As WordPress specialists, CuCo design and develop bespoke e-commerce and brochure websites built on the CMS WordPress. Whether you are looking to develop a brand new website from scratch or add refreshing touches to an existing site, CuCo’s Digital Team are WordPress experts. As an open source CMS, WordPress allows our clients to update their own content as simply as possible.

WordPress History

WordPress started as a blogging platform in May 2003 and gradually evolved, first into a blogging system that let users add Web pages outside of the blog and then into a full-featured, popular CMS. Of the four most popular open-source CMSs — WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Magento — WordPress is the most popular and the fastest growing by far.

CuCo and WordPress

Here at CuCo, we love using WordPress as a CMS – it powers this and our main site. Because of its blogging origins – enabling users who have never run websites before blog – the simplicity of the admin side of WordPress means that our clients not only receive an excellently designed and built website from us, but they are also able to easily edit the site themselves with only having to go through a shallow learning curve. WordPress is currently the most popular CMS on the internet – with over 50 million WordPress powered sites Worldwide. It is used by over 14.7% of Alexa internet’s ‘top 1 million’ websites and, as of August 2011 powers 22% of all new websites. Some well known brands that use WordPress are:

• The Wall Street Journal
• Forbes
• TED
• NFL
• Reuters
• PlayStation
• Dole
• Samsung
• Mercedes Benz
• Nikon

Here are 10 reasons why WordPress is so popular and why we use it for most of our clients:

It’s cost-effective

The most obvious advantage of WordPress is that it is open source and the source code is completely free with no hidden costs. This makes it a very cost-effective code base to choose if you require a new or re-designed website and one which you can easily edit yourself.

Very user-friendly

Once we’ve completed a website for a client using WordPress they can easily update content themselves, using a ‘simple text editor’ which allows you to make quick and easy changes without having to come back to us (although we are always on the other end of the phone if any help is required at any stage!).

No HTML Editing or FTP Software Required

WordPress is a self-contained system and does not require HTML editing software (such as Adobe Contribute or Dreamweaver). You can create a new page or blog post, format text, upload images (and edit them), upload documents, video files, image galleries, etc. all without the need for additional HTML or FTP software.

Multi-media

You can easily just drag and drop media into the media library – photos, videos, audio, pdfs, documents, presentations and spreadsheets. The media library lets you upload files and insert them immediately in a post/page and/or you can save them to use later.

Brilliant for search engine optimisation

The coding and structure of WordPress mean that it is great for search engines. Plus, WordPress comes with several built-in SEO tools, including the ability to use .htaccess to create apparently static URLs called permalinks, blogrolling and pinging. There are also a number of third-party plugins and hacks which can be used for SEO.

Fully customisable

WordPress acts as the engine for your website. The look and feel of the site can be 100% customized so your brand can shine through on your site and provide a unique experience to your visitors.

Extend the Functionality of Your Site

Want to add an event calendar, video gallery, Twitter Feed, Facebook Fan Box, and more to your site? Well on top of the excellent functionality which comes with the basic package of WordPress you are also able to add plug-ins to fully customise your site; photo galleries, sliders, shopping carts, forums, maps, forms – the list is virtually endless. The most popular ones which we use for clients are contact forms, Twitter feeds and newsletter subscriptions.

Built-in blog/news pages

With blogs becoming more popular by clients as a way of improving rankings on search engine sites such as Google, the WordPress blog functionality is one of the best. It allows for; categories, tags, threaded commenting, easy theming, widgets and anti-spam solutions – plus much more!

Easily accessible from anywhere

WordPress sites are usually built on relatively simple and accessible technologies. The web pages render HTML and CSS allowing them to show up on iPhones, Blackberrys, Android, iPad etc. It’s also easy for alternative browsers such as text only browsers which are excellent for those with disabilities. You can even update your site on the go with the WordPress app.

Your website can stay current

Since WordPress 3.7, you don’t have to lift a finger to apply maintenance and security updates. Most sites are now able to automatically apply these updates in the background, though some configurations may not allow it.

Interaction with visitors

The WordPress blog allows visitors to leave messages or posts which means you can have interaction with potential and current clients.

Multiple users

Your company may need to have several people updating your site – for instance, different blog authors. With WordPress you can easily create individual accounts for each user and assign them to different access levels. Plus Post Locking will especially be a boon to sites where more than a single author is working on a post, it makes sure that if there are two users, they cannot both edit the same post simultaneously by kicking one of them out.

Security

Login expiry improvement means that if you step away from the page and your user’s login session has expired, a new login notification system will ask the user to login without leaving the page they were working on. Plus WordPress helps you create stronger passwords. Your password is your site’s first line of defence. It’s best to create passwords that are complex, long, and unique. To that end, our password meter has been updated in WordPress 3.7 to recognize common mistakes that can weaken your password: dates, names, keyboard patterns (123456789), and even pop culture references.

The above points are just the main advantages of using WordPress for your CMS – to find out just how it can be beneficial for you, get in touch.