WordPress to Build Your Website
The first thing you must decide is what to build your new website in. The most popular content management systen on the web these days is WordPress, an open source solution that is optimal for building sites for a number of reasons:
It’s Free – WP is completely open source, meaning anyone can contribute to the core code. You don’t have to pay monthly maintenance fees to keep the site running. Having adequate web hosting will do in most cases. If you plan on having thousands of hits a day though it may be wise to get a dedicated hosting package so your website runs smoothly.
Plugin Ecosystem – Want to add new functionality to your website? If you’re using WordPress it’s as easy as installing a new “plugin”, pieces of code that add extra functionality to your website. The WordPress founders have been quoted as saying they want to eventually see WordPress become an app platform.
Support/Community – The WordPress.org community is very helpful when you’re trying to troubleshoot a problem with your website. All it takes is a WordPress username to logon to one of the forums and ask any technical question you have. In most cases WordPress users are happy to help you out. Consider them your “best friends” when trying to mess with the WordPress core files.
Responsive – Having a website that looks good on multiple devices is paramount to user experience, seeing how people are exponentially flocking to mobile devices to consume internet content.
SEO-Friendly – Search engines love WordPress because of it’s semantic URL options and categorization structure. It’s also fast. A standard WordPress installation is less than 4mb, which means there isn’t too much going on in the background. Other content management systems like Drupal, Joomla, and Magento are much heavier, relying on the the web host to take the brunt of the usage.
Built with PHP – PHP is the dominant web programming language for good reason. It’s scalable, flexible, and it’s easy to find a developer. The problem with many of the newer languages is that because they are new it’s hard to find qualified developers for an affordable price.
There are many reasons (obviously) to build your new website using WordPress. WordPress developers are abundant and a quick Google search will yield thousands of results. Choose carefully though. There are many who say they can build high-quality WordPress websites but very few who have the experience to build large scale.