WordPress the platform

WordPress was released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Today WordPress is used by more than 60 million websites. But what is it, that makes WordPress so popular? To begin with WordPress is a content management system, the most popular one, and a web development framework powered by PHP. At Blend, WordPress is one of the platforms we are using to build corporate and promotional websites. In the following paragraphs I am going to talk about my experience working with WordPress and how WordPress helped me to improve my creativity and web development skills. Moreover, I will explain the advantages of WordPress, this open source framework and how this affects our clients.

Before I joined BLEND, a web development agency in Cyprus, I didn’t have any experience with WordPress. I used to work with other frameworks and plain PHP. I only used WordPress when I was studying for my degree to write a blog, nothing else. By the time I joined BLEND, I started working with WordPress on a real project in no time. It started to feel more familiar to me day by day. My point is that the learning curve of WordPress, from a developer’s point of view, is not as big as you may think. Moreover, it doesn’t require any prior knowledge of any other framework beforehand.

Advantages of WordPress

Many people looking for custom designs are usually a bit reluctant to use WordPress due to the vast majority of ready templates. In fact, they feel that custom designs cannot be applied. However, that’s not the case as all the designs we apply at least at BLEND are fully custom and designed specifically for each client. This applies to the modules and functionalities we also develop. These are custom-made and create a better experience for both the end-user and administrator of the website.

Another advantage of WordPress is security which is usually a concern that many people have when using open source platforms. At BLEND we frequently update the core platform and plugins to their latest versions to ensure they are bug free. Moreover, we make the necessary configuration enhancements in all our projects to accomplish a secure result. Everything is always tested on a staging environment and then migrated to the live server.

Additionally, I discovered that WordPress has many capabilities that can be integrated with ease. Capabilities such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media integration, easy access to your website’s backoffice from anywhere with only an internet connection. Moreover, it has great plugins for security and caching to help make your website fast and secure.

Furthermore, being an open source framework, WordPress enables us to numerous customisations suited to the customer’s needs. For example, a client might ask for a CRM, social media, stock control or any other integration on their website. We can easily connect to any API and integrate these functionalities to the website. Our clients seem to love WordPress. According to their feedback they find it very easy to manage the content of their website. Web designers are also very comfortable to make changes and see them instantly on their screen.

Conclusion

I personally believe that WordPress is a great platform for anyone willing to create a website or even students who are excited about web development and looking for a starting point. Last but not least, it is very good that WordPress has a huge community who will always help solve any problems you have while developing your website or who are willing to collaborate with you to make better websites for everyone.