Website development is now not a complex task. There are many resources in the market, which allow learners and enthusiasts to create websites without much technological knowledge. Tech-savvy users can easily make a simple website but a more enticing design is the most important thing for a layman. Here, the resources fall short and WordPress works for making everything super easy. There are several Content Management Systems (CMSs) that have now entered the market but none of them is as popular as WordPress.
WordPress is a free CMS that was developed by WordPress foundation written in PHP alongside a MySQL database. So, what is it that makes WordPress unique within the fierce competition in the market of CMS? This platform can adapt to new trends and it also offers great features, which other CMSs are unable to do.
Further, one of the many features that are widely talked about in WordPress is the template system that it provides for a website or blog which is referred to as “themes” within WordPress. There are thousands of themes a user can choose from to either build their professional or casual website. Even though most of the basic features within this software are free (Free plan by CMS), one can also opt for reasonably priced plans that WordPress has to offer to expand and grow their business.
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Different Priced Plans Offered by WordPress
Below we have mentioned some of the different priced plans by CMS, have a look to know about them in detail:
1. Personal Plan
This Plan Starts At Less Than $4/Monthly Which Comes With A Custom Domain And Unlimited Access To Email Support From The WordPress Team.
2. Premium Plan
This plan starts at less than $8 per month which is best suggested for freelancers. With this plan, one gets access to advanced design tools, custom CSS, and Google Analytics Support provided by the WordPress team.
3. Business Plan
This plan starts at less than $25/monthly which is best recommended for small businesses. In this, the user would be provided with custom plugins and themes, 200 GB storage and a 24/7 live support chat would be made available to them for connecting to their customers.
4. eCommerce Plan
This plan starts at less than $45 per month which is deemed best for online stores. Additionally, alongside the benefits available in the business plan, the user will also be able to accept payment in 60+ countries, they can integrate with top shipping carriers, and they will be allowed to use premium design options for customized online stores.
All the plans mentioned above are automatically renewed annually and can be canceled or refunded during the specific period. Moreover, a user can unsubscribe whenever they wish to or if they do not want to renew their plan. One of the biggest advantages of using WordPress is that one can import their content from another service (such as Blogger, Medium, Tumblr, or a self-hosted WordPress site) to WordPress easily.
The History of WordPress
In 2001, Michel Valdrighi (a French programmer) launched b2/cafelog as a platform for blogging by using MySQL (which is an open-source database management system) and PHP development services (Hypertext Preprocessor which is an open-source common scripting language which is especially used for website development). But within two years, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little worked on its development of b2/cafelog to finish co-founding what is now known as “WordPress”.
In May 2003, the WordPress platform’s version 0.7 was available. After that, several versions and updates were released with better widgets, themes, plugins, and SEO-optimization tools. By the year 2016, WordPress Version 4.5 (Coleman) came out with several new additional features that included inline links, responsive previews, and other customizable functions. Since then, there have been several versions that have been released for the betterment of website development of WordPress.
As of 2021, WordPress’s latest version WordPress_5.8_Tatum (which is named in honor of the legendary Art Tatum who was a jazz pianist) was released on the date 20 July 2021. This new version includes features such as display posts with fresh blocks and patterns, an overview of the page structure, styling and colorizing images, etc. to allow more customization experience to its users and push boundaries while developing their web pages more boldly than before.
Read Also: A Complete Guide Of Website Development Cost
A Glance At The Statics WordPress Users
Every website has used WordPress which results in 59.4% CMS market share. This means that it is almost inevitable for any web developer or marketer to not have heard or have used WordPress themselves. And, one of the most interesting features of WordPress happens to be how it has extended its horizon beyond blogging? It is also great for social networking and online business card themes. Moreover, WordPress blogs are written in 120+ languages which makes it a universal application that is also healthy for commercial purposes.
Further, statistics displayed that around 400 million people tend to view 24 billion pages that are hosted over WordPress every month while 47 million comments are made under every article written on WordPress. These statistics indeed help in proving how worthwhile and productive WordPress is as a CMS platform.
Advantages Of Using WordPress CMS
With its slow trajectory, WordPress has been able to extend its features leveraging website development services to create truly impressive business and professional websites. So, it comes as no surprise that over 32% of websites today have been powered by this platform. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that countless IT firms have been using WordPress. Here are few prominent advantages which are majorly leveraged by every level of WordPress development company:
1. User-friendly
Probably, one of the biggest advantages that has made WordPress CMS famous is the user-friendly experience it offers even to beginners. Since a WordPress site just requires a domain name and a web hosting account, it is not only easier to start using WordPress within minutes, but it is also easier for anyone to become an expert just by playing around with the software.
There is an inbuilt dashboard through which users can change settings, work with new themes, add pages, etc., and the possibilities are endless. Moreover, merchandise WordPress is an open-source platform, and it comes free to everyone, which makes it a cost-effective option for all its users.
