Meet WordPress!

There are more than 400 Content Management Systems available. Selecting the “best” alternative might seem like a nearly impossible task.

Fortunately not! There’s actually a single stand-out choice. Meet WordPress, an acclaimed and widely adopted open source (free) CMS used to create both Blogs and Websites. If you heard about WordPress a few years ago, it was likely in the context of a “great blogging platform” and certainly WordPress was and is that powering 51 of Technorati’s “Top 100 Blogs“. Also check out this WordPress Adoption Infographic from WPengine.

WordPress just celebrated its 11th birthday and over that decade it has steadily added functionality to excel as:

• A blogging platform (of course)
  
• A robust CMS platform
  
• An application hosting platform
  
• A Software as a Service (SaaS) platform
  
• The single engine powering a network of sites (WordPress Multi-User)
  

Among its strengths:

• Ease of use. WordPress is the unchallenged simplicity leader among all CMSs.
  
• The world’s most widely use CMS with more than 72,000,000 worldwide installations representing a nearly 60% market share among all Content Management Systems (see details here).
  
• WordPress is continually growing and evolving supported by over 300,000 contributing developers worldwide.
  
• Over 100,000 new WordPress sites are created every day.
  
• WordPress powers 16.7% of Alexa Internet’s “Top 1 Million” sites.
  
• WordPress is employed in the creation of 21.3% of all Websites and over a quarter of all new Websites.
  
• Over 3,200 available free theme choices (plus many more paid commercial themes).
  
• Over 49,000 available free plug-ins (plus many more paid commercial choices).
  
• Over 4,100 available how-to books.
  
• Numerous marquee users including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, General Electric, Dell, Intel, Xerox, Samsung, Sony, Nokia, SAP, Martha Stewart, Izod, Van Heusen, Pepsi Cola, CNN, BBC, Reuters, Forbes, Time, People Magazine, Vogue, UPS, NASA, Adobe, Yahoo!, Harvard University, Nikon, NFL, NBA, Carnival Cruise Lines, Mozilla, eBay, MTV, Mashable, the Rolling Stones, the U.S. Government, and many more.
  
• A nearly uncountable number of positive reviews and awards.
  

You might now be thinking “Okay, a CMS makes sense and WordPress is an obviously good choice but what are the tangible enhancements and benefits versus other alternatives?” They are numerous and varied due to both WordPresses’ inherent capabilities and, more particularly, the “plug-in” based enhancements that can be installed. These non-technical “pluses” include in part:

• An updated, modern site look and feel via the numerous available theme choices.
  
• By default, WordPress sites are standards compliant and accessible.
  
• WordPress is a “cloud” based system. You can add to and maintain your site through any Web browser or smart phone from anywhere in the world with no HTML editor to install, learn or keep updated.
  
• WordPress sites are scalable being built on the highly respected MySQL Database (the same database powering Google’s search and Amazon’s online store). A WordPress site will growth with your needs and can, with appropriate Web server support, handle hundreds of thousands of simultaneous site visitors should you ever be lucky enough to attract them.
  
• Better access on mobile devices (smart phones and tablets); a correctly configured “mobile responsive” WordPress site will automatically “restructure” as required to accommodate various smaller mobile screen sizes providing an optimized mobile experience without the effort or expense of creating a separate mobile version of your site. Wondering if a good mobile experience on your site is important? Check these January 2014 statistics from Pew Research:

  • 90% of American adults have a cell phone
  • 58% of American adults have a smartphone
  • 42% of American adults own a tablet computer
  • 32% of American adults own an eReader
• Integrated site search function.
  
• Integrated revision control (roll-back to earlier content versions).
  
• Rapid page content computer based translation into your site visitor’s choice of over 50 languages.
  
• Multiple predefined “widget” areas allowing selected site content to be created once and displayed on some or all site pages.
  
• Integrated media management functions (photos, photo galleries, videos, audio, documents, etc.).
  
• Easy inclusion of videos hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, etc.
  
• Link to remote media libraries like Flickr, Instagram, Tumbr, YouTube, Amazon S3, etc.and add that media to pages and post just as if they were stored in your local media library.
  
• Integrated Web analytics (see your visitor stats within the site’s dashboard).
  
• Built in RSS feed function allowing subscribing site visitors to be notified when site content is updated.
  
• Printer friendly page and PDF generation.
  
• Outstanding performance (faster page loading) via optional content caching and multi-point page component deliveries through Content Distributed Networks (CDNs).
  
• Tighter Website security (more difficult to “hack” than traditional sites).
  
• Easy and powerful search engine optimization (SEO) through free or inexpensive plug-ins resulting in better organic search results positioning.
  
• eCommerce ready (easily sell products and services on your site).
  
• Near effortless social network integration via a number of free or inexpensive plug-ins.
  
• Future obsolesce avoidance.
  
• Ever increasing functionality as the WordPress platform continues to evolve and improve.
  
• After addressing their Website needs, many businesses focus on creating a blog to address positioning, branding, credibility building, outreach, etc. Blogging is, of course, a WordPress forte providing integrated blogging support with no new software or skill sets to learn and master.
  

Hopefully WordPress now looks like the platform of choice on which to build your new Website. The third and final step is selecting the right professional consultant!