10 Reasons WordPress is a Top CMS

Discover what makes WordPress a superior choice for nearly every business looking for a secure, flexible Content Management System. 

According to BuiltWith, 48% of all sites using a Content Management System (CMS) are using WordPress. In the first half of 2015, WordPress usage increased by 7% over the previous year and the software now powers 1.1 million additional websites. Clearly, WordPress is not just for blogging any more. 

If you're looking for a great content management system (CMS) to run your website, WordPress is definitely an excellent choice. Below are ten reasons that we prefer WordPress when building sites.

Scalable For Every Size

WordPress offers a robust platform to underpin sites of any size. Whether you're creating a one-page microsite for your latest product, setting up a multi-page site for your business, or running a huge news machine which is constantly updated, WordPress can handle it. For example, the New York Times (136 million annual visits according to SimilarWeb) uses WordPress to run its blogs. Popular sites like Mashable, FiveThirtyEight, Vogue and Reuters all use WordPress as well.

Setup for Security

In today's world, every website platform faces threats. WordPress is no exception, but if you set it up correctly and update it regularly, WordPress is considered extremely secure. As WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg points out, "WordPress is … trusted to run sites for some of the largest and most security-conscious organizations in the world." It's also worth noting that the implementation of automatic updates means that, if your version is up-to-date, Wordpress will automatically update to the latest version.

Flexible and Customizable

One thing that stands out about WordPress is that you can customize it in so many ways. Whether you are using developers to custom code your site from scratch or creating a site with pre-built themes, you can get a site design that is as unique as your business.

A huge array of plugins also mean you can add almost any function you need to make your site work exactly the way you want, and if it doesn't exist, there's sure to be a developer who can code it for you.

Extremely Easy To Use

If you can use programs like Microsoft Word, you can use WordPress for content creation. The writing and publishing interface is easy to understand, formatting is a snap, and it won't take long to learn how to insert links and images. 

If you need to add content to your site, it's easy to add pages and posts of different types, and to integrate publishing into a workflow with the built-in post statuses.

SEO-Friendly Features

WordPress really delivers on search engine optimization (SEO) to help people find your site. It includes multiple ways to optimize your content and has categories and tags to provide additional search options. WordPress also creates search-engine friendly URLs. You can also extend the built-in functionality with plugins like Yoast SEO, which includes a wide range of SEO improvements, including keyword and meta description optimization and the creation of social cards for your content.

Mobile-Friendly

According to Pew Internet, 64% of Americans own a smartphone, and 15% have limited options for going online other than a smartphone. With the mobile audience expanding daily, it's important to know that WordPress is mobile-friendly out of the box, including themes that look great on mobile devices. You can also extend this functionality with your own themes or mobile plugins like WP-Touch.

Lots of Support

WordPress is also well supported. In addition to the large developer community, there's an even larger community of WordPress users, many of which are willing to share their experiences and the solutions they discover. This means that no matter what WordPress issue you face, you can easily solve it with a simple search. And the WordPress Codex is also a rich resource for self-help with WordPress issues.

Multi-Site Management

Enterprises often run multiple websites, so it's useful that WordPress has multi-site management built into the software. You can easily run a network of sites, using sub-domains and sub-directories to distinguish among them, while keeping overall management central.

Smooth Integrations

Another major WordPress advantage is that many of the other pieces of software you want to use integrate with the platform. Your favorite e-commerce solution or payment gateway will almost certainly have a WordPress plugin. And if you're using particular internal messaging solution or social media management software, it will too. WordPress is everywhere and software developers know that people will be looking for those integrations.

Easy-To-Access Content

Finally, when your site is setup with WordPress, there's no reason to land in web developer hell. Since the software supports multiple users at different levels, you can always have access to your site and content, even if your developer is working on it. And when the site is complete, you will be able to update and maintain it, if that's what you want to do.

As far as the Adept team is concerned, you can't do better than WordPress as a CMS. Find out more about benefits, recommendations for plugins and how to secure your WordPress site in Adept's white paper: Why WordPress – Security, Flexibility and Other Benefits of the World’s Leading CMS.