Why We Recommend WordPress
WordPress has become most people’s first choice for a quick and easy website. This is mainly thanks to how simple it is to setup and get a website running with little or no technical background.
This article focuses on a few basic features of WordPress and why we recommend it to our Web Hosting customers.
Themes
Themes are the foundations of all WordPress websites and you will need one to be installed at all times. When you install WordPress there are three themes already included and one will already be active so that you have a basic 1-page website.
There are 2 categories of themes you can choose from:
Free Themes
A quick Google search for “free WordPress themes” will give you 1000’s of quality themes that you can live preview, download right away, and start using free of charge.
If you’re looking for something specific, let’s say a Photography theme, you can Google “Best Free Photography WordPress Themes” and find collections of the best Photography websites that people and companies have put together.
Here are some great places to find free themes:
- https://wordpress.org/themes/search.php?q=free
- http://www.wpexplorer.com/top-free-themes/
- http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/free-wordpress-themes-712429
- http://freewpthemes.co/
Free themes can be limited in functionality, have paid upgrade options to unlock the full potential of the website, or have limited support while being difficult to customize, watch out for these.
Premium Themes
Premium or Paid themes are ones that need to be purchased before being downloaded or installed and are usually restricted so that the theme cannot be installed on multiple websites.
These paid themes usually come with more functionality, website features and better technical support with regular theme improvements and bug fixes. With premium themes you get what you pay for and we recommend you find one of these if you have long term plans to grow and develop your website.
Price range starts at anything from R100 up to the R10 000’s for premium themes. Here are a couple of recommended websites to browse:
Plugins
A plugin is an extension for your website that can be bolted onto your website for functionality that isn’t included with the basic theme template. Plugins function in a very similar way to how Apps can be installed on mobile phones.
Due to the framework that WordPress is built on, plugin creators can create tools that are compatible across most themes. Plugins can be installed, deactivated or deleted as needed by the website owner.
Plugins also come in free and paid variants, here are some popular plugin collections:
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/
- http://codecanyon.net/category/wordpress
- https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/
Outsourced Development
The free framework WordPress has created has allowed for developers to create themes and plugins all around the world, growing the ability of this platform every day.
This also means that, if you have a WordPress website, you will have access to the global market place of freelancers and agencies that can upgrade your website and customize it to your specific design and development requirements.
Here are a couple of recommended ways to find people to customize your WordPress website:
These are just a few of many benefits of having a WordPress website. We’ve left out many amazing features for the sake of brevity, but we recommend that you go get WordPress installed for yourself and see how simple creating your own website can be.
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