There are over 22 million WordPress publishers as of February 2010: 10.6 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com plus 11.4 million active installations of the WordPress.org software.
If you are new to WordPress and looking into how it might or might not be the best route for you, allow us to give you a few of the reasons why we like it so much.
Open Source Software
WordPress is an Open Source software which allows it to be used free of cost. You can use it on any kind of personal or commercial website without have to pay a single dime for it. It is built on PHP/MySQL (which is again Open Source) and licensed under GPL.
Now, you can choose to buy premium features for a WordPress website – and many people do – but you can also do most anything you want to accomplish without buying any software at all! Again, Open Source.
User Friendly
You don’t really have to be experienced to use WordPress on your website. This is big; it’s safe to say that 10 out of every 10 customers we have are ones that want to do updates themselves. The administration section is easy to navigate and its even easy to add articles/content to your website.
These days, many of the hosting companies provide the ability to easily install WordPress onto your site.
One of our more powerful tips: Check your hosting company’s hosting abilities before committing to your website platform! Make sure they “do” WordPress, that they do it with modern technology (got php5?), and that they do it with excellent customer support. If they don’t have ALL of these, then move on and ask us for a recommendation.
Themes Support
You will never run short of themes when using WordPress. If you don’t like the themes that come with the default installation of WordPress, you can hunt on the Internet and you will find thousands of free themes that you can download and use for your website. Themes can be chosen that accommodate the standard needs of a blog, but the more popular – and more functional for small business – are themes that make your WordPress installation run as a full-featured website.
Plugins Extend Functionality
WordPress plugins allow you to do just about anything that you want and can be installed in a jiffy. For example, if you want to socialize your site with twitter or facebook feeds, just search Google and you can easily find the relevant plugin that will easily do the job for you.
Standards Compliant
WordPress is a software platform that follows Web Standards (a.k.a. WC3 Compliant) and keeps your blog or website in tip top shape.
SEO Friendly
Search Engines are a critical factor to consider when building a website. WordPress uses different functions which allow it to be search engine friendly. For example sending pings to other sites, creating content categories, tagging posts, use of h1/h2 tags, etc.
Large Community Support
There are over 22 million WordPress publishers as of February 2010: 10.6 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com plus 11.4 million active installations of the WordPress.org software. There is a large user community backing the development of this software. So, whenever you face any problems, you can go to a large number of WordPress forums and communities and find answers for all your questions. You can also find many of the answers you’ll need right here at SafeHouse Web!
These seven briefs on the benefits of WordPress just scratch the surface of what we have found to be the most flexible, accessible, affordable and usable platform for a successful small business website.
Graph and Statistics Source: WordPress.com
