Every once in awhile you’ll hear someone say, “WordPress is just a blogging platform” or “PHP isn’t a scalable way to build websites and applications. While large companies like FaceBook and Zynga have certainly had their share of problems scaling PHP within their custom architectures and processes it’s still arguably the most widely used sought after programming language on the web. “Search terms for “PHP Developer” and “WordPress Development” are on the rise.” – Says Clayton Curtis, a developer from us, who specializes in building websites exclusively using WordPress as a content management system. “WordPress has become an absolute beast in terms of overall influence on the web. Using a Chrome extension like Wappalyzer or BuiltWith, you can see right in the toolbar the technologies most websites use.” We tried the experiment ourselves and discovered that indeed, most websites that you visit on the internet are built with WordPress. Because WordPress is a CMS built with PHP Mysql it’s no wonder that the popularity of the WP platform has shed a new light on PHP as a programming language. What makes WordPress so attractive for many designers is its ease of use and accessibility for clients. Many claim that WordPress is the most user-friendly CMS. A few reasons why we love WordPress so much.
Robust Support Ecosystem
Dig into WordPress for even just the first time and you’ll notice that it’ll come with a few readymade “plugins” – little pieces of add-on software that add functionalities to your website like email signup forms, spam protection (mostly Captcha), picture sliders and much more. The incredible thing about these plugins is that most of them are free, meaning that you can install them on as many sites as you wish. The plugins are developed by an ever-growing community of WordPress developers and enthusiasts who contribute to the WordPress core and provide free support to those who have questions. WordPress truly is the poster child for open-source web software. Because of this large community, WordPress is able to continually hold its spot as the number one CMS on the internet.
Theme Selection
WordPress has literally thousands of free themes to choose from. There are marketplaces WooThemes and ThemeForest that feature groundbreaking WordPress websites. Among the features included in some of these premium themes:
Responsive design – this is important if you want people to be able to scan your website easily from their mobile devices. Many new WordPress Themes – even the new ones, are built with responsive design so you don’t have to create a separate “mobile version” of your website.
Built-in shortcodes – these help you add interactive elements to your website like pictures, call-to-action buttons, sliders and much more. It provides an easy way for non-technical people to spice their pages up.
Reliable support – with a lot of the premium themes authors will typically provide free support and also keep the theme compliant with each release of WordPress.
Ecommerce integration – yes, you can sell products on your WordPress website. There are several high quality shopping cart options to choose from like WooCommerce, cart66, and wp commerce.
Purchasing a premium theme is most always worth it. There are free themes you can find automatically but I’ve also found that just like everything else in life, “you get what pay for”.
Social Integration
WordPress has done a great job so far with Buddypress, a plugin that adds forum and social-like features to your WP website. And the best part about BuddyPress is that it’s completely free, just like the other plugins on the marketplace. Other useful social features include post sharing abilities like direct to Twitter and Facebook. You’re basically killing many birds with one stone by automatically publishing your posts to several social networks.
The Time Has Come For PHP
It’s no wonder PHP and WordPress are completely dominant right now. With all of the great features of WordPress and PHP baked right in it’s easy for traditional PHP developers to get on board with customizing WordPress.