Website maintenanceWhy WordPress as CMS?

WordPress is the most widely used CMS system in the world. There are thousands and thousands (no exaggeration) of papers on the internet dealing with the architecture and extensions of this system. Here are the advantages from the point of view of an SME or small organisation.

Michael Mai, 14 June 2019

Picture of a beautifully tidy garden

WordPress is the most widely used CMS system in the world. There are thousands and thousands (no exaggeration) of papers on the internet dealing with the architecture and extensions of this system. In this article, I would simply like to list the advantages from the perspective of an SME or small organisation:

  • The basic version of WordPress is open source and free of charge.
  • By now, all major hosters offer the possibility to install WordPress with just one click. You choose a domain, click a button, enter a few details and then you have a complete content management system up and running. We even offer managed WordPress hosting, i.e. hosting where the technology is tailored specifically for WordPress.
  • Flexible design and layout:
    No other CMS has as many design templates (themes) as WordPress. You can download a theme, install it and change the entire appearance of your website with one click. You can choose from countless templates and select your favourite design. Prices range from free to about 100 EUR per theme. Most templates are already responsive, i.e. they also adapt to smartphones and tablets. So the difficulty is only to distinguish the good themes from the bad ones, but you don't really need a complete design process anymore.
  • Scalability of requirements:
    The strategic advantage of WordPress is the modular system with which the basic application can be extended as desired. Since it is one of the most widely used systems in the world, there is a so-called plugin for almost every use case that can be installed and adapted. A plugin extends WordPress by a certain functionality. Examples would be the famous SEO Plugin from Yoast or the useful Shariff pluginThis is a tool that can be used to implement the share buttons in social networks in a privacy-compliant way.
    This means your system can grow with your requirements and always adapt. Even if you have a Online shop If you need it, it is available as a plug-in.
  • Economical:
    It is much cheaper to purchase and adapt an existing plugin than to programme a requirement from scratch according to the motto: "Why reinvent the wheel when all you need is a nice rim?". You can assume that your exact problem has been encountered at least once on the internet in 2019 and that there is already a solution for it. As with themes, the effort is in finding the right plugin.
  • Performance:
    Excuse me? Performance? WordPress is said to be a bit sluggish by nature. However, this is usually because either the wrong hosting package was chosen or the application itself was not optimised. WordPress is characterised by its high scalability in performance. Many highly frequented applications such as SonyMusic (https://www.sonymusic.com) or the official website of the country of Sweden (https://sweden.se) use WordPress. If the routing model of WordPress is too slow, the option is to use the backend with WordPress and fall back on proven and fast frameworks such as Laravel for the frontend.

We hope we have been able to give you a few advantages that will make your decision easier. I would always choose WordPress with a bunch of plugins and the Astra theme for small websites that need to go online quickly. For landing pages anyway.

But of course there are also cases where WordPress is not the right system, but a dead end. We will write about that soon in an extra article 🙂

If you are still unsure whether WordPress is the right choice for your use case - give us a call or write to us and we will be happy to advise you.

See also