A few weeks back, we wrote about must-have plugins for WordPress. However, we didn’t really touch on What WordPress is and why you should consider it as a website platform for your Hawaii activity or attraction website.
So, what is WordPress? According to Wikipedia:
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. WordPress is installed on a web server, which either is a part of an Internet hosting service or is a network host itself; the first case may be on a service like WordPress.com, for example, and the second case is a computer running the software package WordPress.org. An example of the second case is a local computer configured to act as its own web server hosting WordPress for single-user testing or learning purposes. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system. WordPress was used by more than 26.4% of the top 10 million websites as of April 2016. WordPress is reportedly the easiest and most popular website management or blogging system in use on the Web, supporting more than 60 million websites.
Because of its popularity, a number of very popular activity and attraction websites already use WordPress as its CMS of choice. These are the three main reasons why you should consider using it the next time you redesign your website:
It’s flexible and powerful
WordPress has certainly come a long way from its web blog beginnings, and one of the reasons why it’s not being used as a CMS of choice is because it’s very flexible. By way of plugins (basically add-on software that works in conjunction with WordPress to enhance and extend its functionality), WordPress can be used to power large websites that attract millions of visitors per day. Plugins can also enhance visitor experiences, make maintenance tasks a breeze, and eve provide powerful e-commerce solutions that can turn your website into a revenue generating channel for your business.
It’s very user-friendly
While it’s certainly good to have an in-house web person to handle all your web-related marketing tasks, WordPress also makes it easy for non-technical personnel to perform small text and content updates. If you’ve used Microsoft Word before, you’ll feel right at home with WordPress’ editing panel, which looks and performs almost in the same fashion as any popular word processor in the market today.
Modifying certain parts of your website is also made easier by way of widgets combined with features that come with themes and plugins.
It’s marketing friendly
If there’s one thing that has made WordPress an attractive option for website owners, it would be its marketing orientation. WordPress allows you to configure certain elements of your website for marketing purposes such as URL readability and allowing search engines to crawl and index your site, to mention a few. It also structures your pages and posts in a way that Google and other search engines can easily understand.
But that’s not all. WordPress also has hundreds of plugins that you can choose from to extend your website’s marketing functionality and make it easy for you to keep track of your marketing goals. Do you need a Google Analytics dashboard on your WordPress administration panel? No problem; there’s a plugin for that. Perhaps a newsletter form that connects with your favorite e-mail marketing service? There’s a plugin for that as well. From the simplest marketing task to the more complicated ones, WordPress most certainly has you covered.
Final thoughts
Of course, while WordPress is a great tool, it isn’t perfect. Because of its popularity, it’s prone to attacks and spamming, which is why it’s strongly recommended that you download and install security plugins such as Wordfence. Using too many plugins can also slow down your site, or even invite unwanted spamware and malware onto your website, so be careful with what you install. We’ve covered the five necessary plugins that you should have on your WordPress site in a previous post. Take a gander over the link to find out more.
Do you have a WordPress website? What made you decide to use it as your CMS of choice? Tell us through the comments below!