2. Plugins for All
Plugins are like an extra side dish with the main course. The user can add these tools to their web pages to either improve or include additional features for an appealing user experience. A user can easily add their social media handles, such as Twitter, Facebook Fan box, Instagram page, etc. It also allows the customer to establish an easy contact and feedback route with business owners through several different options. Some other plugins also include a video gallery, calendar, etc. where most of these plugins are either free of cost or low priced.
Multi-users
One of the features that make WordPress stand out from other CMS is the possibility of being able to create a multiple-user website where all the users have either the same or different levels of access to the web page. For example- in a large organization, multi-users feature helps to monitor information being available to its employees depending on the employee’s role within the company. It means that an employee at an executive level will have larger control over the web page than an intern at the company whose established role would be to only write articles on the webpage. Hence, management capacity can be strictly controlled.In-built Tutorials and Courses
WordPress puts a great deal of emphasis on providing help to its users along with the great experience and features they bring to the table. Since it can be daunting for beginners to make an entire webpage on their own, WordPress provides several quick tutorials and intensive courses for its users both in-person or online, so it is easier to make a webpage for one from scratch. Moreover, because WordPress is the only CMS that makes WordPress development services so friendly to use, this platform has succeeded in gathering a loyal audience base for itself as well.Community Support
Moreover, WordPress has specialized forums where a user can easily reach the WordPress team if they encounter a problem. Since the community responds immediately, the responsiveness provides a seamless user experience.Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
With the new development of technology that was noticed in 2020, more and more website development companies are shifting to APIs to allow third-party services to integrate with the user websites. APIs are nothing less than an intermediator where it allows two websites or applications to talk/work with each other. WordPress allows thousands of APIs which not only give the user the freedom to integrate their website with outside resources but also allows one to make their webpage more appealing and easily accessible by others.
3. WooCommerce for E-commerce
WordPress also provides a free eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce that allows e-commerce stores to make their website more attractive and full of several features. It means that WordPress can provide a seamless experience with WooCommerce and also helps small business owners to have complete control over their goods even online with the help of eCommerce development solutions. With this, the small business owners don’t need to spend much money to hire WordPress developers and still manage to sell their merchandise online.
4. Minimal Coding
As the platform has minimal coding, the search engines always favor WordPress sites. But other than that, due to the other user-friendly tools that this CMS offers, all hard work can be done through almost zero effort. Tasks such as creating drafts, revising posts, or managing content, all can be done through minimal coding.
5. SEO-friendly and Statistics
It is no secret that search engines display favoritism towards WordPress due to the clean and simple code this software has, which makes it less troublesome for search engines to read and be able to index the content within the website. Additionally, there are customizable SEO components for every page that WordPress provides to help secure high search ranking and traffic to your website. Furthermore, WordPress provides you with an insight into how your website is performing, through reports and statistics that display one’s online activity, and how one can improve their business through strategic decisions.
6. Best for Blogging
Whenever there is a conversation about writing or blogging, WordPress is one of the platforms that cannot be missed. WordPress has been able to gain the reputation of being the ideal and best blogging platform because when a user set’s off to start their website, they are often provided with a blog within it by default. But apart from this reason, the additional plugins of widget categories alongside the high search rankings are other reasons that make WordPress a popular tool within the writing community.
Read Also: A Complete Guide to Hire WordPress Developer
7. Responsive Design
Apart from WordPress website development, WordPress has been successful in switching to a mobile application for better responsiveness and gathering traffic to their sites. Since the WordPress mobile application has a similar responsive design as the traditional browser version, users can easily make a website over different devices with much ease and less effort with the same features.
Moreover, since the users are unable to play with the code and can only re-optimize everything, it is the perfect adaptable CMS to ever exist. Further, in newer versions, it is possible to only change the template without having to change the entire web page design at the end.
8. Multiple Payment Gateways
When one has an online store or business, it becomes very crucial to provide its customer with various payment options that are safe to be shared on the website. WordPress provides several payment gateways such as PayPal, Amazon, Paymill, Virtual POS (VPOS), etc. which the user can integrate within their web page with ease without the help of experts.
9. Content Management
If editing a word document with plugins such as Grammarly were possible, then it would be like working with WordPress to edit a website. CMS has made things extremely easier what people thought to be hard with the clean categorization services, it provides for a webpage. For example, one can plan and schedule future blog uploads on their website which helps a lot in content management. Another example of this could be how WordPress differentiates one page from another? A user could own edit plugins on one page while making an art gallery on the other one, without mixing the contents of the two pages.
10. Scalability and Efficiency
There is nothing more attractive than a fast-loading functional website within the software world. As WordPress has Windows, Linux, and Unix-like as its operating system, its user interface is very seamless which provides the user with the fast development of websites as they can deflect bugs easily. That is why WordPress is one of the most efficient software in the market.
Conclusion
To conclude, WordPress is the most successful CMS one can get to have a successful social presence for their business or themselves. Above, we have provided different advantages offered by WordPress for its users. Along with these advantages, it provides an SEO-friendly interface, WooCommerce, various plugins, multiple templates, and interactive designs. It becomes a very powerful tool for users, when it comes to create a website from scratch on their own. The above advantages of WordPress make it one of the best CMS available both for beginners and professionals.
