How to make the most out of WordPress

WordPress is the most popular website building platform in the world. It powers nearly one-third of all websites, from small personal blogs to complex corporate sites. It’s easy to use, super powerful, and you can do just about anything you want to with it. Best of all: WordPress is free. 

But, what is WordPress, really? From a technical perspective, it’s an open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. It’s a tool that makes important aspects of a website, like content, easy to build and manage. While WordPress started as a blogging tool, it has evolved into a powerful website builder. You can easily build any type of website using WordPress.

As an important note, when we talk about WordPress, we mean WordPress.org, which provides a free, open-source, downloadable version of the software that you can download and install yourself.

Why WordPress?

Aside from the fact that WordPress is free, there’s a huge community that can help you grow and maintain your WordPress website. This flexible tool offers more advantages as well:

WordPress is customizable. You can make your website look any way you want using a customized theme. You can use one of the themes or create beautiful customized themes with the help of a WordPress developer. Most themes come with built-in, easy to use Page Builders that allow you to access and edit everything you need to customize your website.

WordPress is user-friendly. The platform makes it incredibly easy to create a good user interface, as its tools and themes are simple yet vivid. Animations, slides, and interactive elements are a piece of cake thanks to WordPress.

WordPress is extensible with plugins. WordPress includes all the elements you need to create a basic website and offers additional functions, delivered through plugins. Plugins enable you to add cool functionality to your website just by installing them. A large market full of plugins is available to add any function to your website, such as shopping carts, image galleries, contact forms, and more.

WordPress offers a variety of responsive designs. Google penalizes websites that aren’t mobile-friendly, so your site needs to look good on any device. Most WordPress themes are automatically responsive, making your website accessible on tablets and smartphones.

What can I create with WordPress?

WordPress started as a blogging tool but today, thanks to an extensive community of enthusiasts who keep it updated and secure, individuals and businesses can use it to build any type of website. With WordPress you can create:

• Blogs
• Personal websites
• Corporate websites
• Business websites
• Portfolios
• Forums
• Job boards
• eCommerce stores
• Membership sites
• Magazines and news sites
• Online course sites
• Online communities

Is WordPress for me?

As we’ve seen, WordPress is the most used CMS in the world. But it’s not for everyone. If you’re looking for a free and effortless tool to make something quickly and easily, it may not be the platform for you. Even after you create your website, WordPress has some features  that require your attention:

Updates and vulnerability: You’re in charge of your website. This means you’re responsible for assuring security, making backups, and installing updates. That’s why, as with many other platforms, you still need help from experienced programmers.

Updates are especially important to maintain proper security on your website. And they will be constant. They won’t happen every day but you need to be prepared to update your core WordPress files, plugins, and themes at least a few times per month. Its heavy reliance on plugins and themes developed by different people increases the chances of malicious code sneaking through to your site’s functionalities, which is why you need a professional to support your WordPress website.

Customization: While the WordPress platform is free, it relies on themes and plugins for customization. Most of these advanced themes and plugins have a price, and the more of them you use, the higher the cost. Naturally, if you have a WordPress developer you can make a lot of adjustments yourself. 

But most people need to use a plugin or a well-developed theme. Also, some of these themes and plugins require technical knowledge, so you’ll probably need to hire specialized support.

Loading speed: WordPress is designed with minimal code that allows your website to load quickly, but the use of certain themes and plugins may contain a lot of generic code that can decrease the speed of your website and cause slow load times.  

The more plugins you have, the slower the website will run and the longer it will take to load. Sometimes even just one plugin can cause these issues. That’s why you need to be very careful and selective when it comes to themes and plugins to install on your website.

How to launch an engaging WordPress site

Are you planning to build a WordPress website? Finding the right professionals for your project while trying to meet deadlines can be challenging. Research, interviews, and adaptation take time and effort. 

Our elite engineers can use WordPress to create a customized website that will make you stand out. Get in touch, we’ll get back to you today.