Why I use WordPress

I have been using WordPress to make websites for over 13 years because I feel it bridges the gap between designer, developer, and client.

Originally created in 2003 as a blogging platform it quickly established itself as a tool to build fully customisable, content-editable websites.

As of March 2021, it is the most used Content Management at 64.6% market share and is used by more than 40.5% of the top 10 million websites1. Because it is open source in nature it has allowed 1000’s of developers to contribute to the core development of WordPress and therefore has seen over 100,000+ hours of development time.

People already know it

Most of the clients I’ve worked with have either used it before or know of it which gives them confidence and trust in the platform. There is little training and learning when it comes to clients understanding how to update their content without the need for any programming knowledge.

Open Source

As previously mentioned, WordPress is open source which means that a large number of developers can contribute to the core development. It would be very difficult for one person/developer to recreate the resource and functionality of the platform as a whole. There is no point in recreating the wheel, especially if that wheel will not be as good.

Custom Built Themes

WordPress allows developers to create their own themes which means that there is no restriction when it comes to creativity through HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We can essentially build any design into WordPress and through plugins such as Advanced Custom Fields, these tailored themes can then be fully content editable by the client without breaking the overall look and feel of your site.

Can be used as a headless CMS

There are a growing number of JavaScript frameworks which have inbuilt functionalities that WordPress does not contain or cannot deliver. GatsbyJS for example generates static pages (rather than dynamically generated from a database) and image optimisation that make your website incredibly fast. Thankfully WordPress can still be used for the Content Management System and GatsbyJS and also other Javascript frameworks can use that content to generate the pages so we can now use the best of both worlds. This website is built with GatsbyJS.

1. https://w3techs.com