This is My Love Story With WordPress And Why You Should Start Using IT. On Sunday 27th of May 2018, WordPress clocked 15. WordPress lovers and users within Nigeria gathered at Paystack HQ in Lagos to celebrate the day before to celebrate WordPress.
WordPress means different things to different people, especially a section of the core developers among us as exemplified by some comment from the anniversary post on Nairaland
Many of us regard WordPress as a lazy tool for Web designers who can’t code and who shouldn’t refer themselves as Web designers.
They don’t see anything good about using WordPress and have the cruelness of words for anyone that uses WordPress to build/design websites/blog for businesses. To them, web design and development starts and ends with you writing hundreds of code and anything else outside of this, doesn’t just fit in.
My Earlier View About WordPress
I have a similar view some years back. Earlier 2014 I wasn’t really aware of what WordPress was and what I can use it for, though I do see adverts for WordPress developers on many job boards yet I still didn’t know exactly what WordPress is meant for.
Then I signed up to attend a WordPress workshop at General Assembly London Campus, I couldn’t make it out of Pompey (Portsmouth) on the day of the event, but I still got the event materials. I took my time to go through the material and for the first time, I began to have an idea of what WordPress is all about.
What You Need To Know About WordPress
I got to understand that WordPress is open-source publishing software that you can use to easily and quickly build and manage your business, personal, professional website and blog.
- I found out that WordPress (first released in May 2013) powers over 30% of the web and Is the easiest of Content Management System and the most flexible among its prey (Joomla, Drupal, Magneto)
- I also found out that WordPress is completely free. Yes, free you don’t pay a dim to download WordPress and start putting it into use either via your local server (XAMPP, WAMP, and MAMP) or your live using varied of options from ‘One-click’ install and other options like using softaculous.
- With WordPress, you have two options. Self-hosted one using wordpress.org This is where you get the downloadable version of the software that you can install on your local or live server. With WordPress.org, you’re completely responsible for your blog or website domain registration and hosting but with WordPress.com you don’t need to worry about all that.
- But then, when you’re up for something serious and want total freedom to do all that you want to do on your site (upload custom themes, make changes to the PHP codes behind your site or upload and use premium plugins, then you go to use wordpress.org
- WordPress is SEO Friendly. Yes, WordPress gives you everything you need to make your website, blog and its content search engine friendly alongside
Read Also – The Difference Between Blog and Website
With WordPress, you can do just about anything with your blog and website content the way you want with limitless option to extend it the way you want and how you want it with the avalanche of themes, plugins and page builders available to you to do just about anything without knowing how to code.
Getting Started With WordPress.
So back to Nigeria, I got my first job as Web/Social Media Manager for a Health Institution. Rebuilt their site by coding it from the ground up using HTML, CSS, JS and a bit of PHP here and there.
But have to tire down the site and rebuild with WordPress, when I found out that most of their competitor’s sites were built with WordPress. So Fusion Nest Fertility Center became my first WordPress Website.
Then I got a remote job with a Real Estate Startup Company, my job was mainly to coordinate their website project sorting out the UXD side of things while I get involved from time to time were necessary on other things on the site, especially when the contract developers are on leave on not available for one reason or the other.
It turns out this was another WordPress website which was being built with a premium theme and has real developers working on some custom things within the site. Thus myhomematch.com.ng became my second WordPress Website as I later got involve deeply on the site using my coding knowledge and the few things I already know about WordPress.
The turn around came when the project lead requested that I build a website for a charity organization she has an interest in. I started my normal mockup and HTML things, but I was told in clear terms that the site must be built with WordPress then I know it’s time to make the real plunge into WordPress.
Thus Efficacy Construction Company became my third WordPress Website quickly followed by many others
Today with WordPress I have worked with clients both far and near, clients that I have built a personal relationship with, clients that didn’t need to see and on over 40 websites and blog (this is just a modest figure) till date.
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What Type Of Website Can You Build With WordPress?
Just about any website
- Business
- Personal Portfolio Websites
- E-commerce
- Job Boards
- NGO/Charity
- Church
- Real Estate
- Hospital
- School
- Hotels
- Directory
- Auction
- Forum
and many more too numerous to be listed here
The above is just to show you that you can build just about any website with WordPress across the board. And WordPress has with it some of the biggest names on the planet from Techcrunch to Usainbolt, Walt Disney and Time Inc all have their websites on WordPress.
So Do You Need WordPress For Your Next Website Project?
Yes you will if you
- Want to build the site quick, fast and clear
- You don’t want to burden yourself with codes
- You want your clients to get in and manage stuff by themselves without fuss
If you want all of the above and more, then you got to love WordPress, you got to use WordPress
In Conclusion
That I’m in love with WordPress and have now worked on over 40 websites with this tool, doesn’t mean I have completely abandoned coding.
In fact, you will be a better WordPress user if you know your code. Yes if you know your CSS and PHP, then you will be a better WordPress user. With your coding skill set, you can tweak your WordPress themes, build yours, work on plugins and offer your clients a lot more.
So you can build that website/blog today without fuss using WordPress and with WordPress, you have access to limitless support, videos and other materials to help you get up to speed quickly.
Rutherford Ejimonu is a Digital Marketer, Content analyst, SEO Specialist with many years of experience in the industry. He works with Doers Technologies as their Remote Webmaster, Content Strategies and SEO Specialist.