So what is WordPress and why is it raved about so much? We listed good reasons why you should be using it for your business or personal  website. AS the description on the main wordpress.org site says, WordPress is simply web software that creates beautiful websites or blogs. It started in 2003 and is now the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, and is used on over 60 million sites that are seen by tens of millions of people every day.

WordPress is an Open Source project which means nobody ‘owns’ it. You are FREE to use it for anything, from your dog’s home page to a FTSE 100 web site without paying anyone a license fee.

You may hear about WordPress.com and WordPress.org  for which there are differences:

  • WordPress.com is hosted for free, but comes with limited functionality (you have to pay to upgrade to use this added functionality).
  • WordPress.org can either be hosted by yourself or if you don’t know how to do that, then a web designer will arrange your hosting (most likely all you’d pay is the cost of the domain name which is often $10 a year). This is the better choice as all the functionality of WordPress is available. The code can easily be ‘hacked’ and any adaptations easily made (see point 5 below).

With WordPress you can build a blog, a website, or both together as one.  It lets you create both pages and posts for your site and use the benefits that come with both.

WordPress is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that can be used for more than just blogging. It can store all your images, files, documents, links and easily retrieve and use them as you see fit.

It is designed and suited to publishing and changing content easily. You don’t have to have working knowledge of html or css to create a great looking site.

Using the functionality of WordPress (such as widgets, plugins, and themes) requires no code experience or expertise, as anything can be added, removed, and rearranged within the WordPress Administration panel.

So rather than having to rely and pay someone to update it for you, you can log on an have full access to do whatever you want – amend spelling mistakes, add and delete pages or posts, change the look and feel of your site. You name it, there will be a way to do it, and all within your control.

There are thousands of widgetsplugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine:

  • free design themes to give your site a completely different look at the click of a button
  • the ability to extend your website with logos, polls, newsletter sign-ups, contact forms, ratings or hundreds of other cool features
  • eCommerce shopping cart plugins can list products, services and digital downloads and take any means of electronic payment.

All tools are available without having to hire a web developer to install or set up and configure them.

There are hundreds of people all over the world working on WordPress to continually update and improve the way it works and what it offers.  The wordpress.org/support site is fantastic and features extensive forums as well as documentation on anything you can think of to do with WordPress.

There are also thousands of other support sites, blogs, forums, Twitter feeds, newsletters, videos, podcasts and more all focusing on top tips and tricks to get the most out of WordPress. Any help you need is literally just a Google search away!

You can of course makes an amazing site, but this is pointless unless it can be found easily through the many different search engines available. Luckily WordPress provides many excellent seo benefits and most are completely free. This includes guiding search engine crawlers through posts, pages, and categories, the ability to create permalinks, plus blogrolling, and pinging. There are also a large number of third party plugins and hacks which can be used for search engine optimization (SEO).

It really is. You shouldn’t be asking yourself  ‘why should I use WordPress’  for my site but really  ‘why shouldn’t I be using WordPress’!

I use it daily to create websites for friends, colleagues and customers, for both personal and business use.

All sites that I have created in WordPress have been perfect for their owners and have really impressed.