[Spectator@oghenemarho]

If you are looking to elevate your web presence from just having social media accounts and being active on web forums to actually owning your website, then the easiest way to go about it is to use a web content management system (CMS). These are software that are used to create, manage and modify digital content that is specifically designed to be accessed online via internet browsers. There exist dozens of web content management systems that are made solely to help individuals or businesses establish their presence online and new ones are being created regularly. However, only one of them stands heads and shoulders above the rest when it comes to popularity and user acceptance.

WordPress is by far the most popular web content management system in the world, with over 35% of the websites currently available on the internet built using this CMS as their platform. What started off in 2003 as a simple platform for blogging with a very basic toolset for users, has grown to power 14% of the top 100 websites in the world. While there are other content management systems out there that are arguably more modern than WordPress or even easier to use and understand, there are a number of reasons why it is still recommended as the preferred choice for beginners looing to host their own website. Here are just a few of those reasons why:

Easy to Use and Manage

WordPress as a platform prides itself on the simplicity of its interactions. Depending on whether you choose to take advantage of their hosting platform at wordpress.com or instead go with your own choice of hosting, WordPress is designed in such a way that you can be up and running in minutes. WordPress.com offers a simple questionnaire for beginners to get you started with the process of building things from scratch and guides you to the point where you can start adding content.

Even the process of adding posts and content to your site to your website has been simplified with the introduction of Gutenberg, WordPress’s new block based editor. All you need to do is pick the block that specifies what type of content you are trying to add to your website and then type/upload/copy and past/link the content you are adding.

Even the administration panel for your website has been simplified with easy to understand labels and sections that allow you to change the appearance and behavior of your website. All of these management tasks and modifications can be done with zero knowledge of software development or coding. All you need is to be familiar with how computer systems work and posses a basic understanding of how website structured, and WordPress will guide you through the rest.

Flexibility

WordPress was originally designed to be a blogging platform and not a foundation for full fledged websites but over the years since its launch, due to the demand of its users, the platform has been modified and adapted to serve this purpose, both by the team responsible for developing the content management system and by users who have taken advantage of its openness to expand the functionality of WordPress to suit their own needs.

This openness has led to the development of thousands of plugins that enhance the capacities of WordPress to accommodate all sorts of use cases. The official WordPress plugin directory currently lists well over fifty five thousand plugins that augment your base WordPress website with features like interactive forums, learning management systems, eCommerce stores, social media functionality (like Facebook), online security management, search engine optimizations, to list a few.  It is because of enhancements like this that WordPress as a platform has been able to grow and saturate the market.

Even beyond the expanded functionality that plugins provide, WordPress websites also have access to just as many themes that allow site owners to customize the looks and layout of their we properties according to their taste. Both paid and free themes based on current design trends are available to users and they can turn even the most basic of websites to a beautiful work of art, all with a few clicks.

Also, because of how popular a platform it is, many web tools and services have also been built to support WordPress websites. These include mailing services like MailChimp, payment providers like PayPal and Stripe, video hosting sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. All of these services offer a way to implement or embed their content directly into sites built with WordPress.

Massive Support Community

Did WordPress gain massive community support because of its popularity of did it become popular because of its massive community? Whichever came first the fact remains that there exists a ton of resources available for anyone who’s interested in doing anything with WordPress. Whether you want to build a simple site, create your own custom theme, build plugins or develop web applications based on WordPress, you are no more than one web search away detailed tutorials to guide you through the process and several forums where you can interact with people doing similar thing with you.

Due to the dominance of WordPress as a platform for building websites for several years now, there is a strong possibility that any problems or questions a person may have about the content management system will already have been asked and answered somewhere. Apart from the official support forums hosted on wordpress.org, there are several other places that one can go to for help with WordPress, like stack exchange, Reddit, Facebook groups, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn groups. There are even physical meetups like WordCamp, which holds in different locations around the world and allows WordPress users of all levels to come together and interact.

And that’s not to mention the support offered by web hosts for the platform. Almost all the popular web hosting platforms offers some special type of hosting arrangement that’s specifically designed for customers who want to host WordPress websites with them. These special plans usually come with free WordPress installation, premium themes and plugins, automatic updates, daily backups and customer support that are trained to provide support for WordPress related queries from customers. They also optimize their server offerings for these plans to make sure that WordPress websites run with minimal management input and at a fraction of the usual web hosting costs.

WordPress is free

Did I mention that all these benefits of a user friendly content management system with near endless customization options and the capacity for growth limited only by your own skills is free? Yes, you will still need to pay for hosting and a domain name but WordPress itself with all its unique features and potential for expansion is free to download, free to install, free to use and customize as you see fit. You don’t need to pay any monthly service charge to access new versions of it or receive security updates and all the plugins and themes available from the official WordPress repository are free to use too (though some of them have limited feature set that can only be fully unlocked with the paid version).

Access to the WordPress support forums also doesn’t require any form of payment and the level of responsiveness and quality responses that are available to users looking for help is comparable to that of paid customer service providers. Even if you do not have the funds available to pay for a domain name and web hosting, WordPress offers the ability to host your website for free with basic functionality, the only major compromise being that your website will be hosted as a sub domain of wordpress.com (i.e. instead of having yoursite.com, you will end up with yoursite.wordpress.com).

It is Safe and Reliable

WordPress is among the most stable content management systems available for hosting websites today. The fact that it is used by millions of websites today means that its developers need to work extra hard to make sure it remains reliable and fault tolerant. Its popularity also makes it a target for hackers and other malicious actors looking for exploits to take advantage of. So, once any vulnerabilities are discovered, the WordPress community puts in the effort to fix and release and update that will handle these vulnerabilities. Moreover, there are several security plugins that are available in the WordPress repository that can be used to harden the platform against common attacks like DDoS and brute force login attempts.

With these few points, it is clear to see that considering WordPress as your platform of choice when deciding to build a website will definitely be a wise decision to make, regardless of what kind of website you want to build or what level of skill you possess when it comes to these things..

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