Why Use WordPress to Build Websites?

Why use WordPress? Why is this content management system one of the most popular website-building platforms on the internet? To understand why WordPress is such a useful and popular platform, we first have to understand what it is. So here goes!

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that allows you to easily create dynamic websites. Don’t worry if that doesn’t mean anything to you yet; it originally didn’t mean anything to me either!

Four Things You Should Know About WordPress

WordPress allows you to create dynamic websites: First, let’s elaborate on the part where I mentioned dynamic websites. There are generally two types of websites: static and dynamic. If you want to know more about this topic, check out our post about static websites versus dynamic websites.
WordPress uses both server-side and client-side scripting: WordPress lets us create dynamic websites using server-side (back end) and client-side (front end) scripting. If you want to know the difference between server-side and client-side scripting, check back later for a future article.
WordPress is an extremely popular content management system: WordPress is a Content Management System. We have another article discussing why using a CMS means that you don’t really need to know much about anything else technical. We also had a look at other platforms and the pros and cons of different content management systems.
WordPress is open Source: Being open source is what helps WordPress,or any platform, keep ahead of the rest. This is because anyone can download the code, make any edits that make sense, and then have this incorporated into the whole WordPress platform. The users are constantly helping to develop and improve the platform!

Now that we know what WordPress is it’s time to get to the topic at hand. Why use WordPress to build websites? Or, more importantly, why use WordPress over the competition.

Why Use WordPress Over Another CMS?

#1. WordPress Is Free

Everyone loves free stuff, right? And building a website is no different. WordPress itself is free. You can download everything you need to get started right now at WordPress.org. There are other free CMS solutions, such as Drupal and Joomla, so we’ll need more than the cost to justify using WordPress.

#2. WordPress Is Open-Source

The fact that WordPress is an open-source project means there are heaps of great developers working to maintain the platform and to develop plugins (like White Label) that help you customize your site in basically any way you can imagine.

#3. WordPress Is Easy to Use for Both Developers and Personal Users

WordPress has extensive documentation for developers, whether it be for themes, plugins, or for WordPress itself. There’s a ton of resources to get into. The documentation includes everything about how WordPress runs, so it’s super useful for more advanced users. They even have a specific handbook for plugin developers and a separate one for theme development.

If you are new to WordPress, there’s a lot of documentation for beginners including:

#4. WordPress Is Very Popular

The biggest advantage of WordPress is its massive community of users and developers. In fact, according to W3Techs, WordPress powers over 42% of the internet! The popularity of WordPress means that it’s probably here to stay for a long time, which means plenty of updates and thousands of maintained plugins for you to use.

#5. WordPress Has a Large and Helpful Community

WordPress has a huge community of users and a lot of them are quite engaged with the platform. In addition to its own community-based Support Forum, there are many other online and offline WordPress groups out there, and plenty of people willing to discuss their projects!

If you use Facebook, there are groups like:

There’s also the official WordPress Slack group. Finally, you can also search for WordPress meetups in your area and there’s bound to be some if you’re in a big city.

#6. WordPress Provides Control Over Your Website and Data

Using the free version of WordPress, you can fully customize your site however you want. You can install plugins or write your own code to make your site function the way you want it to. If for some crazy reason the WordPress team shuts down, you’d still have all of your data. Since WordPress is so popular, chances are there’d still be members of the community working to update and maintain the platform anyway.

#7. WordPress Is Flexible and Suited For Any Website

Due to a large number of plugins, you can make any sort of website you want with WordPress From e-commerce to blogs to membership sites. For example, if you’re looking to create an online store, the WooCommerce plugin is the perfect place to start.

Looking to Make WordPress Easier for Your Users?

There you have it. Why use WordPress? Any of our seven great reasons justify using the world’s most popular content management system for your website. Of course, as great as WordPress is, you can make is even easier on you and your users.

Check out White Label, our WordPress plugin for customizing the WordPress login and admin experience. Over 7,000 WordPress websites use your plugin to help make life easier for their clients, employees, and users. Make WordPress match your company or client’s branding. Limit what users can access to keep your site safe and much, much more.