The Power of WordPress: Why It’s Our Go-To CMS

It’s been 20 years since WordPress was first released. Today, it’s the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. Whether you’re building a brand new site or investing in a redesign, there are many benefits to using WordPress for your next website project.

Want the TL;DR version of why I always recommend WordPress to clients? It’s free, open-source, and offers a robust platform for building highly customizable, secure websites that anyone can edit with a little training and practice.

Here are the top reasons why I’ve exclusively used WordPress to develop custom sites for my clients over the past 13 years:

• No Coding Necessary
• Secure and Safe
• Endless Customizations and Integrations
• WordPress is Open Source and Free
• WordPress is Scalable, Reliable, and Here to Stay
• SEO-Friendly

No Coding Necessary

Don’t have technical experience building or maintaining websites? No problem. WordPress websites are user-friendly and very easy to set up – even for beginners. The platform offers helpful user guides, documentation, and tutorials to get you started.

WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, which comes with some added benefits. There is a massive community of creators, marketers, and web developers who share their tips and tricks in forums, YouTube videos, and blog posts. It’s easy to find resources to help you build and maintain your WordPress website.

While coding isn’t necessary to build a great, highly functional WordPress website, eventually you may want to learn a little CSS to customize certain aspects of your website that are hard-coded. If you want a custom website without the hassle of learning how to navigate a CMS, I’d recommend hiring a WordPress developer to save you time and ensure your end product is professional, secure, and functioning well.

Secure and Safe

WordPress is known for being one of the safest and most secure CMS platforms – particularly if you take extra steps to safeguard your website.

For example, you should always limit the number of users who have admin access to your site and add two-factor authentication or mandate quarterly password updates for your team. This reduces the odds of a hacker getting into your site’s back end via one of your administrator’s accounts. It’s also important to keep your plugins, themes, and WordPress versions updated, as outdated code may make your website more vulnerable to attackers.

Finally, make sure that you’re using a high-quality web hosting service and secure sockets layer (SSL) provider. WPEngine is my all-time favorite hosting provider. Sure, it’s a little pricier than GoDaddy or Dreamhost, but WPEngine offers 24/7 support, proactive threat detection, and a dedicated security team that continuously monitors potential attacks. WPEngine is currently offering a deal: $20/month for the first year, which is only $5 – $10 more per month than GoDaddy.

Endless Customizations and Integrations

It’s estimated that there are more than 30,000 free and paid WordPress themes to choose from, and developers are constantly cranking out more. Most pre-made web templates are easy to customize to make your own, but you can also build your WordPress website from scratch using your own code.

When picking a theme, I recommend using a paid option over a freebie. They’re pretty affordable – usually ranging from $20 to $100 – and you only need to buy the license once. Paid theme developers also usually offer great documentation and support, and are continuously working on new patches, features, and updates to make sure your website is functioning properly. Make sure to check the reviews and download stats before buying your WordPress theme. At Mesa, I prefer to start a site off with the Avada theme, because it allows me to build a custom site that’s easy for my clients to update and maintain down the road.

Aside from themes, WordPress also offers a colossal suite of plugins – around 60,000 of them. Plugins are pieces of software that integrate with your WordPress site to enhance its functionality. For example, there are plugins that integrate customer relationship management (CRM) tools into your WordPress site, allowing you to transfer engagement data directly from your site to your CRM database. WordPress plugins for search engine optimization are also very popular. My favorites are Yoast SEO and Google Site Kit. You can also build eCommerce sites on WordPress with ease by integrating WooCommerce, another highly popular plugin.

WordPress is Open-Source and Free to Use

It’s surprising that WordPress is free, considering how robust, high-powered, and user-friendly the platform is. WordPress is also open-source, which means anybody can use it. When you make a professional website design on WordPress, you only need to pay for your domain name and hosting to get started.

WordPress is Scalable, Reliable, and Here to Stay

From small personal blogs to large, high-traffic enterprise websites, WordPress currently supports around 43% of all websites, according to W3Techs data. Thousands of logged-in users are editing their sites right now, and WordPress renders millions of site views each month. Investing in a high-quality hosting service can help ensure your WordPress site performs well under pressure, delivering lightning-fast load speeds without overloading server resources.

SEO-Friendly

WordPress offers plenty of features designed to help your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). First, the platform uses clean, semantic code, making it easier for search engines to index your website’s content. You can also easily add titles, custom permalinks, meta descriptions, and alt text to every piece of content on your site – from pages and posts to individual media files. Appropriately naming and tagging your site content helps search engines identify and index your content, making it more likely to show up on SERPs while enabling you to target specific keywords and phrases. Finally, WordPress themes are usually mobile responsive, which is extremely important for search engines. Google, for example, will deprioritize content that doesn’t render well on different screen sizes or browsers, because its algorithm is designed to deliver the most relevant, helpful, and readable content to searchers.

Popular Alternatives to WordPress

While WordPress is widely used, there are other CMS alternatives that are worth researching based on your goals. Some platforms require more coding knowledge than others to build a high-quality website. For example, you may need to hire a special developer to build and maintain a site on Joomla or Drupal, whereas Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify tend to be more modular, user-friendly, and easy to update without touching code. Like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Wix are free to use, whereas Squarespace and Shopify require a monthly subscription that includes hosting.