Nowadays, there are many different ways to achieve building a  website.  It used to be that websites were solely built using just hand-coded HTML.  We now have XTHML, CSS, Drupal,  Blogger, Joomla! and finally WordPress – an amazingly powerful content management system that is FREE to obtain and install – also known as ‘Open Source’.  And it has a lot of power ‘under the hood’ for a small or medium business looking for an easy way to manage their web site.  Very flexible and extremely robust.

WordPress was designed as a platform for blogging initially, but you don’t have to use it as a blogging tool at all.  With a few tweaks it can be used to run your website, with or without a “blog”.  The fact that WordPress was designed as a blogging platform gives it some compelling advantages, plus there are literally thousands of ‘plug-ins’ that are used to enhance and add pretty much any capablility you can think of into your wordpress site.

It is optimized for easily publishing and constantly-changing content. And getting good search engine rankings requires fresh, unique content.  You need a system that does not get in your way when you want to update your website with a new article or newsletter.  WordPress (once set up) can be maintained by anyone, and any clients that OwenDevelopment set up WordPress sites for, recieve step-by-step instructions on how to maintain your site once it’s been customized and set up for you.

So why is WordPress such a good choice?

Top Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Website

• SEO – WordPress provides excellent search engine optimization (SEO) right out-of-the-box. There are a few tweaks you need to make initially, but there are many seo benefits that WordPress provides for free. In fact Google’s own Matt Cutts says WordPress is “made to do SEO well”.

• Content – it is easy to update content on your website without knowing any HTML.  Do you hate the idea of having to learn to use a complex HTML editor tool like Dreamweaver? Do you have to “ask” your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your website?  Well no longer – once WordPress is set up for you and fully customized, you can easily create new pages or edit existing pages using a simple rich text editor.

• Extensions – There is a thriving ecosystem of developers creating themes and plug-ins – imagine free design themes, or the ability to extend your website with polls, contact forms, ratings or hundreds of other cool features without having to hire a web developer.

• Support – If you do have problems, or want to add very custom features, it is easy to get support from us as we can nominate a specific login for your site which we can go in, change what you need to, or fix what isn’t working at any time so you have a quick fix.  Need something adding into the site like a plug-in?  No problem.  I have been working with WordPress for years and am very confident in full customisation and fixes.  Sometimes HTML and php programming are useful for looks or site features, which may mean you can’t fix it yourself, but we can.

• One-click-installation – Quick installs are provided by many hosting providers, including Bluehost, 1and1 and GoDaddy.  I have experience of 1-click installs as well as full manual installs, so either way: I can do either for you.