WordPress: a developer’s dream

Since its launch back in 2003, WordPress has enjoyed a universal appeal.

It empowered individuals and small businesses with no previous coding experience to develop their own websites using a number of built-in themes that could be easily customised.

Fast forward to today and the platform is used to create all manner of websites, from high-traffic ecommerce sites to news portals.

So – why would a website platform that’s built for everyone appeal to a seasoned developer?

The answer: because of how accessible and intuitive it is.

When we look at this from an end user or client perspective, WordPress doesn’t require a specialist skill set or knowledge to get the most out of the platform. By using the plugin ecosystem and thousands of themes available, high quality websites can be created with relative ease.

This ease of use appeals to developers for three main reasons:

It’s cost-effective
It’s less time-consuming
It’s simple to handover to clients (due to the sheer speed of content creation)

Ready-made themes, customisable plugins

As we’ve already mentioned, building a website with WordPress can be done without coding, and this goes a long way to explaining why the platform is so popular.

Rather than having to start from scratch when building a website, developers can make use of the multitude of pre-built themes that are available directly from the WordPress repository or third-party vendors.

It’s best to think of these themes as templates; they’ll provide a foundation for developers to build on, customising each theme to meet the specific requirements of each business.

“With WordPress, the possibilities are endless,” says James Schofield, a Frontend Developer at 6B. “It allows for a rich amount of personalisation and extendibility, without compromising on how simple and intuitive it is to use on the CMS side.”

Besides themes, the platform also boasts of an extensive library of plugins, which enable developers to add features and enhance a website’s functionality.

And the best thing is, there’s a WordPress plugin for just about everything imaginable.

But if you do need help deciding between which plugins are must-haves or nice-to-haves, we put together a handy guide of five essential WordPress plugins that every site needs.

WordPress websites grow with you

Scalability is crucial for running any successful website.

Think of your business as a plant and your website as the pot it grows in.

You know even when the plant is a couple of shoots poking through the soil that it will eventually outgrow its pot. To ensure it grows further, you need to repot the plant and give it room.

In development terms, this is usually the point where companies end up throwing out an old site, needing to start again because the first structure was never built with growth in mind.

But think of WordPress as an extendable pot – it’ll provide the same robust shape around the plant, but simply expand with it, making it easy for your business to scale up at pace.

Whether you’re opting for a template or custom site, the platform caters to both needs, which means you’ll never have to switch platforms and start over again when looking to grow your business.

Because of the wealth of plugins available to developers, a website can be extended in terms of features and functionality at the click of a button. Everything from web stores and contact forms to analytics and event calendars can be added to your site to help deal with and deliver value to a growing audience.

With the correct infrastructure in place, the platform can serve tens of thousands of logged-in users at a time, and deliver hundreds of millions of monthly page views.

It’s flexible, upgradeable and can power a variety of websites without compromising on security.

A rich community of users

Another invaluable aspect that explains why WordPress is so popular among developers is the wide community of users it has garnered since its creation nearly two decades ago.

As an open-source platform, the source code is available to anyone and developers can use it as a baseline to develop it further depending on the needs of the website they’re building.

The platform is also free to use, meaning it’s an attractive option for developers looking to provide a web solution to clients with smaller budgets like startups.

Because it’s cost-effective and simple to use, the platform has an extensive community of users across the world.

But why is this an inherent benefit for developers?

It means that not only is there a huge community of experienced users actively driving improvements in how the platform functions, but it’s also likely that there’s a solution to almost any developer problem already out there.

If you want to enhance the functionality of your site, chances are that someone has built a bespoke plugin for that specific purpose – or there’s detailed guidance in a forum or blog on how best to achieve it.

Aside from how easy it is to learn from this community of developers, there’s also a robust industry built around the platform. Plugin developers, hosting providers offering WordPress specific services, and maintenance companies all exist because of WordPress.

SEO is prioritised

Every business owner aspires to have their website rank higher on organic search results. That’s why it’s vital for SEO to be a part of your website marketing strategy.

Without a strong focus on SEO, the content you’ve worked so hard to create to attract and engage your target audience will go completely unnoticed.

Unlike other content management systems, WordPress is search engine friendly. It takes the complex art form of SEO and breaks it down into manageable actions to help users implement a comprehensive but straightforward SEO strategy.

Among the most popular plugins on WordPress is Yoast SEO; it’s a must-have, and it’s completely free.

A traffic light system guides users through the process of adding proper titles, headings, optimised images, permalinks, and other on-page fields to ensure all the boxes that search engines are looking for are ticked.

With a strong emphasis on SEO, WordPress ensures that the hard work completed by developers in creating a beautifully functional website isn’t lost or hidden from the world.

It supports multiple media types

Any developer knows the value of varied content on a website.

Quality content helps to attract the right audience to your website, engages them and helps spur users to take action on your website. But if your content is an endless stream of words, no matter how well-written and compelling it may be, users will naturally become disinterested.

From images and documents to visual and audio files, the platform makes it easy to upload files and ensures your website remains attractive to a wide spectrum of users.

Ultimately, high quality and varied content will attract more users to your website and it will help boost engagement levels among those users. If they find the content valuable, then they will be more likely to share it – all of which helps improve search ranking results on Google.

Without quality content or an effective content strategy, your business will struggle to grow in the digital world. WordPress gives you the tools you need to use a variety of content, how you use those tools is up to you.

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Are you looking for a high quality and affordable web solution?

Then WordPress is the platform you’re looking for. With a whole catalogue of visually appealing themes and smart plugins, WordPress can help you create almost any type of website with features and functionality that are unique to your business.

Speak to our team of WordPress developers today

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