So what is this mythical beast called WordPress? You’ve started looking into web design and you keep seeing the peculiar portmanteau splattered across the web, and people talking about it like it’s as obvious as sliced bread.
In complex geek up their own bum speak – it’s an online, open source website creation tool written in PHP. In normal sensible human being speak it’s a versatile and very adaptable way of making a website… All the programming exists on the web so you don’t need any software downloaded to your computer and it’s FREE!!!
WordPress started life as blogging software which means it’s pretty straight forward for even the most technologically averse to make basic edits to their website… as long as you can use Microsoft word – you can use wordpress. But can you build your own site from scratch with it?
Yes absolutely you can – there are plenty of pre-programmed themes out there that you can use with pretty little coding knowledge… The learning curve is still pretty steep – and it’s definitely not as easy to create a site quick as the dedicated site builders out there that you pay more of a premium for (think Wix, Squarespace etc) Have a look at my post examining the various virtues of each here.
I’m not going to lie though – doing it yourself – unless you’re blessed with a great designer’s eye, and an ability to understand a little beyond the basics of coding (think JS, CSS and PHP) the site may always look a little generic and homemade… You’ve also go to weigh up how valuable your time is – can you really afford to spend days (or weeks) figuring out how to get the results you want? The best way to get impressive results quickly is to hire someone like me who earns their crust designing and building ace wordpress sites.
But enough with the hard sell – just what can wordpress do for you and why do I LOVE it so much?
It’s versatile
You can use it to blog, for ecommerce (using the brilliant plug in Woocommerce which I’m writing a blog about soon!), for event scheduling, for course booking, for running internet courses, for membership sites, for forums, for auction sites, for portfolios – the list goes on – anything you need a website to do – wordpress does it – brilliantly!
Google loves it!
WordPress is known for having SEO (search engine optimisation – basically how high you are on a google search page!) built into the platform. In fact, WordPress automatically generates title tags and meta descriptions for all of your pages and posts. This lets search engines known about your content, and it will get you indexed and potentially moved up in the rankings. As with everything in WordPress, there are also more advanced features offered by plugins and online tools.
The biggies use it too!
It’s not just smaller businesses that love wordpress – the biggies do too – it’s fast becoming one of the most popular ways to build websites, any website. If you don’t believe me check out the wordpress website showcase.
It’s affordable
Like I already said the WordPress software itself is totally free (download it yourself from here ), but the open source community that created it and support it means that the build prices can be kept down too! If you’re building a site from the ground up all the finite coding necessary to make it run, let alone give it awesome interactive features takes its sweet time – and time means money. The advent of wordpress design has meant that web design prices have become hugely more affordable as lots of coding short cuts exist via plugins and themes… You need to be careful on both counts – a cumbersome theme, or too many plugins will really slow down your site and make it more prone to not age well – but used economically and well you can get super results quickly and at rates that won’t make you squeal!
It’s Easy To Find WordPress Help
Because WordPress is so popular, it’s easy to find help if you ever run into any issues. There are heaps of blogs, forums and developers (meeeeee) out there ready to help you!
So what do you reckon? Have I convinced you? Comment below and tell me what you think. Or if you want to chat all things wordpress get in touch by hitting the chat button below.
