If you’re starting a blog on WordPress, or if you have an existing one and are looking for a change, WordPress is one of the main blogging platforms for you to consider using.
There are many reasons why you should use WordPress, and here are our main ones:
Open source
WordPress is an open source platform, meaning that any developer in the world is able to build plugins that are available for download and use through WordPress. This gives webmasters and bloggers a huge amount of freedom when it comes to functionality, allowing them to – theoretically – build a website for any purpose they wish.
With it being open source, there are also a tonne of WordPress themes available for bloggers to choose from.
Choice of themes
If you’re starting a blog on WordPress, or if you have an existing one and are looking for a change, there are hundreds of thousands of themes available for you to use.
They’re split between two types; free and premium. The choice of free blog themes is incredible and there is a great range of choice for bloggers. Premium templates start incredibly cheap too and will often come with some great plugins, so represent exceptional value for money.
Great for SEO
The WordPress platform is an excellent choice for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Bloggers have full control over how their URLs appear through the permalinks section of the administrator dashboard, and URLs are really easy to make search engine friendly.
Furthermore, there are some great SEO plugins available, both free and paid-for, which will give bloggers and webmasters instant feedback on the quality of their content from an SEO perspective. Yoast SEO is perhaps the pick of these plugins.
Easy to learn and manage
One of the big advantages of WordPress is how easy it is to pick-up and get familiar with. If you’re at all familiar with content management systems, it is likely you will feel right at home with WordPress within a few minutes of installing it.
Even for newcomers, things are pretty straight forward. The back-end if clean and simple with navigation intuitive. In the unlikely event that do you struggle to get to grips with WordPress initially, there are tonnes of tutorials and online help articles available, so the chances are that things will quickly fall in to place.
Easy to update
With some content management systems, you can end up pulling your hair out when trying to update themes/templates and plugins or controls. Joomla for example can become incredibly frustrating when you begin trying to update old plugins. To update the platform itself to the latest version, it is a manual process, and often infuriating.
WordPress is frustration-free for the most part. Even when the WordPress platform itself is updated, you can turn on automatic updates and the platform will email you to confirm that your install has been upgraded to the latest version. Quick and easy. Installing WordPress is also extremely easy, most hosting providers have 1-click installations!
Security
Finally, WordPress is one of the most secure platforms that you can build a blog on. Being an open source solution that is used by millions of websites worldwide, it is a target for hackers. However, WordPress take security seriously and the automatic updates above are a great help when ensuring your version is the latest available and so includes all of the latest security features.