WordPress was developed by Matt Mullenweg and Mark Little – two users of a blogging software called b2/cafelog. Then, they decided to take this software they were using in a new direction. They released the first version of WordPress on 27th May 2003. Over the past two decades, it’s evolved from a simple blogging software to the world-leading Content Management System (CMS), ECommerce platform and website builder. But, why use WordPress? What makes it so special?
Today, WordPress powers more than 45.8% of all websites on the internet. It also holds a 63.1% CMS market share. No other website builder software even comes close to those stats.
WordPress is used by many recognisable brand names too. The likes of Disney, The White House (yes, that one!), Vogue, Microsoft and Renault all utilise it. Everyone from bloggers to small businesses and Fortune 500 companies use the platform.
In this article, the KIJO team explores just why everyone is turning to, relying on and sticking with WordPress. We’ll also reveal what we think the future holds for the popular CMS.
WordPress is completely free to use, which alone makes it incredibly attractive. WordPress.com is more suitable for complete beginners. WordPress.org is the self-hosted version where you control more of your site and can implement more advanced features. The latter makes more sense for business owners. However, regardless of which you opt to adopt, it’s free for anyone to download.
WordPress is also open source. When a software is open source, this means its source code is freely available to be distributed and modified by third parties. In turn, startup costs are initially lower. This is a real plus for small businesses, those on a budget and those just starting out.
In addition, open source allows WordPress to build a collaborative and supportive community around its software. First and third party developers are continually pushing it forward with new themes and plugins. These can be downloaded from online marketplaces.
Removed from the usual financial incentives of a closed source technology company, it’s also renowned for its ‘customer first’ approach. It allows the wants and trends of its customer base to ultimately dictate the direction of future releases. This is arguably the most important contributing factor to its enduring success.
For business owners who don’t consider themselves tech-savvy, using an open source platform like WordPress can be a real blessing. The sheer amount of documentation and help that exists online makes it far easier to solve issues than if you were tied to a different company with their own customer support team.
With all of this said though, it is worth noting that despite WordPress itself being free, you should budget for comprehensive hosting. Every website needs to be hosted in order to appear on the internet. Comprehensive hosting ensures it performs optimally and runs at a suitable speed. Check out our KIJO hosting packages via the hyperlink.
WordPress’ variety of plugins and themes is another one of its many advantages.
As we just touched on, WordPress has some of the most extensive and well-maintained documentation of any system out there. This has allowed an ecosystem of developers to grow around the platform, continuously building new PlugIns and themes for an ever-widening market of small (and large) businesses looking to improve their digital presence.
The marketplace for WordPress themes and plugins has been beneficial for two reasons. The first is that it’s lucrative. The average WordPress developer can earn around $50,000 (£39,345) p/a! And, almost everything you need to know to kickstart your career, can be obtained online through various resources.
The second is that due to the ever-increasing competition in the WordPress marketplace, the standard of the product is extraordinarily high. This means end users can pick up fantastic themes and plugins for next to nothing, and talented developers can become financially wealthy by selling to a mass market. Take the team behind the theme Avada. This theme alone has generated $12,000,000 in revenue throughout its lifetime so far.
At KIJO, we like to work with Elementor. Elementor is considered the number one builder for WordPress for a reason. As well as an extensive library of full website designs, it boasts a range of benefits from design flexibility, optimised code and an easy to use interface. Partnering with a speciality Elementor website design agency like KIJO can take these benefits and hypercharge them, to give you a professional Elementor website capable of fulfilling your companies needs and helping you scale your business.
Plugins are also a great way for business owners to extend the functionality of their site when building something from scratch. With a quick search of its plugin library, you can do things like add social media buttons or create units for advertising, both of which can help with customer engagement and drive revenue on your site.
WordPress is incredibly web developer friendly. It’s absolutely fantastic at keeping its documentation updated and maintained.
The Developer Documentation is a comprehensive collection of meticulously written reference guides. It allows any developer to actively contribute or modify the existing WordPress code. It covers everything; from PlugIns to APIs, to blogging and coding standards and, as always, everything is free to use.
WordPress really is also a great opportunity for developers looking to earn a great living from their work. The rise of online courses and tutorials has made learning these skills far easier and, as a result, the market has grown exponentially. In turn, this has pushed it to even higher levels of quality – a win-win situation all round.
WordPress really pioneered the easy set up process and made it far easier for the more inexperienced people in tech to build and run their own content management systems. This also gave them a large advantage over their closest competitors and has contributed significantly to their overall growth.
One of the main reasons for its ease of use is their effort to ensure backward compatibility with different server software. This makes the installation process a generally smooth experience, with far less troubleshooting.
The power of simple installation cannot be understated. In an industry fraught with complexity and jargon inaccessible to the outsider, WordPress is now synonymous with the word “simplicity”.
WordPress is based in Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) and MySQL (a database management system). The code is clean and simple and, as a result, is very readable for different search engines, namely Google.
Matt Cutts, the former head of Google’s webspam team, has even gone on record to say, “sites built with WordPress are capable of ranking higher in search results because the CMS takes care of 80-90% of Google’s crawling issues.’
Much of this is due to how the content editor in it works. Each page, post, and image can have its own metatags and descriptions. The content can also be optimised for specific keywords that will be indexed when Google crawls it. The result for business owners is a high probability of ranking well in the SERPs, which means higher organic traffic to your site and, essentially, free exposure.
The fact that almost all WordPress themes are now mobile responsive is another reason for Google’s favouritism too. Google drives almost 96% of all mobile traffic. So, any site that’s responsive to mobile design is going to get priority over the ones that don’t.
Why use WordPress? Well, another great reason why people feel confident using WordPress is that it’s very good at keeping its websites safe. The security team is made up of many of the lead developers and researchers and are thought of as the WordPress ‘core team’. The responsibility for the safety of the platform as a whole falls to them.
If hacks do occur, it’s very rarely WordPress’s fault. Cyber attacks are usually a result of out of date plugins and themes. Updates are usually yours or your host’s are responsibility. Out of date core software, easy to guess login credentials or weak hosting are all preventable!
You can read the official documentation for its security best practices here.
In its basic form, WordPress is certainly easy to use and hosts a user-friendly design. Most users can get their website up and running in a matter of days. Perhaps hours if your design is very simple! The best way to learn how to use the platform depends on your skill level, how you like to learn, and how much you can afford to invest in training. For example, complete beginners might do well with an in-depth WordPress course from a recommended provider.
However, the most stress-free and professional way of building a WordPress site is to work with an experienced, expert development agency like us here at KIJO. We have over 20+ years of experience in building and developing websites. We will build and maintain your WordPress site properly, thoroughly and beautifully. Learn more about our Web Design package via the hyperlink.
It’s pretty clear that WordPress isn’t going anywhere and its anticipated growth comes with nearly concrete certainty. Over 40% of websites are operated using WordPress. Is its future success that hard to believe?
The things that have made WordPress popular over the last ten years and helped it become the number one CMS are fundamental to its future. WordPress knows that. It’s always going to be constantly improving and bolstering its security features, e-commerce elements and further evolving its CMS and application framework. In an ever-developing digital age, sticking to these values and keeping the software updated are imperative for its future success and maintained popularity.
Wondering whether your business could benefit from a WordPress site build or development? Contact the KIJO team here.
