Why WordPress in 2018? Because WordPress is much different than when this post was originally posted in 2009. Back then, WordPress had a bit of a bad rap by being thought of only as “blog” software. That was soooo limiting to the true power of WordPress back then and such negative verbiage has pretty much left the conversation when WordPress comes up, thank goodness.
Here we are in 2018. Still today, after all these years, we use WordPress for the entire Here Next Year website…including the blog part.
Yes, the website you’re on right now is using WordPress. You’re in the blog section where this particular post has commanded a #1, #2, or #3 search position on Google since about 20-minutes after we published it 7 years ago for the phrase “Why WordPress.” So much for the theory that blog posts get pushed down after time.
Go to any of the main pages of this site showcased in the top navigation and, yep, still WordPress.
WordPress websites offer much more than the few five or ten benefits you usually hear about. A blogging software-based website was termed as the new evolution of how websites are constructed. Now, WordPress is the content management system all websites and blogs are compared to.
Before we get into the meat of the actual reasons why we feel WordPress is so great, let’s clear up another myth while we’re at it: A blog is a website…a website is a blog. There is NO difference.
Blogs just have a few more cylinders under the hood, if I was to use a metaphor. In fact, I wrote a blog post that suggested your WordPress website is the very heart of ALL of your Internet marketing efforts.
I don’t know why the power of WordPress is still being so under-rated after all these years, because I believe this beloved software was responsible for business owners no longer being held hostage to their designers and virtual assistants. Owners could easily learn the basic operations of adding and changing content on their websites. And, that changed the industry!
Here are 35 reasons why WordPress websites are better than traditional websites
- Save Money – No longer do you need to send the most basic text changes to your designer or even have your designer add new pages or blog posts for you. Make the edits yourself whenever you want and save the money you would’ve paid your designer for more important things by adding new content on your own. Times are tight and managing your own text, photos and video for your website is a great way to contribute to saving costs.
- Greater Accessibility – Make changes or add content from any computer in the world with Internet access and a browser—without the need for additional software or fixing firewall settings.
- Speed of Communication – Since you don’t have to wait a few days for your designer to make basic changes, the content on your website can be altered immediately by you, thereby giving your website visitors the most timely and current details possible.
- Design Consistency – WordPress uses a themed approach to design and layout. You would either purchase a pre-designed theme or have one custom designed to your unique branding. Then the design theme is added to the WordPress files. No matter how many pages or blog posts you add to your site, the theme setup assures your look and feel will be consistent throughout so that your visitors stay focused on your message rather than being distracted by multiple layouts.
- Design Flexibility – If I bring up “consistency” as a benefit, then I should also include design flexibility. Not only can you have a single theme to provide the consistency you may want, but WordPress also provides powerful flexibility so that you could have a whole different theme and/or layout for every single page of your website…if you really wanted to. More commonly requested is to have sections of websites have a similar layout with different color themes, which is much easier to achieve. I’ve worked with some high-end professional speakers, though, who have demanded multiple design layouts within the same site to display their on-stage presentation creativity, for example. Even in those cases, WordPress has proven to be capable of providing diverse design throughout the website.
- Mobile Readiness – No need to produce a second Web site just for mobile users. WordPress automatically recognizes if a person is viewing the site through a web browser or mobile device and configures the content to be viewed on either.
- Easy Setup for Mobile Responsive – Notice in the “mobile readiness” benefit, I didn’t describe WordPress as an out-of-the-box “mobile responsive” software. You have to use a mobile responsive theme, a plugin that converts your site’s appearance to mobile responsive or customize your CSS file(s) manually for true mobile responsiveness. And, don’t forget that you will need a mobile responsive design to achieve a truly mobile responsive WordPress website. My point is that WordPress gives you options for producing a mobile responsive website and that is one of the greatest reasons WordPress should be considered. The trend in website design these days is to create your website to be viewed on mobile devices first…and desktops and laptops a far distant second. Can you believe we’ve come to that??!
- Better Time Management – Add content and then schedule those posts to publish on your site on whatever day and time you want. You could write an entire 12-week e-course, for example, break it up into 12 pieces and have each automatically post to the site at the same day and time each week for 12 weeks.
- Ease of Membership Site Rollout – With the addition of a few plugins, a WordPress blog can evolve into a full service membership site with as many levels as you would like.
- Social Networking Friendly – Automatically integrate your blog posts with social media like Twitter, facebook, Linkedin instead of having to go to each one, login, and make a post that you’ve just added something new to your website. [2016 Update: We do not advise auto-posting from blog to social. Customizing your posts for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and including your URL link in the post produces much better engagement results.]
- Engage with Current Media – Easily add audio and video to posts and pages.
- Creative Welcoming – Integrate any design within an hour or two in comparison to other CMS (Content Management System) tools that all look alike because of their stringent design constraints.
- Ultimate in SEO Friendliness – The construction of WordPress blog code is consistent and streamlined without excessive HTML code that Google finds very inviting for indexing. Sure, it’s not as streamlined code as manually coding out a website. But, as long as you provide the other essentials of search engine optimization, WordPress will be accepted by Google’s spiders. Plus, with the right setup, you’re able to customize every page or post you make to give you the highest possible probability of getting your pages in high search results positions, which is still not always the case with home-grown CMS systems even in 2016.
