10 Reasons I Jumped on the Wordpress Bandwagon

I’m building a new Wordpress-powered version of Stafflink.ca. Our current site is okay, but Wordpress could bring us to a whole new level. Actually it’s become a bit of an obsession for me.

The seed was planted about a year ago when my colleague Ryan Ayres told me about Wordpress. I wasn’t ready to take the plunge at the time. But since then I've been building little Wordpress sandbox sites to play with and learn.

I’m not the only one jumping on the bandwagon. According to Wordpress stats, there are over 32 million WordPress publishers as of November 2010.

The magic of Wordpress is that it enables anyone to create a dynamic corporate website very quickly and fairly easily depending on how much customization you want.

Something for everyone. It’s not just a blogging platform. It’s a full-fledged content management system. It can be a do-it-yourself web development tool for non-designers and non-coders. Or you can extend Wordpress by building your own templates, plugins and widgets. In either case your site is powered by the amazing open source PHP and MySQL based Wordpress platform.

Top ten reasons I Love Wordpress

1. It’s revolutionary. With Wordpress anyone who knows a little HTML and CSS can put up a dynamic business website in a few weeks (except for me apparently :-).
2. Open source. Its continuously improving thanks to a huge community of developers lead by Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg.
3. You’re in good company. NYTimes, Ebay, Yahoo, Ford, SmashingMag, Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, Sony, Samsung, Playstation and Wired all have Wordpress sites.
4. Easy to install. Wordpress.org is famous for the 5-minute installation. (It took me quite a bit longer the first time).
5. Community support. Numerous sites like WPBeginner.com , WPTavern.com and WPRecipe.com offer tutorials, tips and reviews.
6. Templates. Wordpress enables you to style your website automatically with a huge selection of free and premium design templates.
7. Plugins. Get a free plugin for almost anything: social media , backups, caching, security, mobile integration.
8. Widgets. Drag and drop elements to build your sidebars and footer.
9. Documentation. The Wordpress Codex is fully searchable and meticulously maintained by a dedicated development community.
10. It’s Free! Take advantage of all of this awesomeness for free. Really. I know. It seems too good to be true.

I am so excited to launch a Wordpress powered version of Stafflink.ca. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime if you have any Wordpress tips to share you’ve got my attention. I’ll be happy to try to answer your questions too!

Written by
Laura Upcott
Stafflink Solutions Ltd.
http://stafflink.ca/
http://www.myelbowspace.com/
laurau@stafflink.ca
http://www.twitter.com/lauraupcott
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/lauraupcott