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First off, WordPress has a long history of constant improvement. There have been five major versions of WordPress since 2003, and almost countless ‘point’ updates of the platform. Each one gives WordPress enhanced functionality, state of the art features, and a better User Experience (UX).
Each release is organized in a professional manner, with a project lead overseeing the work, and the raft of community volunteers working on code. We’ll have more to say about the stellar work the WordPress community does later on.
The result of this effort is a constant cycle of releases – around three or four per year – and near constant evolution. In fact, there’s also a roadmap outlining WordPress future. This makes WordPress a stable, dependable, and strong platform to use for your site.
What’s more, WordPress is inherently secure. One of the major resources for the most critical security issues is the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) ‘Top 10’. WordPress works to harden the core platform to address each of these, and mitigate other common security issues.
If a vulnerability is discovered, WordPress has a procedure for reporting it, through the HackerOne website.
WordPress is an open-source project. Nearly 20 years later, the project is still going strong. Being open-source means you’re free to download, use and modify it to match your needs. And this is one of the most attractive points for using WordPress.
WAnyone can download, install WordPress and build a website according to their vision. This is crucial for small or large business owners, bloggers, or just about anyone who’s looking to create their own space online.
We mentioned that WordPress is the world’s most popular website platform and that’s true. In fact, it is the driving engine of 43% of all websites in the world currently. That’s a lot of websites!
Any kind of website can be powered by WordPress, from individual blogs to huge corporate sites. Sites such as Sony Music, The Next Web, Time Magazine, Microsoft News all run on WordPress, and the list goes on and on.
We’ve talked about the uses for WordPress.
However, we’d be remiss if we didn’t emphasize just how great an option WordPress is for blogs.
At its core, WordPress still has blogging at heart. That means it’s easy to publish new content, manage it, keep track of comments, format your text, and more.
Despite its “age,” WordPress continues to innovate. In 2019 its developers launched the new Block editor, which completely overhauls the blogging and editing experience. With the new editor, you get full control over your page and post layouts, which can make for visually stunning blogs.
One of the most challenging aspects of running a website is scaling it. The more content you publish and the more traffic you get, the bigger the strain becomes on your CMS.
Choosing a quality web host is key to scaling your website and making sure it always feels fast. However, the CMS you use also plays a significant role. WordPress, for example, powers some of the most popular sites on the web, so you know in advance that scaling won’t be an issue.
If you’re new to WordPress, you may not be familiar with the concept of plugins and themes. Let’s break down what both of them are:
Themes: These are templates you can use on your website to alter its basic design.
Plugins: These add new features and functionality to your site.
As we mentioned before, there are thousands of plugins and themes (both free and premium) available for WordPress.
WordPress is great for SEO, and that’s not just us talking. Google and other search engines love WordPress due to its high-quality code and semantic markup. And there are plugins that add additional code and markup to your website, helping it to better communicate with search engines. Additionally, WordPress site is scalable and optimized for many devices from desktop to mobile so you can serve traffic from a variety of sources.
Website speed is another important factor for SEO. It’s not a pleasant experience having to wait for a site to load. And you’ll definitely lose out on traffic and sales if you have a slow site. Luckily, WordPress is built for speed. Most WordPress themes on the market are lightweight so as to reduce loading time. Next to that, there are many other things you can do on WordPress to improve website speed. These include using caching plugins, using content delivery network to serve media, all to ensure your visitors won’t leave because of a slow-loading site.
One thing you may not be aware of if you’ve never set up a website before is that they require a bit of maintenance work. With WordPress in particular, you have to stay on top of the following:
Updating the CMS as new versions come out
Updating your plugins and themes whenever you have the option to
Managing your site’s comments (if you choose to enable them)
Ensuring that your website is fully optimized and secure
Backing up your site often
In practice, none of those tasks should take up too much of your time individually. However, if you want to save time, you can always opt for a managed hosting service.
Managed hosting plans get their name because your provider will take care of a lot of maintenance tasks for you. Our Best 4 WordPress Hosting, for example, offer automated backups, website optimization, and around-the-clock support. That means you get more time to focus on growing your site, instead of worrying about making sure it’s running smoothly.
Website builders come and go. Even the biggest ones may disappear (remember GeoCities?).
Open-source software, on the other hand, is much more likely to be around for a very long time.
That’s because as open-source software, it’s not maintained by just one person or company. Even if WordPress disappears, anyone can simply fork its code and launch it with a different name in a matter of minutes.
One of the lesser-known facts about WordPress is that it does not have a CEO. The name WordPress is protected by the WordPress foundation, which is a non-profit organization ensuring that WordPress continues to grow.
There is a strong community of thousands of users, developers, and small businesses behind WordPress. As a community, all of them ensure that WordPress is here to stay for the long-haul.
WordPress benefits millions of users around the globe. It is available in more than 53 languages and powers thousands of multilingual websites as well.
