WordPress Is Not Just a Content Management System

Most people have heard of WordPress in some form or another, but the majority of people will not understand what it actually is.

Essentially WordPress is a publishing software that businesses or individuals can use to create their own website or blog.

It is currently one of the most popular web publishing platforms and has been since its release in 2003. Users are able to build and manage their own fully working website simply using their website browser, and for the most part, it is free to use.

Open Source

What makes WordPress stand out from other content management systems is the fact that it is an ‘open source’ project, meaning that people from all over the world are continuously giving up their time to improve the code for WordPress software and add to the already thousands of plugins and themes that allows people to build some impressive websites.

Already there are 46,291 free plugins and 4,081 free themes, but these numbers are increasing all the time.

Market Leader

In terms of market share, WordPress is leaps and bounds above the rest. It takes a staggering 59.3% of market share, of all content management systems. In comparison, other popular CMS like Joomla only takes 6.2% and Drupal only 4.9%.

It is an extremely popular system, and now powers over 17 million websites, and WordPress 4.6 has been downloaded 3.8 million times.

No Need to Learn Code

For years now, websites have been created using HTML code, where ‘tags’ are used in order to display content on a webpage. To most people, this may seem fairly confusing as there are so many different elements of code to learn.

WordPress essentially eliminates this problem as no longer do people have to use code to build a website, you use a web based editor to create the web pages and can run on most modern web servers.

User-friendly

There are many reasons why people chose to use WordPress rather than other systems. One of the main reasons is simply that it is so user-friendly.

No longer to businesses have to hire a web designer to build their website, as it is perfectly possible for them to do it themselves. The same applies if any small changes need to be made to a web page, with WordPress the website owner can do it in just a few seconds and clicks.

The thousands of plugins that are available help to make a website completely unique, plus users can add cool elements such as contact forms or galleries in just a few clicks. WordPress also comes with a forum where users can go to get their problems solved or questions answered but the thousands of WordPress developers that are ready to help out in any way they can.

SEO friendly

One of WordPress’ biggest selling points is that it comes already SEO friendly. Making a website that is easy to be found is essential to getting visitors to the site, and WordPress make this easy to control. It includes everything that a user needs to create a website that is optimised for search engines and provides tools and aids that will help you do this effectively. Of course you will probably need to get professional SEO done on your site for it to truly rank at the top.

Some of the biggest websites on the internet are using WordPress. You probably use a WordPress website every single day without even realising it.

Some of these websites include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Mashable, Forbes, IGN, PlayStation, Samsung, Star Wars, Coca-Cola and much more. These websites have their content updated all the time, so it is important that they are using a system that makes it easy for the company to make these changes quickly and effectively.

People often mistake WordPress as simply a blogging platform, and while in the past this may have been true to an extent, its use has greatly changed in recent years.

In fact, it can be used in many different ways including as a content management system, a gallery, portfolio, shopping store, rating website, membership site, video collection site, a blog and more. Businesses are constantly coming up with new and creative ways to use the system.

With so many businesses and individuals using this system, it seems as though it will maintain its position on the hotspot for a while as shown in this infographic that is based on data from 37 trusted sources – blogs, news, and large/credible publications.