- Inspiring to Get Involved – Participating by adding posts and pages and managing your own content becomes “fun.” I’ve convinced numerous clients to finally embrace the opportunity that blog posting offers…especially when they add video to their posts! When you see the results from your OWN efforts instead of farming out everything, you become fueled even more to add content, posts and pages on a more frequent basis.
- Search Engine Magnetism – As a result of your inspiration to post content more often, your frequency of contribution will attract Google robots and other search engines like magnets. The robots will search your entire site every day looking for new content and new pages and changes they can index. New pages get indexed in hours or even MINUTES when you commit to adding new content over time. Many of our HereNextYear posts have been published and displayed on Google’s organic search in under 10 seconds! Try that with a traditional website!
- Growth potential – No need to update navigation when you add pages; links to new pages will be added automatically based on what “category” or categories you assign your posts and pages to. This all happens in the admin area instead of manually editing javascript menus and complex PHP include files.
- Insanely Fast Learning Curve – Learning to edit content, post new pages, add photos and images is as easy (maybe even easier) than using MS Word. Figuring out these simple procedures on your own would only take a novice a few hours. With initial one-on-one training by phone from an expert WordPress trainer, all of these functions can be performed by YOU in under an hour…even if you have no design or programming experience. There are two and three FULL-day classes just to learn the BASICS of Dreamweaver or HTML coding. I know…I used to teach them! WordPress blog software is by far, the easiest tool to learn how to maintain content on your website.
- Improved Security – One of the arguments “against” WordPress or other blog software the use of plugins. Plugins are small add-on programs to enhance the capability of the blog software. The supposed threat is that hackers can break in to your website through these plugins. But, the exact opposite is in fact true: If you have the right people involved in the setup of your WordPress installation, your blog site can be hacker-proofed equally to a traditional website. How can that be true? Because there is an actual process to what is called “hardening” a WordPress installation. But, you just don’t hear designers or developers hacker-proofing traditional websites even though FTP and cPanel accounts can be just as easily broken into when simple usernames and passwords are used. See the difference?
- Plugins and WordPress Version Updates are Easier Now – If security has improved, we need to feature the benefit of auto-updating. Remember, plugins and WordPress are software. They get updates and upgrades just like all other software. The need to update and upgrade WordPress software and associated plugins has long been considered a negative in WordPress world. Over the past year, website hosting companies have gotten wise to this and now offer what’s called Managed WordPress Hosting. Almost all hosting companies offer this now but you really need to know what you’re asking for when you talk to them. Use our descriptions if you’d like.
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- Inspires Repeat Visitors – The fact that you are inspired to add new content frequently will also encourage and increase your repeat visitor numbers. When people like what you contribute to the Web, they want to know when you add more. That’s where RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication) come into play along with automated notices by email that new posts have been made. These announcements trigger former visitors to come back to read the rest of the article, or in the case of RSS, visitors can subscribe to receive the entire post through their RSS reader or mobile device. This is not just the “future” of how communication will evolve in a few years, but this is NOW, TODAY. If you are not experienced with how RSS works, having a blog site will introduce you to its importance for sure.
- Two-Way Communication with Visitors – Through the use of blog comments, you are no longer restricted to one-way “outbound” communication with visitors like you would be with a traditional website. Sure, you can always have a “contact us” page on your traditional website, but blog comments allow for anonymous two-way discussion between you and your readers. And, every time someone makes a comment to one of your posts, the inclusion of their content full of keyword phrases helps you to build better search positioning. It’s like getting free SEO help from the general public! You probably searched Google for something related to “why WordPress” to arrive at this page. One of the reasons this page ranks so high is because of the many comments displayed.
- Increase Your Perceived Industry Authority – Making frequent posts and sharing your opinion on what’s happening in your industry offers so much more potential for establishing rapport with your audience than a traditional Web site could offer. Why such a difference? Because traditional websites just take too darn long to format new content. Even if you open Dreamweaver software and copy an existing page to create a new one, you still have to format all that content, upload it to the right directory, assign page permissions, add the page manually to navigation….UGGG! A WordPress blog will allow you to add new pages in as little as five seconds! Period! And, that page can be set to appear in navigation on every other page on your entire website in the click of a button. You just can’t afford to spend that much time to make that many additions of content pages in such a short amount of time with a traditional website. And, when you’re “reporting” on industry happenings, and giving your opinions, speed is of the essence. That’s the difference.
- More Brand Awareness – Since the common approach with a blog site is to build out the site into an industry-specific authority resource with hundreds or even thousands of pages of content, the number of opportunities for the general public to see your brand identity is multiplied exponentially over and above the traditional 10 to 30 page Web site.
- Immediate Identification of Hot Topics Among Your Audience – If you make 10 posts and get one or two…or even no comments at all, and then all of a sudden you post a topic that brings 20 comments, you learn immediately of an interest. This is a highly valuable opportunity that you normally don’t see with a traditional Web site, unless you pay for a bunch of custom programming to create some forms and surveys. The utility to allow blog comments is included with every Blog installation automatically with no custom programming required.
- Better Anchor for Original Articles – When you publish articles to directories and blog networks, you first want to post it to your blog site. Why is a blog site “better” for this than a traditional Web site? Because of the automatic archiving feature within every blog setup.
- Automated Syndication – Blog posts can be automatically converted to RSS feeds and syndicated to blog directories and other peoples’ websites.
