For almost as long as I’ve been building websites, I’ve been using WordPress. I’ve built dozens of WordPress sites, and I’ve updated and maintained even more. I’ve built a successful, respected website design business, and WordPress is at the heart of it.
Sometimes people commit to a particular format or platform because it’s familiar to them, a “stick with what you know” approach. I think that’s perfectly valid. You have to use what you’re
comfortable with.
But that’s not me.
I’m happy to switch to fancy new technology; my wife will tell you that I love a gadget. I’m always on the lookout for the latest plugins and project-management software. I love getting my hands on new toys.
But I’ve stuck with WordPress over the years, and I’ll keep sticking with it. Here’s why.
WordPress is easy to use, but it’s not basic. When you think about it, considering all of the various design options you have when building a WordPress site, making it “easy” is quite a feat.
True, even people with little web-design experience can plonk together a WordPress site, but that’s just a testament to how intuitive it is. As an experienced designer, WordPress lets
me—and my clients—dream big, and then bring those dreams to life without getting bogged down in complicated, inefficient workarounds.
A lot of these big dreams come true thanks to WordPress plugins, which put exceptional online functionality at your fingertips. Plugins bridge the gap between complex source code and clean, functional design.
That means that you have virtually infinite options for what you can accomplish with a WordPress site, including ecommerce, galleries and portfolios, forums, blogs, members-only, and media collections like videos and audio files.
This is where my love of gadgets comes in. There are so many possible functionalities that there’s no limit to what I can achieve with a WordPress site. The only limit is our own imagination, and I love to push that farther and farther every time I sit down to design. No matter what you want your website to do, any good design is a sleek, streamlined presentation that has resulted from hours of digging around and experimenting. WordPress makes this
process downright fun.
The key to all of this is that WordPress is an open-source software, which means the best design minds out there have been able to contribute to it, and users benefit from those limitless contributions. There’s a massive WordPress community pushing the boundaries while simultaneously streamlining the designs. That’s the best of both worlds. Rather than a closed-door company reliant on a handful of designers who can stagnate creatively, WordPress allows everyone in on the process so the creativity is ever-expanding.
WordPress is more than a tool. It’s a source of inspiration.
