WordPress – What is it, and Why Do You Need It?

We design and build a lot of websites – everything from ecommerce sites to one-page sales websites. We’ve used a lot of different technologies – Java, Flash, straight-up HTML, Joomla, Drupal – you name it, we’ve tried it. Some sites are better served by certain technologies – but we’ve found that WordPress has become our favorite, and for good reason.

First – what is WordPress? According to their own site,”WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.” Yep – that’s right. But – what does that really mean? It means that WordPress (the standalone version, not a WordPress.com site – that’s a slightly different beast) a free piece of software that we (or you) install on a server and build a robust, interactive, scalable and attractive website on. It’s an architecture. It’s open source, meaning that anyone can develop stuff for it – plugins, themes, and all sorts of add-ons.

WordPress can be a blog – but it can also be a photographer’s portfolio. It can be a publishing platform, it can be a brochure, it can be a business website, it can be an ecommerce store – it can be damned near ANYTHING. Yep – it’s that powerful, but it’s also exceptionally simple to use. If you can use Word, you can use WordPress (no, they’re not related, thank heavens.)

A stand-alone installation of WordPress allows you (or us) to build a beautiful, functional web site that looks and works just the way you want it to – and the user friendly interface makes it easy to update and change your site. You can change the look, change and add pages – just about anything you want to do, WordPress makes it easy.

Another spectacular feature of WordPress lies in it’s search engine capabilities. It’s standards-compliant, and it keeps your content and keywords and phrases really rockin’ on Google. After all – if you have a great site that nobody can find, what good does it do? Not a lot, buddy – not a lot.

Secondly – why do you need it? Because you need a modern website with all the functionality and changeability that people have come to expect. WordPress makes your web site dynamic – meaning that your content can change easily and regularly. That’ll bring folks back to view your site and offerings, and it makes it attractive to Google/Bing/Yahoo, etc. Also, with easy updates, changes and additions, you can keep your site fresh – without having to pay a programmer/designer to make the changes. Sweet! Everyone wins!

WordPress is a template-based content management system, meaning that it can look like darned near anything you’d like. Plus, since it’s template-based, you can redesign the site without having to rebuild it. We have great experience in designing for WordPress, redesigning sites for WordPress and changing older websites over into WordPress.

You save money, look like a million bucks – and you have a modern, attractive and easy-to-use system. Hooray!

So – if you’re looking for a new website or a fresh approach to a current site, WordPress is the way to go. If you’re looking for someone to design and build it for you, give us a call – we might have an idea of who to turn to…