WordPress, Magento, Wix, Joomla, Shopify, and Weebly might sound utterly foreign to the average business owner. These are all platforms for building websites with their pluses and minuses. People use many of them for niche websites with specific goals.
For example, Magento and Shopify are most suitable for online stores. They are not the right fit for blogs, which might be transformed into eCommerce someday (potentially).
Other platforms and website builders are more flexible. Typically, these tend to attract significant interest from professional developers and regular users.
All website builders have great tools for certain skill levels. This article explains the benefits of WordPress over the others mentioned above.
Free, Open-Source Software
You can use WordPress with the .com and the .org domain for free. The fundamental difference between the two is that WordPress.com is really great for complete novices, while the .org version features some more advanced functions. WordPress.org is self-hosted. If you choose WordPress.com for your business, you’ll need to upgrade eventually. It is better for hobby and personal blogs.
Anyone can download WordPress for free. Launched in 2003, this open-source project has several leading contributors and a vast community. Users can participate through brand advocacy or beta testing, but they are not required to.
You’ll need to pay for hosting as WordPress is self-hosted. However, the price is as low as a few dollars a month for shared hosting. If you need more than that, there are some very high-quality offerings in terms of performance and speed, but those will set you back by as much as several hundred a month. Thankfully, there are many excellent providers of WordPress hosting in Canada, so you shouldn’t have any problem finding the right fit.
Inbuilt SEO
SEO is built into the WordPress platform. The builder automatically generates meta titles and meta descriptions for all posts and pages, which informs search engines of content. Potentially, this can move your site up in the rankings, which is definitely of benefit.
Online tools such as plugins offer more advanced features, as with everything in WordPress. Experts recommend the following SEO options:
- Broken Link Checker
- Schema
- Rel Nofollow Checkbox
While WordPress can practically support all kinds of media, it’s advised to legally use media that you own or give credit for or are open for free downloads. You can download free media from the following websites:
- StockSnap
- Unsplash
- Visual Hunt
- Pexels
User-Friendly
WordPress is intuitive to use and has a huge community. Anyone can use this open-source software. It is not restricted by skill level, pricing, or customer support. There is always more to learn about this content management system, but anyone can figure out how the interface works after playing with the dashboard for a few minutes.
The user community has created online courses, seminars, blogs, forums, webinars, and books because software access has very few limitations. These resources clarify various aspects of the WordPress platform. What’s more, WordPress offers official customer support.
Easy to Manage
Managing a website that’s built on WordPress isn’t much. Typically, it only involves the following things:
- Keeping checks on security.
- Making sure the server is okay.
- Running backups.
- Making SEO and speed improvements
- Managing spam.
- Updating plugins, themes, and software.
- Testing for functionality and broken links.
It’s essential to find a reliable host and ensure uptime is close to 100%. You’re not personally responsible for checking on the server. Either a managed WordPress hosting plan or plugins handle security and site backups.
The Control is Yours
While a Google search for “website platforms” or “website builders” will yield a million hits, all lists will feature WordPress and its main competitors. These are Wix, Magento, Squarespace, Weebly, Joomla, Jimdo, and of course, Shopify. Non-open source options like Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace limit control to the features available in the most expensive plans.
