Why choose WordPress as the platform to build your website

In our post on How to build an Online School, we mentioned that using WordPress enables non-techy people to build sophisticated, professional, commercial education and e-commerce website equipped with learning management system (LMS) without having to write a single line of code. In this post, we are going in-depth into understanding the various methods available to you when you are building a website, what is the difference between website builder and Content Management System (CMS) and why we recommend WordPress.

Image by Dok Sev from Pixabay 

What are the various ways you can take to create a website?

If you are planning to set up a website, regardless of its purpose, whether this website is to become an Online Academy selling courses, an Ecommerce site selling products or simply a Corporate website providing information, you have the following 4 paths to choose in deciding how you want to set up your website. Often, the deciding factor on which path to take depends on your budget, skills and time availability. Here’s the 4 paths:

1. Hire a web designer/developer/agency- In other words, you are outsourcing the task of developing your website. If cost is not a key concern or you simply do not have the time and resource to set up the website using your own or your company’s resource, then, this would be the best option to consider. Depending on the complexity of your website, the cost can range from a few hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars.

2. Do it yourself using HTML and CSS– If you are technically savvy or your company has the technical staff who can do it, then you can choose to build your website from scratch using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) , Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and if needed, Javascript. You may even need skills in PHP and Unix. These are the foundational software languages used to create most websites.  Developing your website from scratch enables you to have the greatest flexibility. If you or your company has the expertise, you can develop anything you want. However, developing a website from scratch takes a lot of time. It may take months to years to get a website fully developed, depending on your requirements and complexity.

3. Use a Website Builder – If you are not technically inclined, you can still build a website without writing a single line of code. This is the advantage of using a Website Builder. There are several website builders such as Wix, Weebly, WordPress.com, GoDaddy Website Builder, etc. With website builders, you sign up for an account and the system will lead you to choose a template from their library. After that, in a few seconds, your website is set up by the system and all you need to do is to change the headings, contents, images. This is a pretty cool option and the pricing plans range from free to tens of dollars. However, the features available are limited to what is made available by the website builder company. In addition, every website builder is a proprietary application. Hence, you will not be able to move a website created on Wix to Weebly.

4. Use a Content Management Builder (CMS)– This last option, in our opinion, is the best option. Although this is a good option for those who are not technically savvy, it is an option used even by established web developers and digital marketing agencies. You can set up a website using a CMS without having to do programming. However, the ease of use will depend on which CMS you choose. There are more than 80 CMS as of 2022. The most common ones are Drupal, Joomla and WordPress.org. Many CMS are open-sourced enabling many developers to develop add-on software applications for these CMS. This means that even if you are not technically inclined, you can add sophisticated features to your website by installing these add-on applications in just a few clicks. Many of these add-ons applications are priced very affordably at tens of dollars and some are even available for free!.

What is the difference between a Website Builder and a Content Management System (CMS)?

These days, people use CMS and Website Builder interchangeably. To learn more, there is a very good article written by Elegantthemes where it described in detail and vividly the differences.

 Recommended reading:

CMS’s vs Website Builders: What’s the Difference and Which Should You Choose?

The key difference is that if you use a Content Management System (CMS), you have to self-host your website, i.e. you need to select your  own hosting platform. The CMS is a software that runs on your web server that lets you create, store, search, and manage content. The CMS is not limited to a specific host.

On the other hand, website builders enables you to create websites using drag and drop user interface so you need not have to do any programming. Your website sits on the builder’s hosting platforms. They use proprietary tools that only work on their platforms to build the pages. 

This does not mean that it is easier to use a Website Builder than a CMS. With CMS such as WordPress.org, you can use the Elegantthemes Divi page builder to help you create your website using drag and drop capabilities. In fact Elegantthemes Divi’s capabilities far exceeds many website builders.

