WordPress is the most popular content management system and hugely popular among website owners, designers, and developers. Over 25% of all websites run on WordPress. That’s crazy! Despite almost taking over the web, there are still many people that don’t trust WordPress sites or have wrong opinions about them.
Today, I want to talk to you about the most common WordPress misconceptions. These are things I hear all the time from bloggers, business owners, people looking for a new website for their business, and even designers and developers.
You’ll have a hard time learning how to use it
One of the things that I see often in Facebook groups is that WordPress is hard to learn. I’m not one of those people who thinks everyone should be on WordPress because it’s the best option for me but don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.
Learning how to do the basic things, like installing a theme, adding plugins, writing posts and setting up pages is easy. Since it was built as a blogging platform, it has a very easy to use text editor that helps you write and publish posts.
The tricky part is actually customizing your site. If you want a site that’s tailored to your needs, you probably need to hire a professional or spend countless hours learning how to do it.
You need to know how to code
Like I said before, you don’t need to start taking web programming classes to have a blog on WordPress. Most themes and plugins have a lot of built-in features and customization options that let you have the perfect blog without touching code. It’s not that hard to create content and manage your site even if you are technologically challenged.
If you are obsessed with every little detail of your site, you might need to learn a bit of CSS and HTML and maybe even PHP. Keep in mind that you have to do this if you want to customize most content management systems.
It’s just for blogs
I hear this all the time from business owners that want a website built from scratch with a nice back-end so they can easily add content. I have to tell you that building a site like that takes a lot of time and it can be very expensive.
Even though it was built as a blogging platform more than ten years ago, you can use it for almost any kind of website. There are many sites built on it from small businesses to news and magazines.
It’s just for businesses
Most people think that WordPress is just for blogs, but there are also those who think that it’s only for businesses and more advanced users.
Having a blog or a business site on a free platform, like wordpress.com or blogspot.com, makes you look unprofessional, even more so if you don’t have your own domain. Well, we all have to start somewhere. At the same time, this is what makes people think that WordPress is only for businesses and people who want to monetize their blogs.
In reality, it’s for those who want to have complete control over their site and their content. It has nothing to do with businesses.
WordPress is not secure
I often read about people that move away from self-hosted WordPress because their site was hacked more than once. It’s easy to think that your potential WordPress site will not be safe.
WordPress sites are targeted by hackers because they are so popular and so many people use them. Hackers usually get in because you don’t update or because your password is not strong enough.
There are many ways to stop hackers from taking over your site and none of them are very complicated. Besides, all websites have vulnerabilities and it’s your job to keep your site safe.
It’s free therefore it’s for amateurs
WordPress is an open-source CMS. That means that besides its main developers, there’s a large community surrounding it that’s dedicated to developing and testing it.
It also means that everybody has access to the WordPress Codex so it makes it easier for people to create themes and plugins. And there’s even a large community to help you solve your issues.
All sites look the same
When people think of a WordPress site, they usually have a certain layout in mind. The visual appearance of a site is controlled through themes and a lot of them have the common content-sidebar look. There are even bloggers that want their site to look like a WordPress site even though they are on another blogging platform.
You can find thousands of themes online and most of them are not very expensive. Some of them are easy to customize with your own logo and you can change the layout and colors without touching the code.
Designers and developers can turn a simple blog theme into your dream website.
You don’t have to worry about SEO
I hear this all the time. There are many people who think you will be on the first page of Google search results just because you are on WordPress. Yes, there are many plugins that can help you with that, but there are still many things you have to do yourself.
One of the things you have to do is create fresh and engaging content. Even if you use a SEO plugin, you still have to add keywords, meta description, optimize images and have a user-friendly website.
Although there are many new and popular blogging platforms, WordPress continues to change and evolve and helps you create beautiful and functional websites.
Do you use WordPress? Are there any misconceptions you’ve come across?
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