- Backdoor FREE Entry to Yahoo! Search Addition – When you submit your RSS feed manually to Yahoo! you don’t have to pay their $299 listing fee as your site will be indexed for free.
- 24-Hour Listing in Bing/MSN – Adding the RSS feed to Bing/MSN is the fastest way to have your site indexed and it is common for even new sites to appear in Bing/MSN within 24 hours using this method.
- One-Step Posting – It might sound like I’m repeating myself with “ease of use” or “ease of learning” already listed as a benefit, but this one is different. How many ways are there to add content to a Web site where you truly only click a single button to make the content appear live online? Only one that I’ve found and it’s through blog software. There are no 10, 5 or even 3-step processes to publish content live. It’s one single step.
- You Control the Discussions – With traditional Web sites, the “old school” way of communicating with visitors was to add a forum or chat room. The problem with those was the need for maintaining the posts from spammers and removing discussions and predatory accounts that could threaten the integrity of your business. Blog sites changed all of that. You begin the topic of discussion. Your visitors make comments to the discussion you started. But, the comments people make are approved by you before anyone ever sees them on your Web site. It’s the best of all worlds without the worry of defaming your business with unacceptable posts.
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- Re-Ignite Your Ideas – By having the ability to add content to your Web site in a way that is easy, fast, and requires no technical skill, you will be amazed how ideas for “what to add” will no longer be a problem. In fact, you’ll be more worried about what to write about….first! Create content about industry happenings, product reviews, or educational steps. The limits are truly endless. You’ll never run out of things to add to your blog.
- Increased Functionality with Lower Cost – Thousands of pre-written programs called plugins can increase the functionality of your out-of-the-box blog software. Traditional websites require everything to be programmed. Even if you find an available PHP or ASP script to work with a traditional website, there is usually significant integration work and customizing required, whereas WordPress plugins are usually a 3-click install process.
- Multi-User Capable – WordPress offers multi-user capability so that larger companies with marketing departments, for example, can offer editing power exclusivity or even read-only mode to others.
- Free Upgrades – Unlike traditional Web site software like Dreamweaver, PhotoShop or Flash, upgrades to WordPress blog software is free.
- Universal Platform – With the economy the way it is, designers and Internet marketing service providers are closing their doors and disappearing even more quickly than when I got started in this business in 1996. You’ve got to be careful these days. With traditional Web sites, very rarely will a new service provider agree to pick up where the old designer or developer left off. The result is that the new provider will want to charge you for starting from scratch. Conversely, almost anyone with basic PHP and MySQL experience can jump into your WordPress blog site project in a moments notice if something was to happen to the helper(s) that got your blog site setup for you in the first place.
- Safety – Add images and media by uploading to server from within your secret admin area instead of through traditional ftp and risking deleting important files or uploading to the wrong directories
- Freshness – Easily change your site layout and appearance by swapping themes. Great for temporary changes for holidays or seasons.
- Reduced Loss of Work – Your work is automatically saved as you type even if you haven’t published your blog posts live to the web yet.
- Ease of Printing – Designers are notorious for creating Web sites that are too wide to print. With a simple plugin, all your WordPress blog site content can be easily printed in easy-to-read format…without creating duplicate “printable” versions of pages. No need for sacrificing screen view design just so that people can print the pages.
Okay, so I just couldn’t stop at 35! There are just so many reasons why WordPress is a great fit for practically every situation.
Did I miss any benefits of WordPress blog sites over traditional websites? Let me know and please contribute to this important post.
If you have been wondering how converting your traditional website would be of benefit, this post was made for you! If you would like to talk more with someone about how you go about converting a traditional Web site to a WordPress blog site, contact us using our WordPress conversion quote form.
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Marty Dickinson is the two-time, co-author of Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies (Wiley). He works with services business owners to become recognized experts in their field using his 6-step A.C.T.I.O.N. System without relying on Facebook ads or AdWords. Get immediate access to this free mini-workbook.
candita
Thanks so much for this info. It was just what I was looking for to make a decision about a new blog site.
Anil Kumar
Thanks for sharing this information for us and resources its really help full for me with the help of this we can improve our ranking in google and other search engine
Larry Hauser
This article was the one I was looking for. It’s the best analysis of WordPress that I’ve read. I’ve been trying to decide whether a website or a blog is the way to go for my project and now I know…… it’s going to be a blog using the WordPress.org platform. I had a website for 3 years that was built by an excellent designer. I was very happy with it, but as you said, I had trouble contacting him and getting my new ideas implemented after he had completed the application, as it was all built with code. I’m an admitted procrastinator, but now I have no excuse not to start right away. Thank you.
Marty
Thanks for the comment Larry and I’m sure you’ll be very happy with a WordPress website.
John Wren
Why WordPress rather than Blogger.com?
Marty
Hi John. Good question! If you have a blog setup at blogger.com, keep it, that’s fine. I have a blog at blogger and one at wordpress.com as well. BUT!! My main website where both of those external blogs point to….is HereNextYear.com. Have your main company or “the most important” website for you hosted at a real hosting company like ours or hostgator or rackspace or wherever. Why? Because YOU will have full control over your main website that way. Keep in mind that Google owns Blogger. They can shut you down whenever they want, whether their reason is justified or not.
