October 9, 2019 / in WordPress / by Jason Terry
It’s been a while since I’ve talked about WordPress. If you don’t know what WordPress is, it’s an open-source content management system that powers websites.
There’s a good chance that your company or organization website is powered by WordPress. Over a third of websites in the world use WordPress. And more than half of websites with a content management system are powered by WordPress. (For more stats on WordPress, check out this article…)
It’s no surprise to me that WordPress continues to grow. It’s a powerful platform. And since it is an open-source effort, new features are added all the time. (Open Source means that hundreds of developers around the world contribute to the coding effort of maintaining and improving the WordPress software.)
There are plenty of companies and organizations that are okay budgeting $7-$12K for a website. But the thought of spending $20-$40K+ is shocking.
Since WordPress is so commonly used, there are plenty of developers and marketing people that have great WordPress experience. That fact, combined with WordPress making rapid development of websites possible, lowers costs significantly.
Let me give you a little bit more on why WordPress saves you money. At a high level, there are really three main parts of a website using WordPress.
The first part is the core WordPress system. (Open source, so it is FREE.)
Then there are plugins. The WordPress plugin architecture allows developers to create segments of code that can be “plugged in” to WordPress to extend the functionality. For example, Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin for SEO related activities. (Let me know if you would be interested in a list of WordPress plugins I like for a future blog post.)
The third component… themes. Themes are usually a framework that allow you to develop a website quickly.
One of the themes I love to use is Enfold. Enfold gives you mobile responsive websites out of the box. And it has all the tools you need to lay out a web page with their advanced drag-and-drop interface. That’s just scratching the surface… a good theme does a lot of heavy lifting for you. The measure of a good theme is how much it frees you up to focus more on the content and graphics.
(Quick aside, this is the last week for the Hope House toilet paper drive. If you want to get involved, check out the blog post. Thanks for considering!)
I mentioned cost… WordPress makes the process of building a website efficient and more affordable.
More importantly, WordPress gives YOU… the end user… the ability to edit a lot of the content yourself instead of paying your marketing company every time you want to add a new employee to the staff page.
A website project shouldn’t be a “launch and it’s done” kind of thing. Websites should be living, breathing extensions of your company and your people. So you need to keep the content updated. Why not pick tools that make it easy to do so?
Even better, when you’re ready to update your website in three to five years, you can install a new theme and touch up the pages instead of doing a full blown web development project. Again, saving time and budget on marketing related stuff. (I have plenty of clients that are on the third version of their website since we started working together.)
If you don’t know the answer to that question, I encourage you to find out. And if it’s time to update your website, I recommend you use WordPress. No matter who you work with to make that happen, it should be part of the conversation.
If you have more questions about WordPress, let me know. I might cover your topic in a future blog post! (And that reminded me of an upcoming topic… hiding the WordPress login page from hackers using a great plugin called WPS Hide Login.)
Until next time… thanks for reading!
The Blue Gurus are hands down the easiest and most fun way to set up and manage a website.
They took us step-by-step through the process of overhauling our organization's website and have been helping us keep it fresh and up to date for over 5 years. They make hard things seem easy; they are friendly, funny, and a true joy to work with.
Donna Rimbo
Director of Marketing & Communications at Christ Church Anglican
