Blogging should be an essential part of every thriving website. I’m fairly new with this myself, partly due to the amount of client work on hand. Thought I should put down some thoughts with what i’ve found so far with WordPress.

Time for me is an expensive and rare commodity and I required a platform that was easy to learn, simple to use and to an extent fairly customisable. We’re spoilt for choice with the number of blog engines out there, and after using and testing a few (and giving up a few times) I found beneath the polish and shine lies a deceptively powerful content management system that can take any static site or gallery to the next level. Each to their own, CMS softwares such as MovableType and Joomla are just as sophisticated as WordPress, but what they cannot compete with is WordPress’ simplicity, agility and ease of use.

I have introduced some of my clients to this Open Source platform for their online presence. Here are 10 good reasons why you should consider it.

1. READY . STEADY . GO

Installing WordPress was a joy. Their so claimed “Famous 5-Minute Install” is as simple as it gets. This is great when a client needs a website up and running immediately. All the structure is already there, fill out the boxes and you have a website. Of course you’d want to style it up, and that’s as simple as clicking a few buttons to apply a theme to get the website looking presentable.

2. PLUG AND PLAY

The great thing about WordPress’ enormous list of plugins is that they are all available without leaving your own website. The software allows administrators to install any plugins they can find through a few clicks from their own administrator’s panel. It’s all built in. Many other CMS scripts requires a lot of manual labour. First you have to look for a theme, download it, upload it, manually install it, and hope it all works.

3. HELLO GOOGLE!

Unlike other blogging platforms, WordPress seems to understand the importance of Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is a crucial part of a website’s development. A website with good SEO implementation ensures that search engines such as Google and Bing is able to index the content. Many businesses rely heavily on the exposure search engines provide to their website. Without the site being optimized, there is very little chance that the website will be seen amongst the millions of websites indexed by search engines.

4. MEASURABLE

An integral part of running a website is making sure that it is measurable. WordPress allows this through the use of plugins such as Google Analytics which can monitor traffic sources and website performance. Through this data, I can determine what works and what doesn’t, what should be improved on and what should be left out. Tracking softwares such as Analytics also provide reports on which keywords people use to search for the website.

5. TEACH!

I do realise that everyone isn’t as tech savvy as everyone else thinks they are (myself included). Clients are worried about the technical jargon they’ll have to deal with to maintain their website. I would prefer clients to focus on building their business than spending their valuable time tinkering with the website.

WordPress users do not need to have any in depth technical knowledge to run the website. This makes it easier for developers and designers like myself to provide some quick instructions to clients on updating and maintaining the site using the web based admin.

6. UP TO DATE

Creating a new page or blog post on WordPress is as simple as making a status change on Facebook (you may have heard of this site…). ok, maybe a few more steps involved, but not much more. Everything can be updated and created using the admin backend provided. Clients will find that writing for a new blog post is as easy as writing a word document. The easier to update, the more frequent the changes, the more the search engines will love your site.

7. THEY’RE A MATCH

One of the most annoying issues for website developers are browser compatibilities. Spare a thought for the developers dealing with new browsers coming online and the old browsers that don’t get updated. Most WordPress sites are compatible for all major browsers. Even Mobile devices!

8. JOIN US

WordPress comes with a great built in member/user system. Allow your clients or customers to keep in touch You can limit them as much as you can and you can also allow them to access as much as they can. This is a great way to update and reward loyal customer or user base.

9. MODULES, MODULES!

In WordPress, everything can be disabled or enabled through a few buttons. You can remove or add plugins, remove or add themes. But most importantly, WordPress has been widgetised. It allows you to drag and drop widgets to where ever within your widget bars (sidebars). Widgets can be anything, just like the widgets on your PC or Mac. Calendars, contact forms, testimonials, simple text, and everything else. This modular system is one of the most sought features in this WEB 2.0+ era.

10. SECURE

WordPress is built around PHP and MySQL, some would argue that this isn’t the most secure coding infrastructure. However, in saying this, WordPress has been around a long time and they know their system inside and out. Security measures have been put in place and all the obvious holes has been patched. With the large community involved with future developments, I can only predict better things to come for this platform.

So, here are some initial advantages i’ve found using WordPress. Look forward to any comments or suggestions on how to improve on this well thought out blogging platform.