Lynn
Concur, this is an excellent explanation of the pros and cons. Thanks!
David Esrati
We’ve been teaching people about the benefits of WordPress as a Content Management System since 2005 in our Websitetology seminar.
One of the other points to make- is your content is highly portable. Since everything is stored in a database, it can be ported to sites using other data structures- like Joomla or Drupal if you decide to go that way (not recommended) or- if you are one author on a site with many- you can take your data and put it on your own site easily.
Our main reason for using WP is the Google love- almost any of our clients have automatic SEO- to the point that their site indexes on hundreds or thousands of key phrases without any extra work at “optimization.”
But this list is one of the most comprehensive I’ve seen.
Thanks
Robin
Overflowing with reasons why to move to WordPress. I was converted 4 years ago. I used to be a .net developer and build websites from scratch for clients.
In the information age you have to move fast and be more agile. WordPress and it’s vast array of themes and plugins enables business to do that.
Rajendra Reddy
Very nice article ,I am very new to this business I want to clarify few things .
I own a wordpress based free classifieds website and I have feature plan to start coupons,events listing and many more can I make all changes using wordpress like a Traditional Website Please let me know what are the demerits as well so that I would be more clear about it .
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Anyone can make changes to the “content” of a WordPress website. Most people can invest a little more time to learn how to make changes to their own graphics and theme elements. But, that’s where it makes sense to start finding people to help in those areas. Probably the biggest “demerit” to wordpress as you called it is security. WordPress installations are a big target and easy to break into….unless you have someone who knows what they’re doing to secure your WordPress install. Here’s a blog post I wrote about WordPress Security.
Vienna Custom Homes
Wow, very interesting article. We currently have an asp website, but now you’ve definitely got me thinking. Thanks for all the information!
david
Was wondering if there is a way to integrate a lead capture, then follow up campaigns as well. Any input is helpfull.
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Hello David and thanks for the question. We prefer using 3rd party systems for lead capture and then rolling them into either automated or manual follow-up campaigns. You might have already heard of 1ShoppingCart but I’d like to suggest the alternative which we’ve been hooking up with clients for a year now: https://herenextyear.com/1shoppingcart-alternative.php
@OutsourceForce1
I would agree that wordpress is best for SEO especially for beginners. You don’t need to be a programmer or web designer to be able to optimize your website well.
Personal Injury Attorney
Very interesting post. My site is a WordPress site and it is nice to not have to call someone when I want to post something or just change a sentence.
Chris
as a developer i agree thar wordpress is much more effective in all the above mentioned comments and article and because is self tested back and front from million users !
I also beleive that you can do everything with wordpress … even websites that are very complex and require lot of work.
But i have 3 questions :
a) why big Companies use normal html/php websites ?
b) Why your client is not happy when he finds out that his website is made in wordpress ?
c) what do you thing is the best way to explain to your clients using wordpress is the best solution ?
other companies when they watch your sourse code thing that you are not a serious company
Brian
I am one of those “skeptics” on the whole wordpress is better train. Yes I lump it in as blog software but I am willing to change that view to some extent. Some of your points above are valid and make very good sense but alot of the points above are “marketing” strategies more than anything.
But that’s neither here nor there… my real concern is that I see this approach as just another avenue of churning out invalid code and code that fails miserably when it comes to WCAG. Just like Frontpage did and MS Word “Save as HTML” did, many many MANY pages are being produced that have bloated and invalid code and no attention to Accessibility and the WCAG guidelines.
Even this page fails both of those sets of guidelines.
Every example site I look at fails these basic “requirements” to good web site coding.
Massive customization aside – which takes knowledge and experience, how can anyone in the web developer field endorse this approach without worrying about the potentially serious consequences – especially when it comes to accessibility (Section 508 and WCAG) – not to be confused with availability.
I know how to fix the issues in my own code, but many don’t, so default code generated by wordpress should be compliant and should in some manner prevent errors. I know this is not your problem, but that of the developers of wordpress.
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Free, security, slow, needless, downloading a template, just for students, lose money…These are all arguments I’ve heard a thousand times about the INvalidity and desired death of WordPress. Readers, pay attention, because this ongoing debate is what you might be faced with as opposition. I’m really not disputing these claims either. John is exactly right. A WordPress website poorly assembled will make all of these nightmares come true. Trying to shoe-string budget your website by hiring inexperienced help, attempting to get everything for free, cutting corners with bottom of the barrel website hosting will bring nothing but problems your way. Done properly, WordPress can reverse all of these claims as well…including fast Return on Investment, Ft. Knox security, fast, essential, custom branded and unique, makes even more sense for established companies than for hobby sites, MAKE money…and a whole lot more. All depends on who’s doing the work I suppose.
catherine
WordPress may do websites, but everyone I’ve seen looks like the last one and is ugly as heck. It looks like a teckie put it together. So what if I can add pages, if they are all just as bad looking as the last one. What about multiple articles on each page? Edit options for menu buttons and other visuals?
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Hi Catherine and that’s a great comment. Probably 95% of the wordpress sites I too look at in disgust. But, that’s not a function of wordpress…it’s just either 1) a designer who thinks he needs to design a certain way to “fit” into the wordpress mold and doesn’t know any better or 2) a programmer that demands the designer design in a certain way so that he or she can fit the design into wordpress. But, that too is just reflective of the programmer’s skill level. Even if you hard-code a site from raw notepad html or use Dreamweaver of equivalent, you’re still going to have to eventually slice the graphics up into little pieces and code them out and mess with css style sheets to get everything to look right cross-browser. It’s not wordpress itself that is so limiting that design has to conform, but its designer/programmer skills that need to evolve that’s important.
