What are the top reasons to use WordPress for your website projects? How does WordPress help you build websites faster?
If WordPress makes it easier and faster to build websites from scratch, isn’t it like cheating?
After all, when you learn coding and want to become a web developer, shouldn’t you be coding your sites from scratch?
Well, the truth is:
WordPress can simply make your life a whole lot easier as web developer. Especially if you want to become a freelance web developer, you should find tools that help you save time and make more money.
Also, you can build a professional portfolio website on WordPress faster than you think.
If you’re not familiar, WordPress is the #1 Content Management System or CMS worldwide.
Thus, there’s more than enough demand for skilled web developers who know how to build beautiful websites with it.
That said, if you learn how to build WordPress websites for clients, you won’t run out of work, trust me.
This powerful CMS allows you to easily build websites that work smoothly, look great, and require little maintenance.
To help you start a successful freelance web developer career, in this post I’ll walk you through the top reasons to use WordPress.
Let’s dive right in!
Here are a few related posts for you:
- The Best Programming Languages and Tools for Freelancing
- 5 Big Benefits of Starting a Blog About Programming
- 10 Quick Steps to Setup WordPress After Installation
Please note: This post contains affiliate links to products I use and recommend. I may receive a small commission if you purchase through one of my links, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a Content Management System (or CMS) first released in 2003 as a platform for blogging.
Since then, it has grown into an incredibly powerful and customisable CMS for creating websites of pretty much any kind.
WordPress powers over 43% of the top 10 million websites around the world as we speak.
Moreover, it’s the single most popular CMS in the market, with a staggering market share of 63.8%.
WordPress comes in two different versions, WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
Let’s look at a few key differences between them next.
1: WordPress.com
Heaps of bloggers choose the WordPress.com version. It’s a free blogging platform where you can start a blog in just a few minutes and publish your first post right away.
Their blog URLs are something like:
myawesomeblog.wordpress.com
Thus, their blog points at the wordpress.com domain. They don’t really own the traffic or their content.
WordPress.com may also display ads on their sites that they can’t disable or control.
Also, they don’t have full control over customizing their site’s design with powerful WordPress themes.
2: WordPress.org
The other, more professional alternative is the self-hosted WordPress.org software.
It allows you to install WordPress directly on your own web hosting account.
This means that you can register a domain name of your choice and create a custom website with WordPress for it.
Thus, your website URL with WordPress.org would be something like:
mygreatwebsite.com
The self-hosted WordPress.org software gives you full control over everything.
In this post, I’m referring to this self-hosted version whenever I’m talking about WordPress.
For more details, check out this article on the differences between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.
But how did WordPress become such a big player in the market?
What makes it so awesome? And what type of projects can you build with it?
What can you build with WordPress?
There are plenty of reasons why WordPress speaks to such a vast, diverse market.
Simply put, it offers an efficient framework for several different types of website projects, such as:
- Blogs
- News portals
- Business websites
- E-commerce websites
- Discussion forums
- Personal homepages
- Portfolio websites
- Social media and networks
WordPress is an incredibly versatile tool for any web developer in 2023 and beyond.
Moreover, if you’re planning to use a CMS as a web developer, WordPress has the biggest supply of jobs you can apply to.
That said, if you want to start a freelance web developer career, learning how to create beautiful WordPress websites is your safest bet.
Even if you’re just getting started with learning web development, you can start making money freelancing online faster than you think.
If you browse through job openings on an online freelancing platform like UpWork, you’ll find heaps of jobs at around $500 where people need a website that has:
- A modern, responsive, and custom design
- 4-10 pages of content (including “About”, “Contact”, “Services” etc.)
- A contact form
- Either a blog, portfolio, or shop
- The ability to manage and update the website themselves
The good news is: WordPress is the perfect tool for all of this.
Thus, if you can learn the skills to fulfil these points as a freelance web developer, you’ve found a goldmine.
Why is WordPress so popular?
WordPress has countless of awesome features that make it so insanely popular.
But remember: Using a CMS like WordPress to build websites divides opinions among web developers.
Because you’re not coding everything from scratch, you may hear some people argue that using WordPress is “cheating”.
But the truth is:
The demand for WordPress websites is massive these days.
Here’s why:
If you build every website from the ground up, your prices will be too high for most clients out there. Most small businesses can’t afford a custom-built website coded from scratch.
