Comprehensive Knowledge of WordPress and Why Use WordPress For Your Website
If you are looking for content management systems (CMS) tools, you may be overwhelmed by many website builder tools available nowadays. Here is the one for you. WordPress is the most popular web design platform, accounting for 43% of all websites. So why are so many people using it? Why use WordPress can benefit you?
In this article, Sosene will answer the question: What is WordPress? We also cover the usage statistics of the Content Management System as well as the advantages and disadvantages when using WordPress.What is WordPress?
WordPress is preferred among users due to its ease of use and multiple beneficial features. It supports users to create many kinds of websites (such as blogs, news, magazines, business introductions, and e-commerce) and even highly complex websites such as hotel booking, car rental, and real estate project listings.
No matter what scale of your website is small or medium, you can still deploy it on the WordPress platform. But that does not mean that it is only suitable for small projects, and up to now, it has about 25% of websites in the list of 100 biggest websites in the world using WordPress source code. For instance, TechCrunch, Mashable, CNN, BBC America, Variety, Sony Music, MTV News, Bata, and Quartz.
In addition, WordPress divides into 2 types:
Each one will have its advantages and disadvantages, which we will cover in our next article – Discrimination between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
Usage Statistics of Content Management Systems
WordPress is still an open-source project. It holds the biggest community in the CMS world, including developers, web designers, and bloggers. As of June 24, 2023, WordPress accounts for 43% of all websites, up from 39.5% of sites in 2021. With its ease of use, customization, and freedom, it is not too surprising that WordPress has such a high market share.
The Pros and Cons of Using WordPress
The advantages of WordPress
Below are some reasons why using WordPress can benefit you
Open-source Platform
One of the primary pros of WordPress is that it is an open-source platform. It simply implies that users can use, modify, and learn the code without writing it from the beginning. Open-source software also enables programmers to share their code with other developers, which helps users cut down on spending time creating and implementing new code bases for small and large changes.
Lots of free functionality and options
When comparing the benefits and drawbacks of WordPress, one of the most significant advantages is the variety of themes available. Hundreds of free designs are obtainable on the official WordPress theme directory.
They frequently have sufficient capabilities to build a portfolio site or professional online store. However, tons of paid themes are available if you have a more comprehensive requirement for functionality. You can discover more on directory sites like ThemeForest or individual developer sites like Themify, Elegant Themes, and WPExplorer.
The best point is that you don’t need to have design skills to employ them. All you have to do is choose a theme, make your selection from the preset options, and then fill your material into pages and posts.
User-Friendly
Selecting CMS like WordPress is simple and requires no technical experience. It enables you to effortlessly modify the pages, navigate to the website backend, and update the new material. Non-technical users can develop websites easily by installing plugins, especially drag-and-drop features, making it easier to design websites. You don’t need any further knowledge about this. It is the trait that has enabled WordPress to stay ahead of its competitors, such as Drupal and Joomla.
Since it’s the most popular CMS, WordPress owns a huge community forum moderated by WordPress employees and enthusiasts. Thus, if you have any trouble, you can go online and look for WordPress communities; they will assist you in answering and solving your problem.
Robust plugin
One of the most significant advantages of WordPress is the availability of over 45,000 plugins. Whether you need to increase your SEO or run an analysis, there is a plugin for practically every purpose. Indeed, using plugins is one of the simplest ways to create a unique website that gives consumers the modern functionality they have come to expect. Furthermore, the plugins significantly improve the capability of your website, from increasing site security to accelerating performance or even incorporating social media features.
Besides, it has many plugins, such as Google Analytics, which will help you manage your website. Such plugins properly track how and when people access your website. As a result, it is proven to be the most important tool for observing user performance and improving site traffic and usability.
SEO friendly platform
You probably understand the importance of search engine optimization for ranking your website higher and obtaining more traffic. WordPress uses premium semiotic coding solutions that let the user efficiently control the SEO characteristics that impact the website’s potential for Google listing. That demonstrates why it is the best platform for SEO.
In addition, WordPress is integrated with many Plugins designing specifically for search engine optimization purposes. You can easily insert your meta descriptions and title just by installing a couple of them, otherwise it can be a daunting task when doing it manually. Also, there are many plugins to support you to get the related keywords and key phrases needed to include on your website to make it appear in the search engines.
Having a mobile-friendly site is now critical to SEO to increase mobile usage. Therefore, when it comes to responsiveness, choosing a CMS like WordPress can help you profit from it since the majority of WordPress themes and designs are responsive.
The Disadvantages of WordPress
Although WordPress can bring many benefits, It also includes several risks that you should know to consider before starting to use it.
Customization
WordPress is still a flexible tool with a large number of plugins and themes compared to the other drag-and-drop web builder tools. However, you might get several problems if you don’t have the necessary expertise and WordPress abilities.
Additionally, many websites adopting the same available theme in the WordPress library do not have many differences since creating something unique is practically difficult without basic technical knowledge of HTML, PHP, and CSS, or the assistance of a professional Website Design Company.
Installing Themes and Plugins is not always convenient. If their versions do not match, conflicts can arise. Designing a sales website through WordPress requires users to have knowledge and understanding of making websites.
Data Security and vulnerability
Even though WordPress is more secure than other website-building tools, security remains a big concern with this CMS. Since it is a popular website used worldwide, it is not difficult to understand why WordPress is the first target for hackers. But, with the assistance of the right Website Design Company and by increasing the security of the website with the right plugins and themes, you can overcome this issue.
Just bear in mind that maintaining security and updating the newest software to prevent vulnerabilities is one of the most crucial components of operating a company website.
Frequent Updates
Because WordPress is open-source, it is constantly evolving to improve your user experience which means it should be constantly upgraded.
The hosting company of your website will have to check regularly to see whether your theme and extensions need to be updated or not. Updating your website is crucial to ensure that all features operate effectively, as well as website performance, compatibility, high security, and detecting (or resolving) potential bugs.
Not be cost effective
At first, WordPress may appear to be a cost-effective method or even less expensive than other competing hosting options. However, when looking at the big picture, you can figure out that there are many substantial expenditures. As we all know, it is heavily reliant on plugins and themes for customization. These free plugins and themes may not always be trustworthy and secure. As a result, you will need to choose some premium ones that can provide you with greater security. Also, if you want to develop a unique website that is outstanding and gives a great experience to your users, you need to purchase a theme because free themes are now too overused.
If you are a WordPress Designer, have coding skills, or are familiar with this platform, you can easily make any changes yourself or rely on expensive plugins and well-developed themes to produce an interactive and highly functional website.
Page speed
Slow page speed is one of the primary downsides of WordPress since it is one of the main factors that strongly influence the user experience as well as the ranking of your website. Many reasons contribute to this, including the excessive use of plugins, the usage of a theme that is not adequately optimized, and generic code. This issue not only annoys marketers and developers working on a website but also frustrates the consumers and leads them to leave your site. Furthermore, Google employs page speed as one of the elements in its ranking algorithms and penalizes websites that load slowly. Further, Google considers page speed as one of the elements in its ranking algorithms and penalizes websites that load slowly.
However, there are a few established techniques for boosting page performance, including adding additional plugins, activating and disabling certain configuration settings, and using CDN. Dealing with these issues can take a significant amount of time spending on enhancing your website.
Conclusion
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