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
I’ve heard good things about tutsplus.com for learning html and css.
Mike Marx
RE: #15 – “…you just don’t hear designers or developers hacker-proofing traditional Web sites. See the difference?”
Quite a bit of F.U.D. you are spreading there. Of course people don’t hear about it, because with straight HTML sites there is no Admin site login to attack, no SQL injections to fend-off, or database queries to intercept.
Witness this April, 2013’s botnet attack against WordPress installations (worldwide)!
Meanwhile, my “traditional” web design clients & I will spend our time more productively than changing user-ID’s, re-naming files, checking plug-in’s, etc.
Have Fun! http://www.zdnet.com/wordpress-hit-by-massive-botnet-worse-to-come-experts-warn-7000014019/
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Hi Mike and thanks for the comment. I’ll respectfully disagree that a standard website has any less potential of being compromised than a WordPress website. I’m figuring you transfer files through some sort of FTP, correct? Where there’s a username and a password to gain access to a domain on the web, there’s an opportunity for someone really desperate to use all their tools available to get in. Just nature of the beast I guess. Oh, and if you use Linux, you probably have something similar to cPanel. Same thing. I didn’t start getting calls from frantic site owners just when WordPress hit the scene. My biz started by rescuing websites starting in 1996…long before WordPress was a tickle in someone’s shorts. At least once a month for probably ten years I’d get an email or phone call from such cases…still before WordPress came along. And, as far as the “time” it takes to pull you away from productivity, locking down a wp site really only takes a half hour at best. The first time around, a person probably has to invest several hours to learn what’s involved but we’ve pretty much got it down to a science so it doesn’t seem to be an issue. Oh, and now we have “Ghost” to contend with soon too 🙂
faheem
does changing site to wordpress effect the ranking of an older website
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Simply changing to WordPress (when installed and setup properly) “can” and probably “will” increase your SERPS (search engine result positions) a few spots even if you don’t make any changes to your urls, page titles, other seo components. I say that only because whenever I give a workshop and bring it up, there’s ALWAYS someone in the audience that acknowledges “yup, we moved to WordPress a few weeks ago and didn’t change anything on the site and sure ‘nuf our positions on Google are higher.” There’s just something Google still loves about WordPress. Of course, I should probably caveat that by saying if you get someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing and doesn’t setup WordPress properly or doesn’t know to install the right plugins and uses the default WordPress install settings, you’re probably going to see your site plummet in search positions. But, I guess that’s true with any site on the web.
ken
wow…can we say bias? many of your 35 advantages are questionable or outright wrong in my opinion
Tristan Robers
I am starting a new biz and my partner is dead set on HTML web site. I know nothing about either but word press from what I have just read sounds like the way to go. The problem is..this is a hard sell to my partner as he is a very stubborn and old school. He thinks WP sites all look like you are reading a newspaper….something about columns.
Is there a simple way to teach this OLD DOG …NEW WordPress tricks?
Signed
Tristan
“Torn”
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Sure, just have him go to DenverAdvertising.com. That’s a website built in WordPress but you’d never guess it. Whether or not a website is in WordPress has no impact on what design you use for it. You just have to have access to skilled enough coders to slice up the design into little bits and pieces and then set it up for you. I say the word “just” tongue in cheek of course. Installing a custom funky design into WordPress or any other Content Management System (CMS) is no easy task. It will take any good programmer 8-15 hours of time to do it right…and make the design appear consistent on multiple browsers and browser versions. Easy for most established companies to “move” their traditional old-school website to WordPress because they have a budget to play with. Sometimes more challenging for new start-ups to budget for…especially when there’s an old school partner in the mix who probably thinks he should only have to pay $100 for a quality website in the first place.
Henrik
It’s HTML in the end whichever approach you choose.
So few use static HTML for building websites these days though. Most people use a CMS of some sort. WordPress is just one of many.
Using a CMS has so many advantages. There’s the templating system that will allow you to easily make visual and structural changes across the whole website.
You can rearrange the site tree with little effort.
Someone with no HTML experience can add and edit pages.
There are tons of addons available so you don’t need to code all the special functions yourself. And the list goes on.
Most CMSs today are flexible enough that you can make them look pretty much however you want them to look. So that is a non-argument.
If you want easy to use alternatives to WordPress, you can take a look at Concrete5 and Silverstripe for example.
Yannis
I am on the way to develop a social network website, that means huge database and a bit complex, do you think wordpress is good enough for that? Or is it better to use drupal joomla or to develop it from scratch on php?
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
More complex sites involving accounts and management of them will be custom development jobs for sure. I would never suggest the ‘next facebook’ to be produced in basic level cms software like wordpress, joomla or anything else in that family. You’ll just be rewriting it all later when it gets big.
Steve
There is nothing in that list that other leading CMS’s can do. If you don’t know how to code, use WordPress. But if you know how to code then there are other better faster CMS’s than WordPress. We use Expression Engine so we can make a better site than WP, but you will need to know how to code.
