WordPress is the most popular FREE content management system in use today.
WordPress has been downloaded over 10 million times worldwide and is trusted by both small and large business owners. Here is a short list of businesses and government agencies currently using WordPress: CNN, Dow Jones, the New York Times, People magazine, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal, the CIA, DEA, FBI, NSA, not to mention the U.S. Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Navy and the Marine Corps.
Benefits of WordPress:
- SEO – WordPress is optimized “out of the box” for easily publishing and changing content. Fresh, unique content is essential for getting good search engine rankings. A static website which is rarely updated will quickly be ignored by Google and the other search engines, but by regularly adding new content (pages, posts, photos and announcements), your ranking will rise naturally in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
- CMS – WordPress acts as an efficient and powerful content management system (CMS), storing images, audio, video, PDFs and other content for easy insertion into your pages.
- Interactive – WordPress encourages interaction and engagement between you and your potential customers. Site visitors can easily connect with you by leaving comments on individual entries, filling out forms, taking online surveys, or downloading materials you have posted for them. Plus, it integrates elegantly with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare and other social media outlets.
- Scalable – Its scalable model can be used to build a simple brochure-style website, a discussion blog, an ecommerce site, or even a multi-level membership site.
- Ease of Use – WordPress is a “Do-It-Yourself”, easy to use, WYSIWYG software that is installed on your web server. To create or edit content, just log into the site from a web browser and access the back-end admin panel. From there you can do everything from changing the layout of the site, adding new static pages, adding articles (aka blog posts), changing themes (similar to templates or “skins”), editing comments from site visitors, adding widgets, and more.
- Customizable– You can add movement and functionality using “sliders”, “widgets” and “plug-ins”.
- Widgets are drag-and-drop components that can be added to your site’s sidebars, header and footer. Widgets can display a wide variety of text, HTML, photos, polls, announcements, lists and even video.
- Plug-ins are mini-programs that extend WordPress’ functionality, e.g., shopping carts, advanced SEO functionality, enhanced editing, custom fields and more.
- Users & Authors – WordPress has a built-in user registration system that (if you choose) can allow people to leave authenticated comments on your blog. You can optionally close comments for non-registered users.
Choosing a Theme:
Themes determine how content is displayed. It is important that you choose an official WordPress theme that has been vetted and approved by WordPress.org. Unapproved themes don’t always work with core plug-ins, may break during release updates, or even harbor malicious code. I will not support or work with non-approved themes.
Twenty Twelve – WordPress comes with an excellent pre-installed theme titled “Twenty Twelve.” It is stylish, customizable, simple, and readable. It has a custom menu, header image, and background. Twenty Twelve supports six widgetized areas (two in the sidebar, four in the footer) and featured images (thumbnails for gallery posts and custom header images for posts and pages).
Free Themes – WordPress has an extensive repository of approved free themes at: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
While there are many beautiful free themes available, they often do not have the extra functionality of premium themes and the free theme authors have little motivation to update or support their themes. Free themes are fine for non-professional bloggers and those looking for a very low-cost alternatives.
Premium Themes –Premium themes can found here: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/
I own developers licenses for several premium themes and prefer them for long-term, professional use. Premium themes range in cost from $25 to $99; typically you get what you pay for. If you find a premium theme you prefer, I will help you evaluate its merits at no extra charge. Please note the cost of premium themes (other than the three listed above) is not included in the price quoted below and is the financial responsibility of the client.
Hosting Considerations
Choosing the right host for your website is critical to the “health” and ranking of your website. For websites with normal to low traffic, I recommend monthly shared hosting through HostGator, which costs between $4 and $10 a month. For websites with a lot of traffic, sites that are regularly mentioned on TV, or those looking to market and rank nationally I would research and interview a more robust and custom hosting solution.
