Plugins, widgets, and themes…oh my! While there are probably hundreds of reasons to launch your next website on WordPress, I’ve narrowed it down to a few of my favourites.

1. Simple content management

You want to keep your website current and you want it to be easy to update. No software to download, no FTP, no complex systems to learn. WordPress makes it very easy to simply open up your favourite browser, log in to your site’s Admin area, and update your content. Easily.

2. Don’t have to build from scratch

Because so much is already built in to WordPress, a complete website is very rarely built entirely from scratch. Well, obviously the CMS portion is already taken care of as we discussed, but much of the front-end design can be constructed from existing complete or starter themes. There’s even a complete arsenal of theme “frameworks” such as Genesis that bring all sorts of design and functionality options to the table right from the start.

3. Quick indexing in search engines

For some reason, Google and other search engines love WordPress. If I post something to any of my WordPress sites in the morning, I typically get an alert from Google by the end of the day that my post has been indexed and is already appearing in results.

4. Content is separate from design

As a web developer I love this one, but this is a great thing for anyone running a WordPress site. It essentially means you can change the design or theme of your site at anytime without having to completely re-format content (which is stored in the database). You really don’t need to do anything special at all. As your site grows, you won’t have to worry about the complexity of a re-design down the road…the content exists on its own.

5. Easy functionality

Need to add an advanced commenting system? There’s a plugin for that. Want to build a premium, pay-for-membership site? There’s a plugin for that. Whatever idea you might have for some sort of functionality, there’s probably a plugin for it already.

6. Huge community of users and developers

There are literally MILLIONS of websites that run on WordPress. That means there are a lot of folks out there who use and build on WordPress. There are all sorts of forums, tutorials, and other resources that can educate you on running your WordPress website and help you in the even of any errors. Personally, whenever I get any sort of error, I copy and paste it directly in Google and am usually able to find the fix within minutes. It’s an active community…and growing.

7. Auto-saves

One of my downfalls has always been I forget to save my work on a regular basis. WordPress has a nice little feature built in that auto-saves your posts or pages as you are composing them. It’s nothing major, but it makes life go on when you accidentally close your browser. It also saves the past few revisions so you can go back and restore older content.

8. Easy to target mobile devices

There are specific themes and plugins available for WordPress that allow you to serve a mobile version of the website to mobile devices. The smartphone market is growing like crazy, and this is a feature that can really allow you to make sure your best content is accessible on these devices.

9. Hooks up to social media

With WordPress and various plugins, you can send your blog posts to Facebook, Twitter, or just about any social media website. You can make it easy for your visitors to add your content to Digg or other bookmarking networks. You can create custom RSS feeds for specific categories and add them to unique Feedburner feeds. WordPress makes it simple.

10. Interactive

Being able to publish a post or a page and allow your visitors to comment with their own thoughts gives you an easy way to interact and develop relationships. You can extend the built-in WordPress comment functionality with plugins such as Disqus and IntenseDebate which allow for threaded discussion and more.

11. Affordable

WordPress is free!  Most of the WordPress plugins are free!  314media will build a custom WordPress website for you at a fraction of the cost of traditional website design.  We take advantage of all the things that WordPress has to offer and pass those savings onto you.  We are professional WordPress consultants and we price ourselves on providing the most affordable website solutions to our customers.  Contact us today for a risk free assessment of your current website and learn how WordPress can help your organization.

12. WordPress Can Be Customized In Any Way

The most important attribute of WordPress is that it’s 100% Open Source. This means WordPress can be modified and adapted by anyone with a working knowledge of its code and structure, written in an industry standard web-programming language. At 314media, we can work directly in this code to make ANY necessary changes, additions or edits. For instance, you may have found a website theme which you like, but the colors don’t match your logo or company palette. We can modify the code of your site to change the colors used; or the layout and design: the images used or the functionality; basically anything.

