WordPress - Should you use it for your website?

What is WordPress?

Wordpress is a website publishing programme that underpins over 20% of the internet. It is an opensource project that is run by a commercial enterprise. WordPress sites can be hosted by anyone who has a server, the cost of using the code is nothing.

wordpress.org is where you find the opensource WordPress info and wordpress.com is the commercial arm

WordPress is written in the PHP coding language and new versions come out frequently to keep it secure and also to keep improving it.

Advantages of WordPress over other publishing systems

Portability: A Wix or Squarespace website is locked to those companies. If they change the rules or increase the price your only option is to rebuild your website in a different system. A WordPress site can be moved to a different website host easily.

Longevity: WordPress has been around a long time and there are a lot of people with experience in using it and a lot of great content online to help learn it's tricks.

The Plugins: There is a huge ecosystem of plugins that allow people to add features to their website easily. Need a slideshow/carousel? Tick. Need an online store? Tick. NB: Building very complex solutions with a stack of plugins is not a great way to achieve a reliable solution, but for most small to medium websites or blogs, using established well rated plugins on WordPress works well.