People are looking at websites more with function in mind than before. Previously, companies wanted a good looking, dynamic site with pizazz. Those things are good to have, but if no one can find you in the search engines, then you have just wasted your money. While WordPress is not considered a Content Management System (CMS), it easily doubles as both a blogging platform and a CMS.
The power and flexibility is enormous, and i have become a believer in it as a product.
Therefore, I am listing ten reasons to build your website on WordPress.
10. Syndication
If you are an online publisher, you know that getting your content in front of as many eyeballs as possible is the name of the game. One of the best ways to do this is through syndication. WordPress has RSS feeds built in to its framework. It automatically parses your content in a raw RSS feed. This makes it easier for other readers to find and import your content in to their favorite reader.
9. Theme Customization
If you are concerned about having a bland-looking website that looks like 250,000 others, you shouldn’t have to. There are tons of amazing designers who can customize a theme, or build a new one from the ground up just for your company. So, you don’t have to share your look with thousands of others on the world wide web.
8. Categories
The posts you publish have a unique URL, but you can use the power of categories to make them easily accessible for your visitors. Categories can be customized as a gateway to that particular content, and your visitors may not know the difference between them and a regular static page. You categorize posts chronologically, or by subject.
7. Community
WordPress builds a comments template in to each post (each page if you want to) allowing visitors and readers a chance to “comment” on a post and making them feel like they are a part of the community. Inherently, it is one of the best community building platforms since the message board, and I, for one, like the comments better than the message boards.
6. User-friendly Publishing
If you can use a word processor, you can use WordPress. In fact, most blogging platforms are built this way. If you are a writer, the easiest way to publish online is with a blogging platform, and the most powerful of the blogging platforms is WordPress. The learning curve is not very hard.
5. Blogging Website
A website that shows up in the search engines well is one that has activity. A blogging website allows publishing to happen quickly and often giving a website built around it all the activity it needs to be “seen and heard” by the search engines. Build your website as (see @Shama The Zen of Social Media Marketing) a blog and you will be “found” easily by Google and the other guys. WordPress is uniquely made to do this well.
4. Large Support Community
Most folks who are regular users of WordPress are very helpful. You will find the support you need, particularly from WordPress.org. People are always writing tutorials and their are WordPress groups across the country. Linkedin even has a WordPress group. There is no shortage of help.
3. SEO Friendly/Standards Compliant
The themes are usually written on the latest website design standards. This, along with activity I mentioned above, makes WordPress very Search Engine Optimization friendly. It kind of helps with the search engine thing.
2. User Friendly CMS
WordPress, as I mentioned before, is very user friendly for publishing online. This makes it a very easy-to-use CMS as well. It allows writers to do what writers do best, write and publish.
1. Free/Open Source
WordPress, the software is free to use under open source! Everything about designing a website costs money from the domain registration, to the hosting, to the designer’s fees, so why would you want to add to the expense by paying thousands of dollars for the CMS software?