Throughout the years, we have posted several blog posts and social media updates that detail why we love WordPress. In those posts and updates, we’ve explained many of the ways that websites can be made using WordPress and how they make the process easy. Yet with all of the other solutions out there, how can you decide if WordPress is right for you? Since this is your website, it is important to know how WordPress can benefit and support you after your website is up and running.

WordPress Makes Blog and Website Management Easier

The number-one benefit that WordPress provides to its users is its ease of use. Anyone can build a sleek, powerful, and versatile website, but if the Content Management System (CMS) or the platform powering the website is difficult to use, the website can easily fall into disrepair. Luckily, WordPress makes it simple to update plugins, themes, and even WordPress itself. Also, if you use a backup plugin such as UpdraftPlus, WordPress can even automate backups to run in the background so you can focus on what you do best.

WordPress plugins are built-in tools that are developed by third-party companies and individuals that add different functionalities to your website. Due to WordPress’ open-source nature, anyone can write and publish a plugin, but there are risks involved when downloading random plugins as well. Those risks are covered later on in this article.

A Brief History of the Evolution of Web Development

When the internet first became popular among the general public, website developers had very limited options when it came to creating a website. Back then, websites were mainly built by hand using HTML, and even the HTML language itself had limited functionalities as it was still in its infancy. It was a tedious, time-consuming, and costly process.

Within a few years, other solutions and technologies emerged, including Microsoft’s ActiveX and the beginning of the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editors. While the coding part became easier, updating the content on the website itself remained cumbersome.

Fast-forward to today and not only has the internet itself evolved, but so have the computer languages and platforms that support it. With various multiple platforms available, including WordPress, Kajabi, Squarespace, and Shopify, it seems as if anyone can now create and maintain their own website. Not only that, but with the prominence of smartphone applications and social media, businesses are now able to be found easier than ever before.

However, even after all of these years, we still prefer WordPress over any other platform. This is due to WordPress’ constant updates and changes, as well as the powerful, reputable plugins that support WordPress.

But don’t just take our word for it. As of 2023, WordPress powers over 34% of all websites on the internet, 14.7% of which are the world’s top websites.

The Power of Blogs and Social Media

While many people still write personal blogs, blogging has changed in the last few years. Nowadays, social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter are dominating the scene. People are more interested in reading short blurbs, looking at images, and watching short videos than reading blogs. Yet even so, blogging is still one of the most powerful and effective ways to get articles – like this one – out in the world. To help blogs be found, an announcement about the blog can go out on social media platforms that link to the article.

Of course, we still strongly believe that WordPress makes blogging easy. While we at Blue Zenith don’t personally use Gutenberg and prefer to use the Classic Editor to create blog posts, Gutenberg is quite popular. According to Kinsta, there are over 19 million websites that actively use Gutenberg and there have been at least 24 million blog posts written using Gutenberg.

For those that aren’t aware, Gutenberg is a block editor, which means users can drag and drop different premade blocks such as a text block, image block, video block, etc. onto the page and enter their content into that block. This is very different from the traditional WordPress editor, which is simply a text editor with basic styling (bolding, italics, headlines, font choices, etc.)

Again, while we don’t use Gutenberg, the theme that we use the most is called Divi, published by Elegant Themes. Divi is very powerful and includes many built in modules and widgets that can create beautiful designs. We also support Beaver Builder, WPBakery, Elementor, and others.

WordPress Makes Website Management Affordable

In our modern world where high prices are everywhere, we want to make sure we are getting the best price for our online tools. With WordPress, there is very little you need to pay for aside from the basics – domain name registration and the hosting environment. WordPress (WordPress.org) itself is free to use. Of course, there are a lot of ways expenses can add up, including the theme, plugins, and images. Yet running a basic WordPress site truly is quite inexpensive.

We still prefer and recommend GoDaddy when it comes to registering a domain. Getting a domain through GoDaddy is cheap and is often hassle-free. For the hosting environment, we prefer SiteGround. We host many of our clients within our SiteGround account and help them with any back-end technical issues. SiteGround is both affordable and offers excellent hosting environments that get periodically updated.

WordPress Makes Everything Easy

Along with the low costs, WordPress offers many free and premium themes. While each one is different, they all make it easy to change fonts, colors, images, content, etc. There are a lot to choose from which can get overwhelming, but it is important to take the time to pick a theme that works for you in both functionality and design.

Furthermore, with a massive library of free and premium plugins, you can add nearly any functionality to your site that you want. There are eCommerce solutions, online forms, backup plugins, security plugins, event plugins, and more.

Keeping WordPress Secure

Speaking of security, you may hear from time to time that WordPress and its plugins and themes get hacked into. This is inevitable. Yet there are a number of steps you can take to keep your website secure and as protected from hacks as possible. The first step is choosing the right hosting environment. This is why we prefer SiteGround – their servers are very well protected against attacks. Then, make sure the theme and plugins you choose are reputable. There are tens of thousands of WordPress plugins out there, so make sure you choose ones that are by respected developers, updated often, have lots of good reviews, and frequently answer their online support forms.

The number one plugin we recommend for security (aside from UpdraftPlus which was mentioned earlier) is Wordfence. Wordfence offers both a free tier and a premium tier, but their free tier is extremely powerful in itself. With the free tier, you can block IP addresses, limit the number of login attempts, and even scan your website for malware. We strongly recommend that every WordPress website install at least the free version of Wordfence.

How We Can Help

At Blue Zenith Design + Strategy, we have been building WordPress websites for nearly 15 years. We know the ins and outs of what themes and plugins to use (and which ones to stay away from). We can help you with any aspect of your WordPress website, from the development and the design to long-term maintenance and security.

Learn More about WordPress