Is WordPress Just for Bloggers? Most Certainly Not.

WordPress was launched as a blogging tool back in 2003 and has been evolving ever since. At its early days, WordPress simply couldn’t get rid of its reputation of a software for hobby bloggers.

Today, the world’s most popular content management system (CMS) is used by millions of bloggers, artists, entrepreneurs, and businesses because handling website content has never been easier. So, it’s high time we shook that blogging tool stigma off once and for all.

Statistics

The stats behind WordPress only prove how powerful this CMS really is. These are just some of the mesmerizing numbers worth mentioning:

• Around 33% of all websites are powered by WP.
• WordPress rules the CMS roost with over 76% market share.
• 50,000 WordPress websites are being launched daily.
• It offers more than 55,000 plugins.
• WordPress is fully translated and available in more than 68 languages.

And the list keeps expanding.

Safe and secure

First things first, the safety and security of your website are the most important aspects of your website and online reputation, no matter what business you’re in. The WordPress community puts a lot of efforts into making it a very safe and secure platform. Security updates and bug fixes are released regularly and you need to make sure that you install them either manually or set them to update automatically.

There are a few other things you can do to secure your WordPress website that require no coding like:

• installing a backup solution
• enabling a web application firewall (WAF)
• changing the default “admin” username
• disabling file editing

and many more which you can find in many of the beginner’s security guides out there.

WordPress: It works for all

Bloggers, freelancers, entrepreneurs, startups, small business, corporations, professionals, sportspeople, artists, universities and teachers worldwide are using WordPress to build their online presence.  

The New York Times Company, The Walt Disney Company, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota Motors of Brasil, Facebook Newsroom, Sony Music, UCLA, Harvard Gazette Online, Library of Congress, Forbes Blogs, The Official Star Wars Blog, TechCrunch, Play Station Blog, The Walking Dead – AMC, MTV News, The Rolling Stones, Beyoncé, Bata, Marks & Spencer for Business, Vogue India, and Usain Bolt are just some of the giant brands and companies currently using WordPress as their platform.

WordPress owns its popularity to many of its great features. Let’s look at some of the far-reaching ones and how they work for different business entities.

1. Free, open-source, and easy to manage – perfect for small businesses

One of the top things that lay the foundations of WordPress’ success is the fact that it’s a free and open-source CMS. Because of its idiosyncratic quality, you can download the WordPress software for free, install, use, and modify it to match your needs.

This is what makes it ideal for small businesses. Startup and SMB owners are aware of the fact that they need to begin building their online presence as they grow their business. And since they are probably starting off with a small or limited budget, WordPress works to their advantage by being a free-to-use software.

At this stage of their evolution, small businesses don’t need to invest in web development because WordPress is a solution that can be easily managed. You have great leeway when it comes to themes. There are thousands of free website templates or themes that make it easy for users to construct a website. After installing a theme, customizing your site is intuitive as it all boils down to point-and-click, drag-and-drop.

When it comes to premium WordPress themes, they come with an options panel that allows you to change colors, background, upload logos, and customize the website without any coding experience.

Although it is free, you’ll need to register a domain name and buy web hosting to install it. Think of these fees as overheads necessary for your business operations. There is a huge number of free themes and plugins, but the premium ones that provide improved features and support are usually paid.

2. Plugins – build a full-featured eCommerce

Plugins are essential for scaling up your website and the WordPress world is brimming with them. When it comes to adding functionality to your website, plugins are the things you turn to. There is a grab bag of just about any feature you can imagine.

Along with themes, you can use plugins to easily build a full-featured website – whether you want to add a membership section, contact form, forum, social media plugins, security, or create an eCommerce website using the WooCommerce plugin. This open source shopping cart plugin is free to download and it allows eCommerce owners to sell just about anything and have complete control over the process. So, whether you’re a small or a large business and want to monetize your website, WordPress can make this happen.

Most of the plugins have always been free and you can explore all the available options in the WordPress plugin library.

3. SEO friendly – for businesses just starting off

WordPress is known for being highly SEO friendly. Google and other search engines simply love WordPress because of its great structure that makes it a crawler-friendly environment. It loads relatively fast, has solid coding, complies with UX standards, and provides easy image optimization.

Once again, this makes WordPress ideal for startups and small business owners that are starting to build their name in their industries and niches and are trying to improve their SERP rankings.

The CMS platform checks the basic SEO requirements. For any advanced SEO features, there is a plethora of SEO plugins that can help your website rank even higher, like Broken Link Checker, Rel Nofollow Checkbox, as well as many of the Google Maps plugins.

Additionally, this ubiquitous CMS is highly responsive and can be opened on different devices.

Apart from giving the website owner full control over their content, WordPress also enables website users to engage with the content and easily and instantly share it with their connections. This is achieved by installing social media plugins that are designed to amplify the overall engagement. You can use these plugins to embed your social media posts on your website for instance and use it for leverage in your marketing efforts.

Just some of the social media platforms that are embedded in WordPress are Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Photobucket, SoundCloud, Google Maps, Slideshare, and Dailymotion.

4. Different media types for different content types

The ability to upload different types of media and content works great for a variety of businesses. The list of accepted file types for WordPress can roughly be divided into the images, documents, audio, and video categories. The platform comes with a built-in media uploader which helps the user manage common file types like .jpg, .png, .gif .pdf, .doc, .pptx, .mp3, .m4a, .mp4, .mov, .wmv, and .avi.

Since it supports oEmbed enabled websites, you can embed Instagram photos, Tweets, YouTube videos, and Soundcloud audio by simply pasting the URL in the post editor. Thus, depending on the channel and content that works best for the specific industry, WordPress website owners can share their content almost effortlessly.

Yes, if you have an idea, there’s the right WordPress for it.

Bottom line

As the world’s most popular CMS, WordPress leads the game with its attractive design, increased functionality, versatility, as well as management and maintenance ease.

Whether you want to start a blog, make a business website, start an online store, or even sell online courses, WordPress is the right choice that gives you complete control over your website and online presentation.

Have we mentioned that custom .ME domains work perfectly with WordPress? No? That’s odd. Register your .ME domain and start your online journey today!