Remember… you will not get the best system using free plug and play addons. It may look good, but behind the scenes it won’t be the best.
Rob
True, most of the items on the list are true for any CMS. But WordPress is not just for non-coders. In fact, WordPress is better when you know how to code, in my opinion, because you can make it do so much more. There are plenty of fast WordPress sites (just as there are probably plenty of slow Expression Engine sites). The speed of the CMS is only part of the picture.
Every CMS has it’s pros and cons. The main thing is to find a solution that works for the goals of the site. WordPress traditionally hasn’t done well with e-commerce (it’s made some big improvements recently, but still not great), so if you’re running an online store you probably want something else. But in my experience and the experience of my clients (mostly professional services) WordPress has been a great solution.
Jay-R
I like wordpress, because unlike any other blogging platform, wordpress has a huge number of useful plug-ins and also a huge number of professional themes.
Rob
Hi,
Just wanted to clarify a couple of items on your list:
#13 – Automatically adding pages to the navigation is only true if you leave the default navigation setting. But since WordPress 3.0 users can enable custom menus, which give site owners far better control over their navigation menus. It’s not always ideal for every page to appear in the navigation, especially on larger sites. Custom menus let you pick and choose – very easily, with drag and drop functionality – which pages (and even categories and custom urls) appear in the navigation menus. You can also rename menu items (e.g. if the page name is “About ABC Widget Company” you can rename the menu item to simple “About”). I think this is a stronger argument in favour of using WordPress than simply the automatic addition pages. One of the things that drove me nuts about WordPress before v3.0 was having to hack the theme files to customize the navigation menus. Fortunately that’s no longer an issue now that custom menus are native to WordPress.
#36 – This is actually not true. “WordPress” does not automatically detect mobile devices. Rather, themes do – but only provided the theme developer built it with a mobile first or responsive web design approach. The default themes that come pre-installed with WordPress are responsive (starting with the 2011 theme, I think), and many other themes are responsive out-of-the-box as well, but there are plenty of themes that do not automatically adapt to mobile devices. Being on WordPress is no guarantee of a mobile-ready site. Using a responsive theme is.
I’m a huge fan of WordPress and I make my living developing for it. In my opinion and experience it’s one of the most flexible and easy to use platforms for web publishing. There’s good reason nearly 20% of websites are using WordPress. So it’s good to see someone promoting it’s use. But I have to agree with some of the critical comments on here. The bulk of the items are really more opinion than fact. E.g. #11 Inspiring… really? WordPress can not and does not guarantee inspiration, no matter how much you love using it.
Adam Yong
Among all the benefits stated above, one of the most important points to make sure it is SEO friendly.
People always doubt on #10Ultimate in SEO Friendliness as it is not as flexible as custom website. But I do see lot of WordPress websites out rank traditional website in competitive industry. This also proof that there is no on-page optimization issue as long as your backlinks is strong.
Terence
WordPress is easily the #1 open source CMS I recommend to my every client.
I’ve seen some WordPress sites outrank traditional sites in a competitive industry. Agreed with you that the CMS has no issue on onpage optimization. Using the right plugin would also add advantage to the SEO effort and save some time.
Jasa buat website
I am a wordpress user. and I was enthusiast wordpress. I am aware that there are many advantages to using WordPress CMS.
but there are still a lot of people out of mine who says WordPress is very bad. They say using wordpress so bad because the user must constantly updating plugins
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
True, plugin updates and WordPress software version upgrades can be a problem. For most, it’s just a click of a button and everything is fine. For some, they’ll click an update or upgrade link and all of a sudden they have a blank screen displaying on their website. Like with any cms product that uses a database to push content to be viewed, eventually there will come a time when you need to get some technical help even if for something as simple as upgrading plugins. The key is to learn how to backup your files and database, then do the upgrade or updates, and be able to revert back to the backed-up version if you need to. And, by all means, make sure your website manager knows to do that too before just updating or upgrading out of the blue.
Douglas
WordPress is stronger then ever
Kevin
I totally disagree. Great for blog, useless for real web sites
I could list double that pro WordPress number with reasons why Dreamweaver is far superior.
Ask hosting sites like GoDaddy and they will tell you they do not support WordPress but tolerate it.
You want to create a real website then go and spend 4 years studying graphics.
Jasa pembuatan website
That’s right, WordPress is incredible
I myself use wordpress. Besides, all of my clients I also recommend using cms wordpress
peter parker
Worpress websites is only good for your blog because it enables you to integrate many plugin’s in the site and may be it having many advantages. I have my own customized website and wordpress website and i personally feel customized website is much better than wordpress website.
Cathy
Great content that I can share with clients that don’t understand the difference… thanks for putting this together..
HonestNews15
Dear WordPressers and The Curious,
What is WordPress anyways, it’s more than just CMS (a simple user-friendly content management system) it’s a CAREER for some people.
Yes, I did say that right, SOME people exploit naive business owners into inferior, cheap, mass produced copies of real websites. Real websites that Real programmers write. real websites, hand crafted after hours and hours of labor, no simple “install” button like wordpress. What it also doesn’t have that WordPress does? A huge hole in it’s security. The security on almost EVERY wordpress website. Google wordwress security. Now, I don’t know about YOU but I like hand-crafted AMERICAN MADE websites. So why would you hire someone to use WordPress anyways? Because it’s easy(lower quality, same price). If you want originally, and craftsmanship.. Buy a website made by a real programmer. You’ll never go back to WordPress.
