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While there’s many a content management system (CMS) that would claim to be ‘powering the Internet’ – or on the way to doing so – few can declare this status as emphatically as WordPress can. Indeed, recent figures suggest that as of 2020, the platform underpins a whopping 36% of the web, which is a few percentage points higher than last year.
So, WordPress is showing no sign of surrendering its online dominance anytime soon. But what are some of the reasons to make it the foundation for your own brand’s web presence?
Before we go any further, we should probably clear up one of the key points of confusion for many business owners approaching WordPress for the first time: the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
The short answer is that while both of these WordPress variants are free to use, WordPress.com is a website hosting service that enables you to create a WordPress site without having to host the site yourself. By contrast, WordPress.org is software that – while allowing you to easily build any kind of website – does require you have your own domain name and web hosting.
While a more detailed rundown of the pros and cons of the two is beyond the scope of this article, in a nutshell, if you are completely new to WordPress and initially simply curious about it, it’s a good idea to try WordPress.com first. Then, once you have come to know WordPress and wish to have complete control over your site, you will probably feel ready to look to WordPress.org.
Regardless, WordPress is a cinch to use for novices. It enables you to manage your site effectively even if you don’t have any coding or programming knowledge, and once you have installed it, you will be able to quickly start adding pages and blog posts to your site.
Something else that defines WordPress, besides its lack of cost and undoubted ease of use, is the astonishing wealth of built-in themes and plugins that you can take advantage of.
The themes, for example – otherwise known as ‘templates’ – are the various design ‘skins’ that business owners can reach for, ‘straight off the shelf’, to give their website a smart and professional look. There are all kinds of free WordPress templates available, so it shouldn’t be too tricky for you to find one that suits your organisation’s brand image and sector.
WordPress plugins, meanwhile, run into the thousands and allow for the addition of all manner of functionality to your site – pretty much anything you can imagine, in fact, ranging from image galleries to contact forms.
A platform like WordPress doesn’t become as dominant as it now is by accident, and while the above is arguably the fundamentals, there’s so much more that has helped to make it such a go-to choice for beginner and seasoned online business owners alike.
From its high level of safety and security that has even led to numerous banks using it as the CMS for their websites, right through to support for all types of media encompassing the likes of images, videos and GIFs, WordPress more-or-less has it all.
And that doesn’t even touch on the fact that WordPress’s strong international following also means there are rich support resources to draw upon in the form of forums, discussion boards, social channels and more, should you ever feel the need to turn to them.
The reasons to use WordPress for your own site, then, are many. Why not contact Rigorous Digital today about the help we can give you to extract the maximum potential of the platform when you make us your choice of WordPress web design, development and support agency?