Hence, if you want to build websites for other freelancers or small businesses, you simply can’t offer competitive pricing.
WordPress saves you heaps of time and allows you to build full-scale websites in a fraction of the time it takes to code them from scratch.
This means that you can target a larger pool of potential clients, and deliver great results without breaking the bank.
Of course, you still need to learn how WordPress works under the hood. That’s the only way to understand how you can customize the system to fit your clients’ needs.
Alright, let’s just right into some of my favorite reasons to use WordPress:
Reason #1: WordPress saves you time
First and foremost, learning the basics of WordPress is very easy.
And learning how to use WordPress pays off: You will be able to build websites much faster.
The thing with WordPress is that it’s almost like a shake-n-bake mix. Since most cake batters have the same ingredients anyways, why not use a ready-made mix off the shelf?
Much like a delicious cake mix, most websites use similar tools, too.
Just like any other website you use, WordPress too uses the universal front-end languages and tools:
The back-end functionalities are based on PHP.
These four languages give you a solid foundation for building any type of WordPress website.
Thus, you need to know how to use them but you don’t have to build everything from scratch for every website you create.
So, instead of taking baby steps towards launching any given website project, you can take bigger leaps and get your projects on their feet faster with WordPress.
Reason #2: WordPress is very easy to use
This is one of the top reasons to use WordPress for client projects.
First of all, WordPress is super easy to use for anyone with some coding skills.
But furthermore, your clients will also benefit from WordPress.
Some clients want to be able to update their websites themselves. They might want to publish new blog posts or add a new paragraph to the home page, for example.
Now, if you’re freelancing, you don’t want a dozen emails every day where your clients ask you to add a sentence to their website. This is not only unnecessarily inefficient, but it’s more likely that the websites don’t get updated in the first place.
WordPress is easy to use for both you and your clients. They don’t have to contact you every time they want to adjust a few details. Hence, you can use your valuable time for more productive tasks.
Reason #3: WordPress is 100% free to use
That’s right! You’re free to use WordPress and all the awesome tools it offers without spending a dime. It’s an open-source project with thousands of developers contributing to improving it constantly.
When you’re building a website, you obviously need a domain name and a web hosting account. There are dozens of great providers to choose from, and you should compare a few options before you sign up.
I use Bluehost for my blogs, simply because they offer great value for my money.
Plus, it’s easy to set up everything with them, and they are super helpful with any questions I have.
If you’re not sure where to host your WordPress website, check out my full guide on how to choose the best web hosting provider easily.
Most web hosting providers – including Bluehost – offer an automatic WordPress installation tool.
When you sign up for a hosting plan, they will install the software for you to start using right away.
But you can also download the WordPress software for free at WordPress.org. Then, just link your installation to a database and you’re all set.
For more details, check out my post on how to install WordPress manually.
Reason #4: WordPress is highly customizable
When it comes to creating a website for a client, nailing the design is just as important as getting the technical features right.
With WordPress, you have practically unlimited possibilities to be creative.
Using WordPress themes to customize your design
You can customize and adjust the look and feel of your website using pre-made WordPress themes or creating one of your own. They allow you to customize:
- The page layout
- Menu structures
- Colors
- Fonts
- Backgrounds
- and much more…
There are hundreds of beautiful, free themes to choose from. You can easily find and install them directly in your WordPress dashboard.
And if you can invest a few bucks in a paid premium theme, you’ll get even more powerful customization tools to use.
Some of the most popular and powerful premium themes include:
Here’s a helpful post for finding the perfect WordPress theme for your website or blog.
Using WordPress plugins to add new features
Apart from customizing the design of your website, WordPress also allows you to add new features and functionalities.
That’s where WordPress plugins come into the picture.
You can use different plugins to:
- Manage your SEO tasks
- Add a contact form to your website
- Create an online shop for your client
- Manage your blog comments
- Speed up your website
- Add email opt-in forms
- Increase the security of your website
- Create backups of your site
Again, there are thousands of free plugins you can use right away.
These days, the possibilities with WordPress plugins are almost unlimited.
But bear in mind that plugins come from third parties. They aren’t necessarily compatible with your WordPress theme (or with each other).
Therefore, make sure you really need a certain plugin and test it thoroughly before installing it.