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Correct. WordPress is definitely a career for many people…and thank goodness for that! WordPress is software like anything else on the web. If people didn’t make careers out of supporting software, we would all be in very big trouble. Every software needs to be supported, upgraded, tweaked, and monitored for security; yes, even custom code written by the best programmers. Security holes in WP are threats to the business owner who does not have an ongoing maintenance and support package with its developers. THIS is where the very misleading component of WP presents itself. Somewhere along the way, users were led to believe WordPress is maintenance-free. That I would never claim. As a matter of fact, I would go just the opposite direction and say don’t even get started with WordPress for your website if you’re not going to be willing to budget paying someone to update/upgrade your plugins and WordPress versions at least every month, preferably every two weeks. Don’t even get started with WordPress unless you’re willing to get website hosting on a server that is prepared to host WordPress sites specifically! And, sorry, that does NOT include GoDaddy, Hostgator, 1and1, bluehost shared hosting.
Dave
As someone who’s cut his teeth on WordPress years ago, I don’t really use it all that much now except for small websites. Once you start getting into bigger corporate sites, with multiple taxonomies, post types, or things that have to relate to each other, WP really starts to fall apart. And most of these points, like editing everywhere, not having to have a developer on call for simple text changes, etc. can be made about every other content management system as well. It really depends on how it’s setup.
But as someone who’s managed a server and dealt with WP security issues, #15 – Safety is just plain WRONG. Running any script—WordPress or otherwise—that allows users to upload/write to the file system is infinitely more dangerous than any “traditional” static site no matter how much you “hacker proof” it.
Convenience vs security is always a tradeoff; you can make your website a fortress of solitude but you’re going to jump through more hoops to keep it that way. If you run a WP website, the best thing you can do is keep WP up to date. I’ve inherited websites from clients who’s former “designers” added plugins to prevent WordPress from updating because their site broke as soon as WordPress or another plugin got updated. Don’t be lazy; be safe.
Kandisha Crystal x
all the benefits mentioned above the most important is seo friendly website, so it is easy to be on the first page of search engines
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Not knowing ALL the details from a project manager standpoint, my first gut-response to this question is this: Websites that expect to have constant interactivity on a large scale, such as a dating site, job finder, social network, real estate directory, or classified ad system, should have applications developed and customized specifically for those interactivity features. Second to that, you can usually find pre-made software where you can hire the developer to customize from there. We’ve gone through that process many times. The only thing I would use WordPress for in a case like that would be the front-end. So, someone lands on the home page and they would see a WordPress-driven website. The pages and posts would be in WordPress. But, once someone clicks on the button for the classified ad system, they would be brought to another section of the site that manages the classified ads. Or, the button could even point directly to the 3rd party’s URL so that it would be managed completely separately from the system application. Now, again, not knowing the full scope of the project, there could be possible reasons why it would be worth while exploring pre-made WordPress plugins that offer classified ad management. But, I’ve been involved with enough large development projects to know there is a crossover where it just makes sense to fork out the bucks and get a custom development project going instead of trying to find some free plugin to squeeze into WordPress hoping it does the same as a $50,000 custom development build. Maybe a WordPress plugin for classified ads is possible for a “test of concept” or to raise funds for the bigger website, but again, you should have a project manager on hand to go through these kinds of details with you to help you decide which way to go with.
ALEX MCGINNESS
When I read what you posted I almost peed my pants. You posted “#Insanely Fast Learning Curve – Learning to edit content, post new pages, add photos and images is as easy (maybe even easier) than using MS Word. Figuring out these simple procedures on your own would only take a novice a few hours. ” I started training on WordPress on the 7th of June 2102. I bought a couple of WordPress training books with videos to help me out. I spent from 2 to 6 hours a day every week untill the 30th of October 2012 to finally get to the point where I said NO MORE. Ive gone back since and tried to get a wesite set up from a template with no luck. Ive just come down from my room after spending another hour noodling with instant wordpress and some themes and various instruction videos to no avail. Trying to work this POS app literally makes me want to cut myself it is that difficult to understand and use that after fiddling with it I have to walk away untill my will to live returns. ( Im not kidding ) This thing is NOT easy AT ALL and to say it is is a whopping and willfull deception. On the 7th of June this year ( 2016) will mark the 4 th year Ive been at this trying to learn how to work it. Yup…its “insanely” fast my eye.
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
That’s a great comment Alex and an important way to distinguish between usage and setup. I just searched for the word “setup” on my post and it shows up 12 times. Nowhere next to the word “setup” do I have the word “easy” associated. So, my statement still holds true…that adding a new page or a new post to WordPress is extremely simple to do, and I’ll tack on to that (provided that your website is already setup and setup properly). In my one-on-one training sessions, a person is able to add a new blog post within the first 5 minutes. I do that on purpose just to show how easy it really is. But, I remember once, where WP was not setup properly by their developer, so I had to get my own guys to make two hours worth of setup changes. Big difference between setup and simply adding pages and posts.
Peter J
Also less files to manage !!!
UPOD MEDIA
No doubt it is better to use wordpress. However traditional business owner who are less internet savvy feels traumatised when they look at the new wordpress theme features on settings, layout, shortcode, etc. And many web design company are promoting their so called more secure (not open source) CMS which looked simpler to businesses.
