WordPress is the easily the most commonly used Content Management System (CMS) around with approximately 25% of all sites using WordPress.  It is open source meaning the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.  For this reason, there are over 34,000 WordPress plugins. (Plugins are bits of software that can be uploaded  to increase the functionality of your website site.) Plugins give your website the ability to do virtually anything you can imagine.  Some of the things you can add to your WordPress site are: weather reports, share buttons, portfolios, progress bars for fundraising campaigns and so much more.

The plugins are one of the items that make regular website maintenanceessential. An unmaintained site is more easily hacked.

Your WordPress site is flexible.  A WordPress web site can be a blog, or a website using pages only, or both a website and a blog.  You can also use your WordPress site for e-commerce.

Search engine optimization is another really important feature that sets WordPress apart from other types of websites. It’s important that your website can be optimized in order to be found on the search engine results page. If you worked with other CMS systems or drop and drag build it yourself sites you probably encounter platforms that you weren’t able to optimize. WordPress websites are easily optimized for both DIY or WordPress web design pros.

Finally it’s important that your website be mobile friendly for both visitors and search engines.  Some systems aren’t able to be easily viewed on a mobile device.  Your viewers have to pinch and squeeze, drag and pull to read your site.  It’s anything but friendly making for a wretched user  experience.  These folks won’t be back and you’ll lose business because of it.

So what does stop someone from using WordPress?  To scare you into buying another system some sales reps or web designers will tell you WordPress is most heavily hit by hackers.  Well, we won’t deny that but let’s talk about the reason.  IT’S THE MOST WIDELY USED PLATFORM!  Learning to exploit a site is time-consuming and difficult so if you were going to spend the time and energy to learn how to accomplish this it only makes sense to learn on the most widely used software.  Why bother exploiting something almost nobody uses.

So as  a WordPress Web designer I suggest you choose the WordPress platform for the next website you build.