What is WordPress? When it comes to creating websites, WordPress is a powerful starting base, powering nearly 42% of all websites on the internet.

WordPress is a CMS (Content Management system), was originally conceived as a blog system that allowed users to easily produce and publish content on the web, but also allows the creation of robust and feature-rich websites catered to not only bloggers, but also small businesses and even Fortune 500 companies.

For us at Thrive, WordPress is a powerful platform we can offer to provide the capability of building and maintaining your online presence, whether it be eCommerce, blogging, or extensive multi-site networks. Here are just some of our favorite parts of WordPress:

No Coding Required

Perhaps the best feature of WordPress is that it takes comparatively little knowledge of building web pages to publish content to your website. Though it is built on the open-source programming language PHP and allows for the use of custom HTML, CSS, and Javascript, these are not tools you’ll necessarily need to make great web content.

If you can handle creating a Word document, you can easily start publishing content in WordPress with its WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) content creation tools. The WordPress core does all the heavy lifting, leaving you to focus on making great content for your customers.

User-Friendly Blogging

The primary function of WordPress was originally to draft and publish blog content quickly, and it has been excelling at this feature since 2003. As previously stated, putting content on a page is as easy as typing up a Word document, formatting to your liking with images and styling, and publishing your work to the web. This makes producing content and news about your business incredibly easy and fast.

Need to let your customers know about an online sale, or maybe even an in-store event? It’s as quick and easy as making a post to social media with WordPress’ easy-to-use Gutenberg editor.

eCommerce Made Easy

In today’s marketplace, it is incredibly difficult to get the word out on your business unless you have a website for potential customers to easily find you. In a post-COVID-19 world, all businesses are now acutely aware of how important it is to have an online outlet for sales and services, when having customers in-store may not be so easy.

WordPress makes it quick to publish content and posting products for sale is no exception to that. With fully-featured plugins like WooCommerce and a multitude of customizations that can be made, it’s easy and affordable to get an online store up and running.

Interact With Your Customers

WordPress makes it easy and intuitive to make changes to your website, but it also assists you in interacting with site visitors through various means. WordPress comes with a built-in commenting feature that allows users to post comments to your blog content, allowing you (and other users) to engage by responding. In addition to this, it’s very easy to extend the capabilities of your WordPress site by adding plugins for contact forms, newsletter subscriptions, and live chat widgets.

Highly Customizable

As stated previously, WordPress allows for extensive customization through its Theme and Plugin environment. At Thrive, we implement themes with robust control over site colors and layouts, so you can achieve a look that is perfect for your business.

Plugins

Due to the open-source nature of WordPress and its wide adoption, plugins for just about everything you’ll need for a modern website are available. Contacts forms, SEO automation, eCommerce, and more are common additions to any business website. Have a project that requires a specific functionality? A quick search in WordPress’ plugin repository may very well have the answer, and will likely be free to boot! As well, there are thousands of premium options available outside of the plugin repository for more advanced functionality.

If you can’t find a plugin to do the job, WordPress is easy to extend with custom PHP coding.

Large User Base

Because WordPress is so widely used across the web, there is a multitude of resources on how to use it. If you ever run into a problem with your site or are just looking for new features that you want to bring to your customers, information is just a Google search away. As well, there is a large community of people dedicated to WordPress across various social media platforms and forums, so it’s easy to find discussion about WordPress and what other businesses are doing with it.

Secure

Security is extremely important for your business, whether it be protecting your site from malware, or protecting your customer’s data from being harvested from malicious actors. With WordPress being such a widely used platform, the foundational code must be well maintained by the WordPress team.

Thankfully, the WordPress core is updated very frequently by the WordPress Foundation monthly with small patches, and with steady major version releases about every 6 months. In addition to this, these releases often contain quality of life improvements and major feature upgrades to keep current with modern site design standards.

Streamline Your Work Process, Produce Content Faster

Because WordPress is so easy to use, you’ll be able to produce content much faster than other types of websites that require more knowledge of page design and content publishing. Adding a new page can be as simple as adding some text and a press of the Publish button. Search engines like Google prioritize consistent, high-quality content when it comes to search rankings, and saving time on the process of putting out content is extremely valuable. As well, WordPress has easy scheduling tools for posts, allowing you to create content in bulk and make it public whenever you need to with scheduled publishing.

WordPress is also a great candidate for integrating into your existing workflow. If you utilize a CRM (customer relationship management) or Marketing solution like Zapier, Intercom, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc., ready-made integrations are available to tie your web presence into your everyday processes, saving you time.

Mobile Responsive

Mobile-first design is now more important than ever, as nearly 70% of all web traffic is generated by users on mobile devices. Tablets and smartphones make internet access accessible to a wider audience, so it’s important to consider this when designing your site. WordPress makes it easy and convenient to design your site for a wide array of devices simultaneously, making the process of designing for different screen sizes effortless. Most modern WordPress themes are built with this in mind and allow for a ton of customization in regards to how pages will display on smaller screens.

As well, if you’re looking to create content on the go, WordPress has got you covered. The entire WordPress core is mobile responsive, giving you easy access to the WordPress dashboard on your mobile device and allowing you to add content wherever you have a stable internet connection. It may not be the most ideal way to design web pages, but it can be helpful in a pinch if you need to make a quick edit or post content to your blog remotely.

Thrive and WordPress

WordPress is a truly versatile and easy-to-use platform. It can be extended in almost any way imaginable by a programming team that has the expertise, and tailored exactly to your business needs.

That’s where we come in. We routinely extend WordPress, creating elegant custom solutions for our clients. Whatever WordPress solution you need, we can build it for you. We love working with WordPress, and we’d love to work with you.

Drop us a line and let us know what you’d like to build!

REQUEST A FREE QUOTE!
X-Wing