What is WordPress and Why is it Good for Your Business?
WordPress is a web-based, open source website development and management tool built on the technology combination of PHP and MySQL. WordPress belongs to a class of software known as Content Management Systems (CMS), designed to allow people to create, publish and maintain online content using just a web browser and without requiring them to possess coding skills.
Why Should You Build Your Business Website With WordPress?
When you take into consideration that I run a business that is built using WordPress, it is perhaps obvious that I must think WordPress rocks! And indeed it does. I am frequently asked why I favour the WordPress website platform over all other systems and platforms, so often in fact, that I’ve decided to finally sit down and put my thoughts about the topic into a book.
Although there are literally dozens of reasons why WordPress is a brilliant choice for developing your business website, the ten (10) main reasons to my way of thinking are:
- WordPress is free
- WordPress has default website functionality ‘out of the box’
- WordPress is very supportive of SEO as standard
- WordPress is the closest thing to a de facto web development platform
- WordPress allows you to update it quickly and easily
- WordPress is supported by a massive community of plugin and theme developers
- WordPress is easy to learn and simple to manage
- WordPress has widely available official and unofficial support
- WordPress is supported by all reputable web hosts
- WordPress is highly flexible and customisable
I’ll describe each one of these reason below in detail, each followed by a short summary as to why these reasons are of significant benefit in a business context.
1 WordPress is free
The term ‘free’ as it applies to WordPress has a dual meaning. Firstly it is free in the sense that you can get it and use it without having to pay any form of up-front or ongoing fee, ever. However, the term ‘free’ as the makers of WordPress intend it aligns itself more closely to that of ‘freedom of speech’ as a philosophy of unrestricted expression and sharing.
In the software world, WordPress is what’s known as an Open Source application or program. This means that WordPress is made freely available to anyone to use under a licence that allows it to be used, modified and / or shared under a set of defined terms and conditions. Specifically, WordPress is released under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), which simply means that anyone who changes and then releases their own version of the program must do so under the same terms and conditions upon which they originally obtained it.
However, from a business perspective, the GPL places no limitations on usage at all, for the enterprises that use it are not modifying its source code for the purposes of creating their own version of the platform for sale. Rather, they are simply using WordPress as the platform upon which to build their own proprietary websites, upon which all data, information and content published or otherwise made available is copyright-protected intellectual property.
Put in more simplistic terms however, if you intend to use WordPress solely for the purpose of building and managing a business website, then it is indeed totally free of cost, and further, its licencing conditions have no bearing on its usage for this purpose.