Hence, it is still quite long way for everyone to fully adopt it. Our experience from local clients we met.
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
The strategy of “locking in” a customer to a company’s CMS has been a long-time business model. When a customer stops paying for the CMS or hosting, or has a fallout with the company, the client suddenly finds themselves in quite a pickle. WordPress is still the best CMS (we believe) for clients who wish to have full control and ownership of their website.
Magdalena
What about WordPress brute force attacks last 2 years (2015-2016) . WordPress is great cms becouse of customizable design and extend functionality with variete plugins but where I work (Poland) we note lot of attacks and malware.
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
Brute force attacks are definitely an issue but are a total NON issue if your site is setup correctly, hosted properly and “hardened” as the term is known. Most importantly, any WordPress install with “admin” as a username and /wp-admin as a login URL are easy prey for the automated scripts that go out pounding logins to get in. Once in, the redirect scripts are automatically added deep into the core code and it will take at least a few hours for a developer to go line by line through the code to get the junk script out of there. Unless you know what you are doing, hire someone with experience to scan your site, remove any malicious code that you might not even know is already in there, and “harden” the install from there. Even after hardening, there is no guarantee you’re safe forever, but the chances of someone brute force entering will be reduced greatly. Then, get on a maintenance plan with your hosting company immediately so they can upgrade your plugins every month and run frequent backups. At HereNextYear, we supply WordPress hosting, maintenance, and the whole scan/fix/harden process. Use the Quick Quote form if you need some help.
Ryan
Hell Yeh, I’m fan of wordpress & user friendly. tried others CMS….the learning curve & flexibility wordpress still the best.
Ryan
Being using for 8years, still only cms that can be trust. The flexibility & plugin are awesome.
Web Hungers
WordPress is a simple cms that it very simple to use.
Lirik Lagu
Hundred persent I agree that wordpress was the most amazing place to start a website for business
Sean John
Excellent article about WordPress and thank and keep working!
Kelly
Nice thanks. 2 questions. Are frameworks like the Studiopress Genesis worth the effort or am I better off skipping the framework step?
And, I’ve been hosting a WP site on a regular cpanel hosting platform not designed for wordpress sites…its consistent but s-l-o-w. Godaddy has a wordpress specific hosting program optimized just for WP sites. Is there really a difference?
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
It’s been a while since I’ve supported or installed a Genesis theme. We custom design every new website for companies and therefore use a very basic theme and then customize pretty much everything inside it. So, I can’t answer about any framework based on functionality. What I can say is that “support” is critical for any framework or theme. And, recent word on the street suggests they still have pretty good response times for their support. You will always need to customize any theme. So, I don’t know that I would buy Genesis simply because they have pretty themes. Again, that’s where support comes into play if you’re not an advanced programmer. A worthy alternative is TemplateMonster. I’ve setup several of my own personal sites using their themes. TemplateMonster has a VERY good online chat support feature built-in to every theme purchase. I have yet to have to go to any of my development team to help customize anything on TemplateMonster sites. When I’m stuck, I just jump onto the chat and they give me whatever css stuff I need to get it right. Lots of options out there today.
Wallace
WordPress is the 1st thing come to my mind when develops a website today! Almost any kind of applications/ functionalities can be done by installing the right plugin.
It is definitely easier changing from a theme to another, I won’t say that you will find a theme that that meet your requirement exactly 100% but it was close. Another big reason I’m using WordPress is because it’s SEO user friendliness, combine with the use of the right plugin such as yeast SEO, WordPress is definitely second to none.
James
With the plugins being created today, the things you could do with wordpress are endless.
Kevin Isaac
If there is “no difference between a blog and a website”, why does this *website* have a Blog section in the top navigation bar?
Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear
The only real difference between pages of a website and blog posts is that people have gradually over the years come to know the word BLOG and its posts as a place for providing up-to-the-minute news about a company, product, service or social event. The blog could either be a section of a website or the entire website itself. For example, on the Here Next Year website, the blog section is the same WordPress software installation as the pages of the website. But, I could just as easily fire-up a Blogger blog and have a button on my standard website that takes people to the Blogger blog. But, by definition, that Blogger blog could still be described as a “website.” Hope that helps. Kinda tough to describe.
LogoViz
Static HTML5 website loads very fast and really good for SEO when compared to WordPress.
Raju Ahmed
Most likely it is smarter to utilize WordPress. However customary entrepreneur who is less web astute feels damaged when they take a gander at the new WordPress topic includes on settings, design, shortcode, and so on. Also, many website composition organization are advancing they’re alleged more secure (not open source) CMS which looked less difficult to organizations.
Thus, it is still the very long path for everybody to completely embrace it. Our experience from neighborhood customers we met.
Hindi Shayari
Great content that I can share with clients that don’t understand the difference… thanks for putting this together..
Learn Harmonium
WordPress Better but blogger is free (y)
Ary curve
Thanks so much for this info. It was just what I was looking for to make a decision about a new blog site.
upendra
There is many platforms to create blogs, But I love the only WordPress.
Spacema
In terms of administration, WordPress is significantly easier to use than any of its competitors. The administrative interface is much more intuitive, adding content is quick and simple, and installing plugins takes very little effort.