WordPress Web Development: 5 Reasons to Choose this CMS

We have previously talked about the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) - one of our favorites in web development. In this article, we would like to introduce you to another fantastic content management system – WordPress.

WordPress was created in the early 2000′s as a blogging tool, but has since grown into a full content management system.   If you are not familiar with what a content management system is, you can find that information in our Drupal post. WordPress is an open source project, meaning that developers from all over the World contribute to it. When it comes to building smaller scale websites, we at Tidal are big fans of this easy-to-use, yet powerful CMS and here are the reasons why:

1) User-friendliness

WordPress has a very intuitive interface, accessible through the (www.yourdomain.com)/wp-admin URL . We tend to recommend WordPress to clients who are looking to build a relatively simple website, for this very reason. The CMS makes maintaining the site about as easy as updating a social media profile. The process of installing WordPress is also user-oriented and takes around five minutes.

2) Easy work with content

WordPress content administrators and contributors are able to maintain their sites and add content on their own, even if they don’t have a technical background. Creating content can be done within a few clicks and WordPress provides you with a MS Word-like text editor – the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), which makes formatting very straight forward. All content can be immediately search engine optimized, during the process of its creation – each piece of content will have SEO options such as meta keywords, meta description and tags.  The content publishing process in WordPress provides the user with freedom to save content as drafts prior to publishing.

3) Quick theming with lots of choices

With over a thousand themes to choose from and the ability to customize the themes, you can create an impressive look for your site in little time. If you have some knowledge of HTML and CSS, you can also use theme templates that provide you with even more flexibility. Another convenient feature is the ability to keep your content, even if you have changed the look and feel of the website – saving you tons of time.

4) Simple and effective media management

All media in WordPress, including images and videos, is conveniently organized in a media library. You can access your library from the admin interface. Images, stored in the library, can be edited at any time, with the ability to conveniently add alt tags and captions for search engine optimization. Each piece of stored media has a URL associated with it, so it can be linked to easily.

5) Platform expansion with plug-ins

Similar to Drupal’s concept of modules, WordPress can be expanded with plug-ins. There is a multitude of WordPress plug-ins available for free online. These provide additional functionality, allowing you to add features like web forms, various social media integration, calendars and many others.

We hope you enjoyed this article.

If you are interested in creating a WordPress based website, or have questions about it, contact us!

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