Using WordPress for Your Website

WordPress is easily the most popular content management system being used around the world. It hosts basic, private websites right through to professional sites such as newspapers or big business. This is mainly because of how functional it is, but also because of how much you can adapt it to your own needs. So while you might have specific word processing, spreadsheet and even maintenance software for your business, there are only a few options for a great website.

Modular Madness with WordPress!

One of the best features of WordPress is its almost modular design that allows one to change and move things around very easily. While you need some knowledge of coding to do complicated things, placing a lot of the features on this CMS is just select or drag and drop. It is also very easy to update and if you have used a word processor before you can easily add content to your site.

Main features of WordPress:

• Can add ‘widgets’ to sidebars and other parts of the site.
• Can easily add or schedule new blog posts.
• Lots of plug-ins, even if you want to run an online store.
• A vast number of themes, many which are highly customisable.

Finding the Right Theme

As there are so many themes, the problem with WordPress is that you have too much choice. You can even find hundreds of different companies and individuals that can offer custom web design for your WordPress site. The themes not only determine the colours and graphics of your website but also the placement of different elements.

SEO Benefits of WordPress

WordPress is well known as a great option for having simple and great search engine optimisation. There are a number of good plug-ins you can use, however, the site usually operates well by itself and is easy for Google to crawl. If you are not planning anything overly huge as a site then WordPress will be able to handle it.

Getting Professional Help

If you need specific coding done on a WordPress site then the really great thing is as so many people use it you will easily find someone and it will not cost you the world. If you need your site to do specific things not included then you will probably need a programmer. Likewise, if you want to have links to your social media accounts, or have plug-ins set up properly – but don’t know much about programming – then you might need a professional.

Alternatives to WordPress

There are a lot of different CMS (content management systems) out there but the biggest ones are:

• WordPress- as mentioned
• Joomla – bit more complicated but a little more powerful.
• Drupal – Not as popular but a nice and clean CMS to use.
• Custom – there are many that can be built and customised by programmers. This is only for those with a budget or a very specific need for a website.

The good thing about the first three is that they are all free and usually included in any hosting packages. So try them out first and see if they are right for you and your website.

Author Bio: Tom Mallet is an Australian freelance writer and journalist. He writes extensively in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the US. He’s published more than 500 articles about various topics, including maintenance software and search engine optimisation.