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Is WordPress Right for Your Site?

With a 59.4% market share and growing, it is undeniable that WordPress CMS is the world’s most-used content management system for creating websites today. In fact, W3Techs (a company that tracks technology usage) reported in March of 2016 that 26.4% of all the websites in the world are now powered by WordPress, with 500 new sites being created on WordPress every single day. That’s a LOT of websites!

WordPress Usage & Popularity

However, a quick Google search for just about any WordPress-related search term will undoubtedly turn up a mixed bag of both vocal fans and fierce detractors. In today’s social-proof focused, review-driven tech marketplace, this might give you pause when deciding whether to choose WordPress for your next website build.

When clients come to us for a content management web solution and ask, “Is WordPress right for my site?” the answer is simple:

“It can be.”

Allow us to explain.

WordPress Features that Work

Like a lump of unmolded clay, WordPress’s true power lies in its potential. It has many advantageous features that can be useful to any business. It offers virtually endless configurations and customization features to personalize your website, create a bold and memorable user experience, and support your business requirements. Here are some key features that make WordPress worthy of its CMS market leader status:

Versatility

WordPress works for a wide variety of site types, from a personal blog to a business website or even a professional portfolio.

Flexibility

WordPress allows users to easily apply themes to customize the look and layout of their site. Themes can also be created, altered and customized freely with the help of a knowledgeable web developer.

Mobile Friendliness

With the right theme and proper design and coding, WordPress sites can be extremely mobile friendly .

Content Handling

You can easily add and update content to your WordPress website with or without a professional web developer. It’s simple to add eye-catching media items (photos, videos, etc.) to pages and posts as well.

Search Engine Optimization

WordPress websites often have excellent SEO capabilities. So much so that Google has been suspected for years of favoring WordPress sites (the verdict:  it doesn’t). WordPress’s SEO strength comes from site owners’ good content practices and the wide variety of plugins that build in live SEO checks for each piece of content created.

Customization

Speaking of plugins, there are currently more than 43,000 plugins available to help extend and expand the functionality of WordPress. When existing plugins don’t fit the bill, ambitious developers can create their own custom plugins and then make them available for use by the rest of the WordPress community for further advancement of the solution.

What About Security?

There is also a common fear of hacking when dealing with a WordPress site. While it is true that many hackers target WordPress sites (because of their ubiquity), there are measures that you can take to keep your site secure. For example, Blayzer has created a proprietary hosting solution that is designed specifically to defend against hacks and attacks on WordPress sites. You can read more about that here. We can’t give away all of our secrets online, but we would be happy to answer questions and provide further technical information on a phone call or face to face meeting.

When WordPress isn’t right

Even with so much flexibility, there are some cases where WordPress just isn’t a fit for the project. Here is a short list of some of the reasons we recommend solutions other than WordPress to our clients:

Serious Ecommerce

You can achieve some basic ecommerce functionality on a WordPress site via plugins like WooCommerce, but serious sellers need something with a little more power under the hood. Depending on the size of your database and just how much complexity, integration, and customization are needed, we will usually recommend OpenCart or Magento for ecommerce sites.

Custom Applications

When trying to get a website to do something really cool or complicated, the first place developers usually look is the plugin library. Why reinvent the wheel, right? And in the case of WordPress, they’re almost guaranteed to find a handful of plugins that seem like they will combine to get you where you need to be. But website plugins are kind of like pharmaceutical medications. Individually they can work miracles, but certain combinations can be a recipe for disaster. This is because most plugins have “side effects” that impact your code beyond simply adding or changing a single function on the site. The more plugins you add on to your site, the greater the risk of site-breaking errors. Instead of creating a Frankenstein’s Monster of plugins to get a site to do something, we often recommend creating a custom application. This can mean an entire custom website (such as you see with our client EatKidFriendly.com) or as a customization to an existing platform or plugin.

Client’s Request

WordPress CMS has much to offer, but many people are overwhelmed by the amount of work it might take to create and maintain such flexible software. At Blayzer, we pride ourselves on being WordPress experts and professionals. We would be happy to give you a FREE consultation to help you see what WordPress and Blayzer can do for you.

Conclusion

There is also a common fear of hacking when dealing with a WordPress site. While it is true that many hackers target WordPress sites (because of their ubiquity), there are measures that you can take to keep your site secure. For example, Blayzer has created a proprietary hosting solution that is designed specifically to defend against hacks and attacks on WordPress sites. You can read more about that here. We can’t give away all of our secrets online, but we would be happy to answer questions and provide further technical information on a phone call or face to face meeting.

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