The WordPress Advantage

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM:
I have recently started designing WordPress blogs.  I find myself recommending them to clients as “the” preferred website content management system.   Even if you have no intention of “blogging”, WordPress is a powerful database-driven publishing platform and best of all; it is open source.  WordPress is very user-friendly and flexible. It has wide community support with hundreds of third-party plug-ins freely available for download.  What’s not to love?

PLUG-INS and THEMES:
When I first discovered plug-ins I was astounded. WordPress plug-ins can be added with just a couple of mouse clicks -> install -> activate.  As a website developer, I have spent many, many hours manually adding code contributions on other platforms – clearly WordPress has the advantage here.  Similarly, WordPress can easily be upgraded to kept up-to-date on the latest system release and security patches – a HUGE advantage.  There are also thousands of amazing professional WordPress themes available to download for free. With WordPress Theme customization you can overlay your own personal brand.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION:
WordPress has been designed with search engine optimization in mind.  The WordPress codex says, “WordPress, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines.  Its features and functions guide a search engine through the posts, pages, and categories to help the search engine crawl your site and gather the information it needs to include your site within its database.”  There are also a number of great plug-ins that further enhance the SEO capabilities of WordPress.

NEWSLETTER CONTENT:
I recently explained the WordPress advantage to one of my clients who was spending a lot of time compiling a monthly e-newsletter. All of this carefully-written, keyword-rich content was only being sent to email Inboxes.  What a waste!   I proposed setting up a blog for article content; the newsletters become much shorter offering just the highlights with links to the blog posts. This will drive traffic to the website, initially when the newsletter campaign is launched but also, in the weeks and months ahead as the keywords are picked up by search engines.

RSS FEEDS:
If your website has been developed from the start using WordPress, it comes feed-enabled.  Other website systems generally do not create RSS feeds automatically.   Email newsletters are still more familiar to most people than RSS Feeds but as Internet users become more comfortable with feeds, they may begin to replace expensive, time-consuming email marketing campaigns.  Subscribers receive your content in the feed reader of their choice while keeping their email address private.  Remember, email newsletters may end up in your subscriber’s junk folder.   If your subscribers are busy when the email arrives they will skim your newsletter at best or they may just delete it from an overly-full Inbox. With an RSS feed you don’t have to write a newsletter announcing the new articles.  Subscribers receive your feed in their feed reader and will read it when they have the time not when you chose to send it.  Feeds can also be received by email if the subscriber prefers.  RSS is the easier way.

There are clearly many advantages to using WordPress to develop your website.

Please leave me a comment if you liked this post or can contribute other advantages to using a blog.