This is the reason why we recommend WordPress.org. With WordPress.org, you can add a theme applications such as Elegantthemes Divi or Divi page builder plugin. Divi empowers WordPress with the capabilities provided by website builder. This means that you enjoy the benefits that a website builder provides while not limited to only the features offered by a proprietary website builder. With add-on applications call plugins, you can turn a simple website to a sophisticated Online Academy using Learning Management System (LMS) plugins, without hiring a web agency and yet having your site set up in minutes! Interested to know how? Read on..

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

WordPress is owned and operated by Automattic, Inc. WordPress offers two types of products available on  two websites respectively : WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.com is a hosted Website Builder. This means that you only need to create an account on WordPress.com, choose a design (theme) that you like and you will be guided through the steps to build your website. All the web application files and contents (images and articles) are stored (hosted) in WordPress.com. If you need bigger storage or more functionalities, you just choose the price plans that offers the capacity and functionalities you require. The only disadvantage is that you are limited by the functionalities offered in WordPress.org.

Whereas WordPress.org provides an open-source Content Management System (CMS) application software for people to build their website on a self-hosted platform. That means, you need to find your own hosting company, install the open source WordPress application and then start customizing, designing and building your website.e’s never compromised. 

Our recommendation is WordPress.org if you are building a commercial site. If you choose the right hosting company to begin with, you do not need to worry anything on technical issue. From the time you register an account and buy a hosting plan to the time you get your website set up may only be just around 30 minutes or less. Then you can spend the rest of your time writing your contents and doing the necessary customisation.

Why we recommend WordPress.org?

According to W3Techs, the the leading source for CMS usage statistics, 33.1% of the world websites are not built with CMS. So this means that 66.9% are built with CMS. Of these that are built with CMS, WordPress has a market share of 64.2%. ! Out of all websites in the world, WordPress has a market share of 43%. This shows that WordPress is a proven platform for creating websites.

As of 2022, a research summary provided by Zippia reported that there are roughly. 30.46 million live websites using WordPress.

Base on data from W3Techs and Zippia, let’s look at some of WordPress’ greatest competitors:

If you study the above chart, you would have noticed that Shopify is next in line after WordPress but Shopify’s market share is not even close to WordPress. Even the total market share of the top 5 competitors only have about 10% of the market share. 

The following article from Bluehost provides us a glimpse into some of the top companies using WordPress. If you are considering which platform to build your website, these data will prove to you that you will not go wrong if you build your website on WordPress.

More reasons why we recommend WordPress.org

1. Themes –Change Your Design with just a click

To set up a website using WordPress CMS, you have to choose a WordPress theme. The theme is the design of your website. If you visit WordPress.org, and click on Themes under their menu, you will discover that there are over 9000 free WordPress themes as of 2022. These themes are so beautifully and professionally designed. With just  a click, you can change from one theme to another!

If those thousands of themes do not meet your requirements, there are many marketplace selling WordPress themes. One of the best marketplace is Themeforest where you will find a whole forest of beautifully designed themes equipped with sophisticated functionalities.

The theme that we always work with is Elegantthemes Divi. With Divi, you can create almost any design. We love it, immensely.

2. Plugins – Add any functionalities with hiring developers

Again, go to WordPress.org, click on the Plugins in the menu. There are more than 55,000 plugins. Plugins are software applications that independent developers built for WordPress. Let’s say, you what your website to have a chat button that allows your site visitors to WhatsApp you, just like the one we have on this site. All you need to do is to go to the Plugin menu on your WordPress dashboard, select the plugin that provide that specific function, click “Install”, and after that “Activate”. Depending on the plugin’s design, you might be guided to go to the plugin’s settings page to select the required features. That’s it, and that chat function will get activated. No need to spend thousands of dollars to hire a developer. How cool is that!

Conclusion

In this article, we have explained why we strongly advise clients to use WordPress CMS as the platform to set up their website. As mentioned earlier, if you start with a good hosting company, it only takes a few clicks to set up a WordPress website.