Why Use WordPress?
WordPress is a free blogging tool that lets you create beautiful blogs and professional websites.
WordPress is also a powerful web marketing tool that combines an easy-to-use content management system with a fully-featured online publishing platform and lets anyone easily run their own websites without requiring the technical knowledge or web coding skills of a web developer or web designer to operate or manage.
This sounds great, but what exactly can WordPress do for you?
If you run any type of business, then your website is probably an important part of your business and your business strategy. WordPress allows you to easily create, update and manage your own web presence all by yourself using just an internet browser.
In other words … WordPress gives you an online vehicle that puts YOU in the driver’s seat!
WordPress is powerful, flexible, inexpensive, easy to manage, and it gives you complete control over your own web presence …
Now … you probably have some questions about what WordPress has to offer you as a content management system.
Let’s take a closer look at what millions of people see in WordPress. What does WordPress offer you that will make it the right online vehicle for setting up your web presence?
WordPress – Capabilities and Benefits
WordPress allows you to easily create a powerful website with almost unlimited scalability. This enables you to start simple and then expand and grow as your needs change, and to focus on more important things like running your business, adding content that will inform and educate your prospects and customers (and free up your time), increasing your exposure online, and improving your sales and marketing.
Here are just some of the major benefits of using WordPress:
1. It’s Free! WordPress can be downloaded for free at WordPress.org. You will need a web hosting account for the self-hosted (free) version, but hosting a WordPress site is quite inexpensive. For example, a webhosting company like Hostgator will charge less than $10 a month, and you will be able to host any number of websites for that amount.
Webhosting companies you can look at for hosting your WordPress site include:
If you really want to keep your costs way down (we’re talking so low, it’s free!), you can get free hosting at WordPress.com. Keep in mind, however, that this option lacks the flexibility of your own hosting and will limit some of the things you can or want to do with your web presence. There are also costs involved if you want to upgrade later to use certain features or use your own domain name.
We highly recommend, therefore, that you host your WordPress site using your own domain using the FREE, self-hosted version of WordPress, especially if you plan to run a business. You can get a professional WordPress site built and set up very quickly and then use our WordPress step-by-step tutorials to learn how to gain complete control of your own web presence.
To learn more about why WordPress is “free”, read the articles below:
2. Lots Of Great Training Available – When it comes to building websites, there can be a huge and lengthy learning curve for anyone who is not a “techie” or a “geek”.
Many sites provide WordPress tips and tutorials online. One of the challenges with this, however, is that you can spend hours on end scouring the net for information.
In addition to spending lots of time searching online for information, you will find many sites offering WordPress training, tips, or tutorials that have not invested enough time into planning an effective, well organized and logically structured training system for end users, and so their content is often delivered as a loose bunch of information that require more technically-apt users like developers to make sense of the information, or the training is out-of-date, presented out of context, delivered out of sequence, or just simply leaves out too many important steps, creating more confusion than clarity.
Presenting training information this way generally only works for people who know what they’re looking for (e.g. those who are trying to solve a problem with their sites, or who want to get a specific thing done and need to know how to get through the next step). WordPress has many powerful features and applications that most users may not know about, however, and so many users are not aware of what they can achieve online with WordPress because no one goes looking for things that “they don’t know that they don’t know”.
This is why we have developed WPCompendium.org. This site provides new WordPress users with a complete and methodical WordPress training system, including hundreds of detailed WordPress step-by-step tutorials.
You can also get complete access to hundreds of video tutorials about WordPress and building an online business by downloading our WordPress For Beginners guide …
(WordPress For Beginners: The Ultimate WordPress Guide For Non-Techies!)
After your WordPress site is installed and configured (which our tutorials show you how to do), adding new content and new functionality to your site and keeping it maintained, optimized and secure is easy and takes very little time.
You don’t need to learn how to write code or develop technical expertise to add, edit and manage content or manage a WordPress-powered blog or website. WordPress is a true blessing for all non-techies!
3. Super Easy Installation – Two things you need for a website are a domain name and webhosting. Good hosting companies will also offer applications in your control panel that allow you to install WordPress on your domain with just a few clicks. Gone is the complicated, technical coding of the past. Of course, if you are too busy to do it yourself, then get a professional web developer or web designer to help you.
4. Website Themes – A theme is basically a web design template which controls the look and feel of your site. WordPress offers you thousands of free themes to choose from. You can also purchase themes which can be installed on WordPress with just a few mouse clicks. You can also have custom themes designed if you choose. The themes will provide a clean and professional looking site even without custom design work. And the great thing is, if you want to change your theme, you can replace your theme with another one, and it won’t affect your blog posts or pages. No need for expensive graphics and spending thousands of dollars on web design costs – with WordPress themes it’s all done for you.
Note: Paid themes also usually offer some form of support so consider that when choosing a theme.
Our training tutorials will teach you everything you need to know about using WordPress themes, including where to find thousands of high quality free and premium themes.
5. Functionality – WordPress users benefit from the availability of thousands of WordPress plugins that offer you just about every type of functionality imaginable. These plugins are created by WordPress plugin developers and can be easily installed with just a few clicks. Plugins allow you to do almost anything you desire with ease, whether it’s communicating content or selling products. For example, you can track site visits, fight spam, create contact forms, improve your site security, and many more things. Best of all, many great plugins are available for free.
We provide great tutorials on installing and using WordPress plugins that will extend your site’s functionality.
6. Open source – WordPress is built with PHP and its source code is available to anyone who wants to look at it. In addition, WordPress has included both extensive documentation and a range of functions. Because of this, you can easily program themes and plugins with just a minimal knowledge of PHP (if you ever want to develop plugins and themes).
If programming code or designing websites is not your thing, you can still get plugins and themes developed or customized to suit your specific needs, because WordPress makes its source code freely available.
If you need your WordPress site to do something that can’t be achieved with an existing plugin, then speak with a professional web developer.
7. Self updating – WordPress includes a feature that notifies you if upgrades are available for either the WordPress software or your plugins. Many times all you need to do is click for the upgrades to be installed automatically. Again, this means ease of use.
And, in the rare instances where you can’t use the built-in updating features of WordPress, our tutorials will show you step-by-step how to perform all of the required updates manually … you’ll be covered no matter what!
8. Search engine power – WordPress boosts your search engine optimization abilities. In fact, the top search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) love WordPress. There are many SEO-related plugins available that will increase the power of WordPress even more, and we provide tutorials on the best WordPress SEO plugins to use. If you’re a business, using a properly configured and SEO optimized-site can really help make you more competitive in the online space.
9. Technical support – although WordPress itself does not offer dedicated technical support to users (remember, WordPress is “free”), there are plenty of options available for getting all the WordPress help and support you need.
You can speak with a professional WordPress web developer, web designer or consultant, or search online. WordPress.org has a very active forum with users who are willing to help people having problems with the software. Also, there are loads of websites, message boards, and blogs where people are happy to share useful information with you about WordPress. Because millions of people use WordPress and WordPress is not complicated to begin with, the expertise you need to build, run and manage a WordPress site successfully is quite readily available.
The first place we recommend you look for help with WordPress, of course, is right here on WPCompendium.org.
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For more benefits of using WordPress, read the article below:
For useful WordPress statistics, see the tutorial below:
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"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya