WordPress for sure had been gaining a lot of popularity. I had been getting web enquiries about a lot of WordPress related work lately.
Based on the enquiries I had been receiving I can say that the popularity of WordPress is gaining momentum. Any website from small to medium scale, WordPress can be an ideal solution. Here are 5 main reasons why WordPress is so popular at the moment.
Cost of Ownership
WordPress is free and Open Source, meaning all the source code is free to download, use and modify based on your requirements. So there is no cost about ownership of the Content Management System (CMS).
This had been one of the main reason why so many web owner are shifting towards WordPress. Building website on proprietary CMS can be very costly. On top of that, it’s not yours and there can be recurring fees using proprietary CMS. This makes website running cost extremely high. Some minor work on website can lead to big invoices.
Cost of Management
Management of WordPress websites are relatively simple and hence cost of management is relatively less too.
Seasoned WordPress developer can build WordPress on very few plugins. For example most of the website I build runs at around 5-8 plugins and most of them are free plugins. Even if there is need to add some premium plugins, WordPress by far have the most reasonably priced plugins compared to other CMS. With purchase of each plugins comes at least one year of free support and upgrades. Renewal fee is at discounted prices.
So in short management cost of WordPress websites are light to pocket.
Easy to Manage
WordPress website are easy to manage. With clean interface and robustness of the framework a good web developer can build really easy to manage website.
Some of the salient features of WordPress includes Custom Post Types and Custom Fields, which gives developer for extensibilities and web admin ease of managing information.
Though in some case some basic understanding of the WordPress framework is needed. If you are thinking of building custom WordPress solutions, you need to prepare a good solid brief. It’s critical to write about future extensibilities too so that the web developer is aware of what’s coming.
SEO Friendly-ness
WordPress is SEO friendly. This doesn't mean that by using WordPress you will be ranking number 1 in Google overnight. But this refers to the fact the way WordPress is architect, it does look after basics of SEO very well.
One of the plugin I am quite a big admirer is WordPress SEO by Yoast which is part of my WordPress development. It is a great tool for On Page SEO Optimisation. It’s been properly build and actively maintained.
Easy to Extend
WordPress started as blogging platform. But over the years it had been adding some robust features to its core. This had in turn lead to a framework that is able to building some complex websites.
The reason behind WordPress extensibility comes from its vast repository of plugins. WordPress have larger number of free and premium plugins. If you are thinking of adding new functionalities for WordPress, chances are there is already some few decent plugins to do your job. Just follow some basic steps on selecting a good plugin for your website.
Just few examples such as adding complex forms, creating online shop, integrating with CRM etc. within WordPress website isn't hassle anymore. You can either find a good plugin to solve your problem or even the service provider provide good well documented APIs on how to integrate in your website.
Conclusion
WordPress for sure can be very good choice for your website if you are looking to develop or re-develop your website. It’s must to have a good specifications about your goals and objectives. And then liaise with developer on what is achievable on what is not.