Why WordPress is still the most popular CMS choice for websites. WordPress has been around for quite some time now – 16 years to be precise. In the time since its initial release back in 2003, it’s become the most popular CMS (content management system) for everyone looking to build a website. In fact, almost 56% of the entire internet runs on WordPress. And the platform claims almost half of the entire CMS market. So you can really argue its dominance. There are a number of advantages to using WordPress that have allowed it to stay ahead of other CMS out there. Now we’re exploring the five critical factors that have helped the platform maintain its reign on the web. 1. It’s open source and free. This is probably the biggest reason why WordPress is the most popular CMS. First off, it’s free to download and free to use, so you’re saving money from the get go. There’s more to it than that though. It’s also open source which means it’s constantly up-to-date and and upgraded. There have been 53 major versions since its inception , with new updates released every five months on average. Despite being around for over a 15 years, WordPress is still the fastest growing CMS with over 700 new websites being developed every day on the platform. Every second, 25 users hit the „Publish“ button on a new blog post they’ve uploaded onto WordPress. 2. It’s very easy to use. WordPress CMS is very user friendly. If you spend a couple of hours exploring the backend of a website built on WordPress, you’ll see just how easy it is to use. One huge advantage is that it needs little to no coding skills, unlike different content management systems like Drupal. If you have some basic HTML knowledge, you can perform almost any task with WordPress. This is what really sets it apart and makes it the most popular CMS. Because anyone can just install it and start using it straight away. According to recent data, 50% of users in the US work with WordPress . With the runners-up Drupal and Joomla barley making up half that figure combined. 3. It’s SEO-friendly. 4. It’s highly customizable. Another reason why WordPress has become the most popular CMS over the years. You can use it to build any type of website imaginable. WordPress powers 22% of the top 100 websites in the world. It’s extremely versatile and highly customizable. Therefore, you can use it to build anything from simple blog-style websites and portfolios to more complex e-commerce sites and large-scale government websites. 5. It has a plugin for almost everything. There are more than 120,000 different open source plugins you can install to add value to a WordPress website. You can find everything from anti-spam filters, SEO tools, popup modules and interactive image plugins online. Many of these plugins are also free and constantly updated by a community of dedicated professionals. A complete toolkit for Advanced WordPress Users. As time flew by, WordPress has grown and evolved into a sprawling and complex platform. Thus, advanced users need plenty of moving parts to use and manage their projects successfully. Thanks to software like the WordPress Toolkit by Plesk , you can quickly upgrade your WordPress experience. Hence, simplifying the work that goes into setting up, securing and maintaining your websites. This is thanks to the centralized dashboard where you can monitor several WordPress instances at the same time. It also lets you implement changes across multiple instances at the same time, saving you the hassle of having to do this manually. This also applies to updates and by enabling maintenance mode you can update everything simultaneously. On the SEO front, you can enable site indexing for search engines too. And even disable it for those instances where you don’t want Google to crawl your site.

Why WordPress?

Once classified as a blogging platform, WordPress has evolved through the years into a versatile content management system (CMS). It allows the creation of fully functional websites and mobile applications. According to a recent survey, WordPress powers 56% of all websites on the internet. That’s 147 million sites. Some examples include: Time Magazine, Google, Facebook, Sony, Disney, LinkedIn, The New York times, CNN, and eBay.

Beginner-Friendly CMS

Maintaining a site has never been easier. With its intuitive CMS, clients are able to update their sites with ease. The Admin dashboard is simple to understand and navigate whether the need is adding new pages, blog posts, or updating existing content.

High Security Standard

Regardless of the industry, it’s important to insure a site’s security. WordPress is designed with that security in mind, so it helps protect information and content „straight out of the box.“ Moreover, security updates are released recurrently to address rising issues and concerns. WordPress is widely regarded as one of the most secure platforms for web sites design and software development development. There are constant security updates that are pushed to your site automatically.

WordPress is Search Engine Friendly

According to Google, WordPress is 99% SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly. This is because WordPress is written using standard compliance, high quality code and produces semantic mark up, making site very attractive to search engines. For example, both website speed and mobile responsiveness are key components to a proper SEO, and WordPress covers both of those areas. In addition, WordPress allows us to use the Yoast SEO plugin for increased optimization. With search engines continuing to be the most important source of traffic for most websites, SEO stays an important discipline and topic. For that reason, if you want to rank high in the search results, your best bet is to base your site on a platform that can help you do so.

Some crucial CMS Validity Requirements:

Fast Loading Speed: The loading speed of a website is also influenced by your CMS. That’s why WordPress is already optimized for good speed. Mobile Optimization is Standard Proper HTML markup: Though written mostly in PHP, WordPress creates HTML pages that are easily understandable by search engines. XML Sitemap: Easily generate and submit sitemap to search engines. It helps them recognize the structure of your site content. Navigation: In WordPress navigation becomes very robust with menus, drop down menu functionality, tags, categories, and tons of widgets provided in WordPress. Image Optimization: Adding Title & Alt Tags in images takes no time. So you don’t feel any burden to optimize your images for good ranking of your post/page. Social Media Integration: Search engines give importance to sites getting good traffic from social networking sites. That’s why WordPress supports social media integration. User Experience: WordPress is fully optimized to work well on multiple devices, browsers, and systems.

Support

Due to the large number of active users and developer, WordPress has a well-maintained support forum containing millions of queries and solutions to troubleshoot problems. Apart from is official forum, there are many other WordPress dedicated forums run by professional developers where one can ask questions and get answers.

Easily Integrated With Any Service/Application

There are over 120000 plugins available at WordPress repository. This means there are lots of functions that can be easily integrated with WordPress such as contact forms and email marketing. Plugins allow for faster development of websites, making the site more cost effective. Such integration frees one from a static website or proprietary CMS that is costly to tweak after initial development.

WordPress has done a lot over the years to be search engine friendly. By now, it is a mature platform with extensive SEO capabilities. WordPress plays nice with Google and other search engines, has loads of themes and plugins for advanced SEO optimization, is fast and mobile friendly, community supported, secure and easy to learn.

In short, WordPress is the perfect CMS for SEO and building websites that rank well. If your goal is to hit Google’s front page, the WordPress platform is the way to go.