Since 2012, I’ve been developing websites and I have worked on a few different platforms. When it comes to real-world commercial applications, however, WordPress is usually always my first choice since it makes the most sense for most businesses.
- It’s simple and straightforward to use. You don’t need significant coding skills to build a website with WordPress. Anyone with a basic understanding of the internet can learn how to utilize it and create a completely functional website.
- It’s adaptable. WordPress has the most extensive collection of themes and plugins available. Dozens of gorgeous themes are available to pick from, and thousands more plugins are available to add any functionality you choose.
- Because you’ll be hosting your site on your own WordPress hosting account, you’ll have complete ownership and management over your website data.
- It’s effective: WordPress is a scalable and robust platform. With WordPress, you can efficiently run high-traffic sites, eCommerce sites, and any other form of site.
- It’s a no-cost service. WordPress is a completely free open source program that you are free to download, use, modify, and share as many times as you like. When constructing a simple WordPress site, you’ll only need to purchase a domain and hosting.
- You are never alone: There are a ton of resources and millions of users on WordPress who can assist you with any problems you may have. In support forums, emails, chat, and business phone services, you’ll find a wealth of articles, tutorials, manuals, and videos, as well as real people that can assist you.
Ten big Brands that use WordPress
- Sony Music Entertainment Inc. is a global music organization with a WordPress-based website.
- Microsoft’s news site. It has a magazine-style design that highlights their stories, news, and updates.
- TechCrunch is a well-known online publication that covers start-up and technology news.
- Walt Disney Company’s website. The website includes a large featured image, recent headlines, and several sections such as about, careers, charities, and so on.
- Reuters Blogs provides the most up-to-date information on business, markets, the world, politics, technology, life, and a variety of other topics.
- Wall Street Journal Law Blog. The site’s design is straightforward.
- Katy Perry’s official website includes music, videos, tours, photographs, and a store, among other things.
- The popular video gaming console PlayStation has a WordPress-based blog.
- If you’re interested in learning more about Sweden, visit their official website is powered by WordPress.
- The City University of New York has a WordPress website with full-width sliders, news, menus, and connections.
The issue with the for-profit platforms
When it comes to platform selection, you have a plethora of options. Some of the most popular include Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace. The majority of these platforms are built to allow you to quickly launch something with a few clicks and have it look excellent. They usually do a good job at it.
The issue arises when you need to perform something that should be simple and straightforward, but the platform you’re using doesn’t support it. A lot of code modifying skills need to be curtailed to make things easier. As a result, you’re limited in what you can accomplish. Another concern is that when you use a paid platform, you are obligated to stick with it. What you’re allowed to do is determined by the monthly cost you pay, and key business features sometimes necessitate a higher monthly fee. Furthermore, most platforms make it difficult to export your data (content), making moving costly and time-consuming. To top it off, you don’t control the platform you’re utilizing, so if you inadvertently break their terms of service, your website could be taken down and erased entirely with no recourse. Convenience comes at a high price.
The issue with custom software development
You have no limitations when it comes to bespoke development. However, because everything must be built from the ground up, it is both costly to develop and costly to maintain. It is just not a realistic or economical alternative for most small enterprises. You can either pay for a license for another application, write something yourself, or hope to discover an open-source tool that meets your demands well enough to deploy if you want to make it easy for a non-technical content editor to upload content. All of this consumes a significant amount of time.
Most small businesses don’t have the funds to employ a competent agency or even a small development team to design anything in-house. It’s also not easy to manage a project like this. It will be quite frustrating for you if you have no prior experience with it or do not grasp the frequent hurdles. To make improvements to something custom-made, you’ll need a full-fledged developer. Finding someone that can hop into your project, make the changes, and repair the bugs, even with popular frameworks, can cost hundreds, if not thousands extra.
Without having to reinvent the wheel, WordPress allows you to acquire the specific features you want.
If one of the 50,000 plugins offered doesn’t solve your problem, you can do whatever custom coding you want with it.
The benefits of WordPress’s widespread adoption on the internet
WordPress is the de-facto standard because it powers such a large fraction of the internet’s websites. This means that almost every product creates a direct interaction with WordPress because they don’t want to exclude 40% of all websites from using their services. This also means that finding courses, training, and professionals to run your site is incredibly simple and reasonable. Websites are always changing to keep up with the changes in your business. You’ll need someone to help you scale it up or manage it at some point. And most website developers and some digital marketers are familiar with WordPress.
One of the disadvantages of such an open and accessible platform with such a low entrance barrier is that it’s easy to hire someone cheap who produces substandard work that needs to be repaired later. We’ve had to deal with a number of these situations, and they’re rarely pleasant. That’s why now we offer an online course in WordPress website development so that Business Owners can empower themselves with the knowledge to take control of their own website and digital presence.
You have complete control over your site because it is open source.
WordPress is available in two versions. Most people use WordPress.org since it is entirely autonomous and open source. That means that after you download WordPress and install it on your server (most hosts have a one-click install option for WordPress), you can do whatever you want with it and no one can take it away from you. In the technical world, this is referred to as “self-hosted” WordPress. Aside from whatever your host charges you for your website server, there are no costs associated with running WordPress.
Automattic is the owner of WordPress.com (founded by the co-founder of WordPress). It’s a for-profit platform similar to Wix or Shopify. Despite the fact that it is powered by WordPress, there are certain restrictions on what you can do. For example, you can only use approved plugins, and custom code for anything other than CSS is prohibited. Independent contributors volunteer to improve the code, debug it, and make the platform better, which means you have a team of some of the top developers in the world working to enhance the platform that drives your website without having to spend a dollar.
How to Start a WordPress Site
The WordPress software, a domain name, and a hosting server are the three primary components of a WordPress site. The WordPress software is free to download, but you’ll need to pay for a domain name and hosting. There are lots of YouTube videos on WordPress, including ours. If you prefer more hands-on help, we offer a course on WordPress website development.
Written by Terrill Christians, Business Owner of Success By Design
At Success By Design we help Businesses increase sales, productivity and improve customer experience through consulting training, and software services. Feel free to contact us to talk about your needs info@successbydesign.co.za