Or perhaps there is a WordPress Plugin application or widget that you want to utilize on your site, but it lacks a specific option that you’d really like to have. No problem, your 314media website developer can adapt it for you to any specification. With WordPress, anything is possible!

13. The Look And Feel Of Your Website Can Be Easily Modified

This Open Source basis for WordPress also means that you can easily craft whatever online experience that you would like for your website visitors. To start with, there are already thousands of themes and website templates that have been created, which you can use as an easy starting point for your design. With a bit of research you can find a WordPress theme that you like, one you feel would work well with your brands and specific content. Then allow us at 314media to customize the template to your particular needs, including things like your company and brand logos, your branded colors or specific font styles. Any aspect of any theme can be customized just for you!

14. Your WordPress Website Can Evolve

Another great aspect of WordPress is that it separates the data used in your website – like your specific text copy and design files, from the operating core of your website. Which means that it’s easy to implement global changes to upgrade your site, even swapping out your current theme for an entirely new one! And once again, since WordPress is Open Source, at 314media we can build features or functionality as complex as necessary, from the ground up if need be. Your site will grow and evolve to keep pace with any future developments and changes that your business experiences.

15. It’s Easy To Use A Content Managed Website

One of the best aspects of a WordPress website is the ease of managing your site going forward. You can easily add, edit or delete your content, including images, videos and links, without requiring any technical knowledge of programming languages or markup languages. With just a minimal amount of training in using the browser-based interface, you can easily modify many different aspects of your website with little (or no) knowledge of HTML. An easy-to-navigate central Dashboard allows you to manage day to day content needs for your website, and the User Access control system provides you a simple way to allow others to administer your site also.

16. Expandable Website Options

There are thousands of Plugins available for WordPress that can be installed and utilized to meet your specific website needs, with more being created every day. Some of the most popular Plugins being used right now include: Calendar, Shopping Cart for E-Commerce, Connections to Social Network Accounts and Feeds, Image Galleries, Contact Us Forms, and the list goes on. Just ask, and we can probably find it!

17. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Friendly

WordPress also gives you the ability to easily implement your all-important Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keyword strategy. It allows you to use search-engine friendly URLs throughout your website, edit the META tags for each page, and include Header Tags and Alt Tags directly in the Content Management System. SEO has never been more critical to business success than it is today, and WordPress offers a very efficient way to implement a robust – and effective – SEO strategy for your website.

18. Google XML Sitemaps

The Google XML Plugin is just one of those deserving special importance. This Plugin will generate a special XML sitemap, which basically helps search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index the content of your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s far easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site, and retrieve it more efficiently. This Plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages, as well as custom URLs too. It also Pings (notifies) all the major search engines EVERY TIME you create a post or add new content.

19. Constant Development And Updates

Technology is constantly changing and evolving, and WordPress more than keeps up. New versions are being developed and released all the time to take advantage of new technologies; to enhance existing features; to make the platform more secure; and to develop new, cutting-edge components that make website management easier. And the best part is that these updates are done automatically by WordPress!

20. A Strong And Active Community

In addition to the “official” WordPress development team that constantly manages the core of the platform, there are also millions of very active WordPress users and enthusiasts that can help you in many ways. This huge network of users worldwide are constantly developing new Plugins, fresh themes and templates, and other improvements to the platform, and can happily answer questions you may have about WordPress via a great many energetic online forums, and can also provide a wide array of professional services should you require them.

21. Keep Your Website Safe And Secure

You pour a huge portion of time and invest valuable resources into your website, and you need to know that it’s safe, and secure, at all times. As business owners, we all share a very deep, and justifiable, concern over what could happen to our invaluable data in one of the worst case scenarios. So it’s a comfort to learn that in addition to WordPress’ security features being automatically honed and hardened with every new release, there are also tools that make it easy to keep complete backups of ALL your website files and data, allowing you to restore your website quickly and easily even in the worst of circumstances.

 

So many WordPress reasons; so little time.  Learn more and leverage WordPress for your small business website with 314media.com