WordPress is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) which is used by 43.1% of all websites on the internet, when you take websites with a CMS facility this rises to 63.1%, making it the most popular website platform in use today.
At Simpsons Creative we use WordPress to create a wide range of websites, from simple 5-page brochure-style sites to bespoke solutions and e-commerce. It is an incredibly powerful and flexible system and, in the right hands, can create fantastic websites and transform your online presence.
What is a CMS?
A CMS is a special platform that a website is built on, it gives you the ability to update and manage the content of your website, which covers the text, images and more. This platform will live alongside your website, giving you a system to log into online and get access to the CMS. This means you can log into your website from any web browser without the need for specialist tools. You won’t need to know HTML, CSS or JS either, as this is covered by the CMS as it takes your content and automatically converts it to standard HTML.
Having a CMS means that you can be in control of your website yourself on a day-to-day basis, with no need to get a web developer to make every little change for you. It makes it incredibly easy for you to add new pages or features such as contact forms, blogs and galleries, without the need to learn coding. Removing this barrier means you are more likely to keep your website updated, which is good from both a content and an SEO point of view.
Why is WordPress so popular?
WordPress is popular for a number of reasons, firstly it is an incredibly powerful and feature-rich CMS which can handle almost anything you throw at it. It also has a huge community behind it with millions of users around the world contributing to make sure that WordPress stays up-to-date and relevant. In addition, it is open source, so you don’t need to pay any license fees or expensive hosting packages to use WordPress. Last but not least, the vast range of plugins and themes available means that you never have to start with a blank slate when creating your website – giving you more time to explore, and develop something truly unique.
WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
When you are looking for WordPress, you may come across two variants – WordPress.com and WordPress.org. In the simplest terms, WordPress.com is a simple platform for DIY website creation, it gives users the ability to make their own sites but has limitations which means you don’t get the full WP experience. WordPress.org on the other hand allows you to download the source code so that you can install it on your own web hosting. The latter option gives much more control over your website as well as having a greater range of themes and plugins available, but does require some technical knowledge or at least access to a good web developer who knows how to set up and manage a full website on their own server using WordPress.
What are WordPress Plugins?
WordPress plugins are pieces of software which add extra features and functionality to your website. These could be anything from a simple contact form to a full-blown e-commerce system – with the right plugins installed you can completely customise your website to do pretty much anything you want. The best thing is that there are over 50,000 plugins available in the official WordPress plugin directory so you can benefit from tried and tested code. WP also lets you create your own bespoke plugins for your site, giving you full control over the functionality of your website.
What do we love about WordPress?
We have been building our websites with WP for over 10 years. Its power and flexibility have proven to be invaluable to us over the years as it has allowed us to create unique and bespoke websites that attract visitors, drive conversions and give clients the results they need.
The community
One of the things that makes WP so popular is the community that has grown around it. This community is friendly and helpful providing detailed documentation on WP and how to get the most out of it. They provide help for people new to the platform as well as develop plugins to extend the capabilities of WP which benefit the community as a whole.
Easy to use
WordPress undergoes continuous development and part of this has been the focus on the UI/editor. In recent years it has been rebuilt to give users even more power with the intuitive easy-to-use block editor. These improvements make WP easy to use internally but also easy to get clients up to speed with how to manage their websites themselves.
Ongoing updates and improvements
WP has a built-in update system that helps you keep your plugins, themes and translations updated, this means that if there is a security update it can be rolled out seamlessly, helping to keep the WP websites safe and secure. It’s important to carefully select which plugins you use but WP has ratings and reviews in its plugin directory making this easier than ever.
Performance and stability
WP is a well-coded platform which runs efficiently, which helps keep the load times of your website down and makes sure that user experience is effortless. WP also has caching plugins available which can further increase performance by storing pages locally and serving them up from memory.
Design freedom
We build all of our WP websites from the ground up; this gives us complete control over the design process, allowing our web designers full creative freedom. Our experience with building bespoke themes like this means we are not affected by off-the-shelf theme limitations or conventional WP issues. We involve designers and developers at every stage of the project, maximising the benefits WP brings to the table.
How to learn more about WordPress
If you want to see how WordPress can help you, get in touch for a free consultation or demonstration, we are always happy to help showcase what we can do with WP. We also have online training resources on how to log in and update the content of a WordPress-powered website:
- Introduction to WordPress
- Dashboard Overview
- Content Editor
- Media Library
- Menu System
- User Accounts
- Custom Fields
WordPress Website Portfolio
We have a wide range of websites in our website portfolio that are built using WordPress, you can see the wide range of websites that WP can be used to build:
Pexhurst
Established in 1977, Pexhurst is a London based property company specialising in award-winning fit-outs and refurbishment of offices, warehouses and public service buildings in the educational and healthcare sectors. A comprehensive portfolio of award-winning work has given Pexhurst an impressive 100% recommendation rating by their loyal customers.
TREIO
The website is fully responsive and gives the client the ability to update and add content themselves. This works particularly well in the ‘Insights’ section of the website which the client uses to showcase their knowledge and experience.
Bishop’s Stortford BID
Alongside the branding and logo, we created a custom WordPress website. This allows the Bishop’s Stortford BID to manage and make changes to their content directly. Post launch we have been supporting the BID with various updates to the website as they achieve their goals and set new targets.
