. Quite another to get it to the top of Google search.
SEO is the continuous process of optimization that propels the site to the top of the search.
Not all CMS platforms are SEO-friendly. Google owns Blogger, but have you ever seen a Blogger site rank high apart from very rare keywords?
WordPress uses semantic markup. This means using an HTML framework that allows content headings and subheadings, page sections, lists which let Google crawl the page easily and index.
In the past few years, search has shifted from exact keywords to keywords plus context.
Since WordPress facilitates semantic search, the content hosted on the platform is comprehended more easily by search engines.
Themes galore
The internet has become more attractive. Bland pages with HTML links have been replaced by stylish web pages, attractive fonts, and image carousels.
When you use WordPress, you have access to over ten thousand themes. Like plugins, most of the better ones are premium.
But that does not mean you are left without choice when using free themes with about a thousand to choose from.
Most of these themes lend themselves to easy optimization since they have drag-and-drop elements. Using a control panel, you could make the webpage look exactly as you wish without knowing even a single line of code.
Topnotch Security
Overall WordPress possesses quite sturdy security. Of course, no website can be entirely secure, but as long as you take website best practices seriously, your site is well protected.
There are two parts to a site–the core and the plugins.
The WordPress core receives regular security patch updates. It is up to you to install these and ensure that they are working properly.
When WordPress sites get hacked, it is largely because of a failure on part of the owner. This includes using plugins from doubtful publishers or not using strong passwords.
To improve this aspect, the WordPress plugin directory offers reviews from real users that point out the flaws and vulnerabilities.
Large Community
The immense popularity of WordPress has led to a vibrant developer community who are happy to help but expect nothing in return.
At r/ WordPress on Reddit, there are several thousand developers who can help you out in a pinch.
You can also find WordPress communities on Facebook and StackExchange.
It’s not that for every problem, you need to type out a query and wait for responses.
Most of what you face has already been experienced and solved. That vast database of Q&A speeds up the process of maintenance and upgrades.
Besides, there are hundreds of hours of YouTube videos and dozens of books that tutor how to use WordPress CMS.
Finally
There is little doubt that WordPress CMS is perfect for hosting a website.
With the right support team, you can make WordPress the backbone of your web presence.
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