If you Google “Why should I use WordPress?” you’ll be amazed at the number of results. The web-related software industry is rapidly growing—WordPress now powers 26 percent of the entire web—and the need for a dependable and scalable content management system (CMS) is at an all time high.
Despite this trend, a huge number of web agencies still rely on making custom layouts for development projects. It’s time to change these outdated practices.
1. WordPress Is Free And Open Source
People say that the best things in life are free. I say, the best things in life are free and open source. That’s WordPress — it’s free and open source with a GPL license. This means that you get to save on any proprietary CMS software, and then there are the benefits of opensource community, of course.
Not only this, other website building tools come with limitations. WordPress frees you from these obstacles. The moment you install WordPress, you take full control of it. Any changes in a paid software’s pricing model can hurt the entire business model of web agencies. But this isn’t the case with WordPress.
2. WordPress Is Secure
Some people claim that WordPress itself isn’t secure. This is largely based on misinformation about open-source software and WordPress in general. Any software is vulnerable to security breaches. Nothing is perfect. WordPress is more than a decade old and, through the years, it has been tested, refined, and a good number of security consultants and developers have made improvements to the core software.
Web agencies should explore their security options with WordPress. While WordPress is inherently secure, there are some simple steps you can take to keep it that way, such as such as using strong passwords, updating themes and plugins regularly, implementing SSH, and more. In addition, there’s a growing number of WordPress-specific security plugins and services available for an extra layer of protection, like two-factor authentication.
The iThemes Security plugin safeguards more than 7 million websites worldwide. It offers a complete security package. Web agencies may use it to boost the security of their web projects. Along with plugins, companies like Sucuri and services like VaultPress provide complete security solutions. And their services are relatively inexpensive, which is a big plus for WordPress users and agencies.
3. WordPress Has A Massive Support System
WordPress is supported by a robust online community. I call it the “WordPress family.” These are people who have contributed their support and ideas generously since its launch. Web agencies can find solutions to their queries easily, which allows companies to cut support costs.
To handle support queries, Stack Exchange has allocated a dedicated domain “wordpress.stackexchange.com” for its users. The WordPress community will help troubleshoot any problems you may encounter. There is also the official support forum, which is filled with WordPress professionals helping one another. In fact, the first global contributors’ weekend was all about helping in the support forum. I, along with 14 other WordPress developers, contributed our time for free to support WordPress and help the community.
4. WordPress Boasts Thousands of Free Plugins and Themes
It isn’t uncommon for clients to want a feature-rich website for their business. Web agencies put new design and development trends in practice to create something magical. Working on such projects is time-consuming. But with WordPress, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel daily.
Instead, WordPress plugins can add complex features in a few clicks without hiring a coding expert. There are literally thousands of free plugins available, which can add functionality at different levels from the core to the end user. They offer a virtually unlimited amount solutions, from adding a simple submit button to your site to building a full-fledged ecommerce store. Millions of sites use these solutions—just from the official repository alone, plugins have been downloaded more than 1 billion times.
The story doesn’t end there. Web agencies can also find professionally designed web templates for WordPress. If you are a small dev web agency, you can build a complete solution by developing a plugin and adding a prebuilt WordPress theme.
Thousands of free themes are available in the official WordPress theme directory. Premium themes can also be purchased at a nominal price from platforms like ThemeForest, or other theme stores like Commercial Themes, InspiryThemes, Array Themes, ThemeIsle, ProteusThemes, and more. You can’t find this kind of platform support outside of the WordPress ecosystem.
5. WordPress Helps with SEO and SMM
Online marketing is important and every business needs it. The essential forms of online marketing include SEO (search engine optimization) and SMM (social media marketing). WordPress helps you with both.
Almost all of the prominent search engines understand websites that are powered by WordPress. Matt Cutts, the head of the webspam team at Google, endorsed WordPress in 2009 during WordCamp San Francisco when he said:
WordPress automatically solves a ton of SEO issues.
WordPress is capable of outclassing its competitors in search engine results. A few default features and plugins can help you maintain and monitor your site’s traffic. Let’s not forget the famous SEO plugin by Yoast, which is used on more than a million WordPress sites.
6. WordPress Supports Multilingual Sites
Building a site that supports multiple languages can be challenging. But with WordPress, you can create multilingual sites quickly and easily. Web agencies do it via manual translations by integrating Google Translate with the development project or by using free (Polylang) and premium (WPML) plugins. WPML makes it easy to build multilingual sites and run them. It’s powerful enough for corporate sites, yet simple enough for blogs.
7. WordPress Scales
Although WordPress started off as a blogging platform, today it has evolved into a world-class content management tool. It has helped many big names grow and prosper. Many notable brands, celebrities,
and publications use WordPress and have seen tremendous business and digital outcomes.
Names like The New York Times, BBC America, Quartz, Forbes, General Electric (GE) and other notable brands use WordPress. WordPress is used by large media sites that serve more than a billion impressions each day.
And WordPress continues to move upmarket, powering high-traffic websites. Find out what it takes to run WordPress at scale.
Key Takeaways
WordPress is getting better and bigger. It is by far the most popular CMS with nearly 60 percent of CMS market share, and web agencies simply can’t just ignore its importance. With the inclusion of the REST API, WordPress is poised to capture the next 25 percent of the web.
Let’s recap on why web agencies should use WordPress:
• WordPress has extensive open-source contributions and community support.
• WordPress keeps both developers and clients happy. Developers find website building process easy and maintainable, and customers get cool features with massive support.
• It lowers the risk of proprietary systems by using an open source script.
• It’s a lot easier to find and hire developers who have been building websites with WordPress as their tool of choice, compared to any other proprietary CMS.
• It’s easier to follow pre-built standards or to create and contribute new ones to build a strong foundation for your web agency.
So, are you ready to take your web agency to the next level with WordPress?