Check out these powerful WordPress plugins to get started.
Reason #5: WordPress makes SEO easy
Speaking of search engine optimisation (SEO), WordPress offers a variety of tools for making sure that your website can easily be crawled by search engines and included in their search results.
When you launch a website, you want to attract visitors and relevant traffic to your page. Therefore, SEO is a major issue you should focus on.
And if SEO isn’t your forte just yet, don’t worry. There are plenty of free WordPress plugins to choose from that will help you out from day one.
You can start by checking out my post on how to use the Yoast SEO Plugin for your WordPress website.
Recommended: How Do Search Engines Work Exactly?
Reason #6: WordPress is responsive and mobile-friendly
Websites created with WordPress are responsive, meaning that they look good on any device you use to visit them.
So, regardless of whether you’re sitting in front of your desktop or using your phone to view a web page, the layout will adjust to your screen size.
According to Cisco’s Annual Internet Report, over 70 percent of the global population will have mobile connectivity by 2023.
Furthermore, 50% of all traffic on the Web is mobile-based. Therefore, responsiveness is a big deal in web design and development.
Again, this is where powerful WordPress themes can help you.
For instance, the Divi theme is 100% responsive and super easy to use. I use it for almost all of my WordPress projects, and I really can’t recommend it enough.
Reason #7: WordPress is scalable
My first WordPress website was just a simple little project that didn’t exactly attract massive traffic from all over the world.
But how about using WordPress for a big news website that perhaps has millions of hits every day or at least on a weekly level?
There are plenty of good examples of sites created with WordPress that need to work on this kind of scale, like CNN, for instance.
Other good examples of big names relying on WordPress are Sony Music, MTV News, TechCrunch, and Fortune.
Reason #8: WordPress has a huge global, supportive community
Whenever you need help with your website for some reason, anyone with skills in PHP and MySQL can lend you a hand to solve problems concerning back-end functionalities.
When it comes to front-end challenges, basic knowledge in HTML and CSS alone will get you pretty far. Here’s a great book to get you started.
For hands-on practice, check out these 30+ HTML and CSS projects for beginners with source code.
Since WordPress is such a widespread and popular framework on a global level, there’s a huge community out there to support you when you’re having trouble making things work then way you intended.
Whatever problem you may have, it’s highly likely that someone else has struggled with it already and posted it on a forum somewhere. And if not, feel free to do so yourself!
Reason #9: WordPress supports multiple content types
Professional-looking, easy-to-use websites contain various different sorts of content.
With WordPress, you’re not limited to writing blog posts and attaching an image to them.
Instead, you can enrich your visitors’ experience by adding more diverse media onto your web page.
Perhaps you’d like to add a video, or some audio? No problem!
Or maybe you wish to embed some content from other platforms, like Instagram photos, Tweets, Youtube videos, or Soundcloud audio? WordPress will make it work!
Final thoughts: Top reasons to use WordPress to build websites
All in all, WordPress offers an amazing set of tools for building professional websites fast.
If you’re just getting started with web development, it’s definitely a valuable asset to have in your toolbox.
Depending on what you wish to create with coding and web development in the future, WordPress is worth giving a try. It allows you to build all kinds of different websites for a wide variety of clients.
And since you’ll be able to build everything by yourself, WordPress is one of the best tools for freelancers.
Ready to learn how to use WordPress? Awesome!
Here’s the course I used to learn how to build WordPress websites:
I spent a couple of months practising and building mockup projects for my portfolio. At that point, it felt like the right thing for me, so I decided to quit my job.
I slowly started working on small projects and gradually build a steady base of clients.
And just a few months later, I had to start turning down freelance jobs because I had too much to do.
Needless to say, the course paid itself back quicker than I expected. I’ve never been short of work.
I’ve never looked back either. Freelancing and WordPress are paying my bills and I’m feeling happier than ever with my job.
I have much more time I can spend with friends and family, and I can work remotely whenever I feel like traveling. Not too shabby!
What do you think about WordPress? Do you see yourself working with it in the future? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below!
Here are a few hand-picked articles you might want to read:
- How to Become a Front-End Web Developer? Step-by-Step Guide
- What Is the Easiest Programming Language for Beginners?
P.S. If you found this article helpful, please share it with others, too! Thanks!
