Building out a website seems like a daunting task, but it can be easier than you realize by using a functional and efficient content management system (CMS). There are many CMS platforms available out there, and each one has its own positive and negative attributes. However, there is one that stands out among the rest. That is WordPress.
WordPress powers 62.5% of all websites using a CMS,. In addition, 37% of all websites used WordPress in 2021, which is 10% more than in 2016. With statistics like that, it is no wonder why we at Enilon love WordPress.
Choosing the right CMS when building out your business’ front door online will always be a crucial step. With WordPress you can feel safe knowing that you are working with a high-performance CMS platform. In this blog you will learn more about WordPress and why it is the leading CMS for all websites today.
Why Choose WordPress CMS?
Now that you have been introduced to WordPress, here are the reasons why WordPress CMS is so great.
Cost Effectiveness
If WordPress is so great, it must cost a lot, right? Not necessarily—technically it is free. WordPress is an open-source community project where tens of thousands of people have made contributions to make it into the great software that it is today. No single individual or company owns WordPress. It is licensed in a way that allows everyone to use it for free.
The cost of WordPress is really in the following:
- Hosting
- Paid plugins
- Custom development
- Keeping everything updated and secure
In our experience, development on other platforms cost at least 2 to 3 times more than developing on WordPress.
Flexibility
WordPress is completely flexible and customizable. In fact, WordPress is probably the most flexible CMS on the Internet today. Its popularity cannot get to be so huge without having some sort of flexibility built in. It is this flexibility that allows programmers, coders, and non-coders alike to create such great websites. It can suit your needs no matter what they are.
However, it is important to remembering the following:
- Not all plugins are created equally
- Research before you install any plugins
- You get what you pay for
WordPress has over 54,000 plugins available with a total of 1.5 billion downloads. With so many plugins, it is clear that it is a very flexible platform.
Stability
More good news is that WordPress is a very stable platform, which means you will rarely experience downtime. Stability issues will most likely be with the host, how the site is maintained, and/or the plugins that are in use. Many of the best practices for security apply to site stability.
Some key factors in stability to be aware of:
- A good webhost is a key factor to stability
- Keep the number of active plugins to a minimum
- Keep your software up to date
- Only use plugins with a good reputation
- Test everything before going live
Bottom line is if you have a secure host and maintain your website and plugins correctly, you should have few interruptions.
Security
Another thing to consider when choosing a CMS platform is security. There are 2,800 attacks per second targeting websites and spending to protect against these online threats is projected to be $1.75 trillion by 2025. Thankfully with WordPress, you can build a secure site as long as you maintain it.
Some facts about security:
- Security for any website is up to the due diligence of the owner of the site
- Plugins and themes are the number one bad actors in WordPress security issues
- The WordPress core has been responsible for less than 1% of security issues in 2021
Essentially, WordPress is secure; however, it is up to you and your team to maintain the website. Without maintenance, you leave yourself vulnerable to attacks.
Performance
You know now that WordPress is cost effective, flexible, stable, and secure, but you may be wondering how it actually performs.
Global Edge Security
Global Edge Security (GES) is a high-performance advanced security add-on for WordPress engine. Some of the features of GES include:
Managed Web Application Firewall – Blocks the most common website attacks.
Advanced DDoS Migration – Attacks are stopped by Cloudflare before they reach the WP Engine server.
Cloudflare CDN – Cloudflare’s Edge network serves pages to users around the world faster.
Cloudflare Polish – Speeds up websites by reducing image size in a few different ways: removing metadata, applying lossless file compression, and adding the WebP file format.
Automatic SSL Installation – GES automatically installs the SSL certificates added in the WP Engine User Portal on the Cloudflare Edge servers. Both the connection between the user’s browser and Cloudflare will be encrypted, as well as the connection between Cloudflare and WP Engine.
Atlas Headless
Atlas Headless CMS has further enhanced WordPress’s capabilities. Atlas Headless WordPress, or Atlas Headless WP, is an innovative solution that separates the frontend from the backend, providing developers with unparalleled freedom and customization options. With Atlas Headless, businesses can seamlessly integrate WordPress CMS with modern technologies and frameworks, offering dynamic and interactive user experiences.
SEO Performance
WordPress is perfect for digital marketers because of the rich SEO features. For example, WordPress makes metadata easy to manage. Plugins like Yoast SEO allow the administrator to easily add metadata such as descriptions or schemas.
Optimizing images for SEO is very simple on WordPress as well. Plugins such as Smush Pro allow you to set up automatic parameters for all image uploads, ensuring that every image added to the site is optimized to certain dimensions and certain file sizes.
We take it one step further at Enilon when we employ GES which takes advantage of Cloudflare’s enterprise tool, Polish, serving up all images on a site in the optimized WebP format. WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size than the other image formats.
Additionally, WordPress helps you integrate your campaign with social media.
Responsiveness
WordPress focuses on user experience and responsiveness. WordPress is accessible, so it allows developers and designers to have little difficulty create user experience focused websites.
WordPress’ site doesn’t frustrate users with slow load times. Because of the plugin infrastructure, there are multiple options to automatically improve site speed.
WordPress is also optimized for mobile users. Because of the accessible nature of WordPress, developers and designers have very little difficulty creating functional mobile experience.
Future Expansion
The percentage of WordPress-powered sites continues to grow and so does its CMS market share. Companies and brands across the world keep investing in WordPress. It is a huge sign that this solution for web content management is not going anywhere anytime soon. Quite the opposite actually. It is going to grow even larger.
Your WordPress Journey Starts with Us
WordPress is not going anywhere but forward. Enilon offers digital marketing solutions focused on helping you achieve market growth. Your website is a critical piece to your business growth. Wherever you are in the website development process, we at Enilon are here to help. We invite you to contact us today to discuss your situation and develop an action plan forward.
