Launched as a blogging platform back in 2003, WordPress has come a long way to become a popular open-source content management system (CMS) that allows you to build feature-rich websites, blogs, or even applications without the need to learn to code. With the latest release of WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg Editor, WordPress has streamlined the writing and editing experience by introducing the new block-based post editor.
If reports are to be believed, WordPress powers 32.54% of the top 1 million websites across the globe. Today, WordPress it is being used by some of the big brands in the industry including Facebook Newsroom, Microsoft News Center, Time Inc., The Walt Disney Company, Bata, Reuters, GoDaddy, TechCrunch, Sony, Glassdoor, Yelp and more. This clearly indicates that anyone can vouch for WordPress for the fact that it is the best open-source CMS loaded with rich features and ample customization possibilities, which allow you to build your website in whatever way you like. Now, let’s quickly look at the top reasons why you should choose WordPress over other CMS.
1. Free and Open-source
WordPress doesn’t charge a penny for the basic version. You can use it to create any type of website and it will render the same performance forever, even if your website starts getting more traffic than you’ve anticipated. Besides free, WordPress is also open-source, which means you can modify or edit its source code in whatever way you like and customize the appearance of your website as per your need.
2. Search Engine Friendly
For a website to appear in the search engine results, it needs to be SEO friendly. Fortunately, SEO is built into the WordPress platform, which allows the popular search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to crawl and index your website. In fact, Matt Cutts former head of the Google’s Webspam team in 2009 had personally endorsed WordPress. This is what he stated, “ WordPress Takes Care of 80-90% of (the mechanics of) Search Engine Optimization”. Furthermore, by using the plugins you can augment the performance of your website. For instance, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to achieve that number one spot in the search engine results.
3. Strong Community Support
33% of all websites are powered by WordPress and it has around 60% share of the CMS market. This indicates that if you encounter any problem or have a question, you have strong community support of professional web developers, consultants, and experts at your disposal. In other words, the number of people using WordPress is pretty staggering and even a quick search on Google will pull up several forums, guides and tutorials, blogs, magazines, video courses, YouTube channels, and knowledge bases dedicated to WordPress. In a nutshell, you have endless support options available to perform the basic troubleshooting.
4. Completely Safe and Secure
With the ever-growing popularity of WordPress, it has become a primary target for hackers. However, you don’t have to worry, since all your business related data will be stored safely in the WordPress repository. The WordPress staff periodically releases platform updates to prevent security vulnerabilities and keep data thieves and hackers out of your website. The thing that you need to keep in mind is that when you think of installing any plugin on your website, always ensure that you download it from a trusted source. You can also install a robust yet reliable security plugin to ensure double protection of your website.
5. Support Different Types of Media Files
Though WordPress started out as a blogging platform but today it is not limited to writing just text. In fact, it comes with a built-in media uploader using which you can upload images, audios, and video files and make your website or blog interactive. Not just this, you can also embed Instagram photos, YouTube videos, Soundcloud audio, podcasts, slideshows and tweets by just copy-pasting the URL in the WordPress post editor. The different video and audio formats supported by WordPress include MP4, FLV, MP3, M4a, WebM, OGG, and WAV files. Always remember that the websites that have lower bounce rate are the ones that are rich in multimedia.
Final Words
After reading this insightful post, I hope you’ve got the answer to your question – why should you choose WordPress over other CMS? If you aren’t using WordPress, I strongly recommend you to give it a try. With WordPress, you get not only complete control over your site, but also receive several great advantages like plugins and themes galore, free tools, and full media support. If you still have any question regarding WordPress, you can ask me in the comments below.
