Why we love WordPress
One confusing thing about WordPress is there are lots of themes and templates around, so people think that’s all there is!
Not with us! Before I go into my love letter to “WordPress” I have to clarify, we use WordPress for bespoke designed custom websites, built using the WordPress CMS. So no themes or templates.
I surveyed the team as well as asked myself – what are the reasons I love it? It helps we know it really well so we have full confidence to deliver. And otherwise – read on!
We have full flexibility for any design:
I don’t want to give limits to our clients, and I love to say to our clients: “Sure, we can design that for you” and know that we can also translate it into a website. With other CMSs, like Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress themes we spend a lot of time explaining to clients that there will be limits based on the template or theme. With custom WordPress sites, we can do anything.
Custom fields – one place for each thing
This is related again to the way we build sites. I love that we have central areas where we can keep certain information, like the people in the team of a company, or the testimonials. For each of these, there is common information, so it makes sense to build a “mini database” to keep this information. A central place for each type of thing. For example, with testimonials, we may have the name of the person, what they said, and their company logo or photo. And we have a central place in our WordPress “back end” where we can add new testimonials or edit and delete existing ones.
WordPress is easily scalable
Tom’s our lead coder, mentioned this as his favourite thing. It means that if one day you want a bigger website or to add more services, you can add more and more, without changing the entire system.
Ownership
Another favourite of Tom’s, who says: “with WordPress, you literally own your website and your content. In the age of cloud computing that might sound uncomfortable, but ownership continues to be important and relevant. So the reason that you can suspend, shuffle, or attach new content without third-party intervention or system processing is important.”
Places to put keywords
For SEO, keywords are important. When I upload a new image I can add keywords in the title, description, and “alt” tag for that image. With each article, I can add “focus keywords” using the Yoast SEO plugin and I can tag with other keywords. All this makes the pages easier to find by people searching online, and even for us to find if we’re making changes to the site down the line.
Our SEO specialist Tom, says WordPress is easily the best CMS for SEO for 2 main reasons:
WordPress is fully customisable with no SEO constraints
Whilst with other CMS systems you have to work within the confines of what the CMS allows, for example in terms of a maximum SEO page title length when using Wix. WordPress allows all aspects of SEO work to be customised as required for each particular website. This is very important as some sites will require longer SEO titles to perform better than others, in relation to the amount of content on the webpage and the existing links pointing to the webpage.
WordPress has access to great SEO plugins & many plugins for a variety of purposes
SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO, enables each article to have separate titles for SEO & social media, this is very important as what can work for sending keyword visitors via google search, is not necessarily a title that will entice clicks via social media. This ensures each main page on the website, whether accessible via google search or social media, can attract the maximum number of visitors.
Special ode to WordPress, From Aurimas, our coder
“I love WordPress because of its extensive capabilities for the novice programmer as well as the experienced. I’m constantly amazed at the ever-improving functionality along with the progress in making WordPress pages faster, even with several plugins enabled.
WordPress plugin “ACF Pro” makes the development process very fast, also very convenient for the future administrator of the site, and the customization possibilities are endless.
I used to touch other CMSs in the past, but what can I say, WordPress is the best one for me.”
Further reading:
Wonderful article describing why we should use WordPress: https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/why-use-wordpress/
If you want to understand the complexities of custom fields see: https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/wordpress/wordpress-custom-fields
