You’re not a coding genius, but you do need a website for your business. Fortunately, web building platforms have your back with “drag and drop” interfaces that allow you to create beautiful, intuitive websites—even if you know nothing about HTML, CSS or Java. There are a lot of platforms out there to get you started so we asked the experts to narrow down the choices. Read on to learn more.
Axel DeAngelis
WordPress
Why is WordPress Best for SEO?
WordPress is the best website building platform because it has significant third-party support. Many online tutorials and guides assume that the reader uses WordPress. It’s much easier to follow a tutorial to the letter, rather than adapting it for another platform.
In addition to web tutorials, many popular SaaS tools have WordPress integrations. With WordPress, website owners don’t need to hire a developer to integrate a tool they find useful. Instead, they can install the plugin and connect the integration in a few minutes.
WordPress is the best SEO platform because of the friendly CMS and plugin support. The CMS makes it extremely easy to add metadata, optimize images, and edit permalinks. It also supports plugins like Yoast SEO, which makes it easy for any business owner to optimize their content.
There are so many reasons that WordPress is the best platform.
The community is growing
There are a ton of new businesses and individuals who are developing all kinds of different plugins and enhancements that could be used in your WordPress website. You pay a small fee to use the plugin and that helps you save tons of money paying a developer to create it (i.e., you don’t have to reinvent the wheel).
It’s customizable
Since it comes with a lot of things you need to build a complex website, like databases, user profiles, post types, etc., you’re able to create anything you need with a little bit of imagination and a good full stack developer.
It’s Free
If you’re using the open-source model
Meesha Gerhart
Brett Downes
WordPress isn’t the best, but…
Technically speaking WordPress isn’t the best platform to build a website on, but people will get more out of it as it is the most popular and every man and their dog has some kind of experience with it.
The forums, support groups and network for help around WordPress are fantastic – any issues you have you just reach out and somebody else will have had that same problem and will be able to give you the solution.
The guides are so widespread and available that it is simple to get going on WordPress from day one and start to optimise your site immediately.
The user interface is friendly and intuitive so even a beginner will be able to get a website up and running in a few days. Then for more advanced things they can self-learn or reach out for help from one of the many communities.
WordPress is hands-down the best
WordPress is hands-down the best platform to build a website on.
I recently made the transition from Blogger, the other popular platform, and my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.
WordPress gives you the ‘block’ system for writing. The block system makes your content incredibly user friendly. This means your valuable fanbase and readers have an easier time reading what you’re writing to them every day.
Furthermore, this block system makes it incredibly easy to add polls, bullet points, different formatting options, widgets, and plugins. This brings your writing to the next level, allowing your website to not only look professional but be taken seriously.
Lastly, your content will look phenomenal compared to other online platforms. No other platform for website creation allows you to write and create content as easily or as efficiently as WordPress does.
I recommend you go to wordpress.com and try the free plan just to mess around with it a bit and see how you like it. It’s also incredibly easy to switch from any platform to WordPress once you do decide to move platforms.
Over 70% of the internet is run by WordPress- it’s time for you to make the switch.
Thomas Pederson
Lisa McCloud
Benefits of using WordPress
Widely Supported
You might not have realized it but WordPress is everywhere. Almost 38% of websites were using WordPress in July 2020 according to w3techs. And this number is steadily increasing, as in 2019 this percentage was 34%.
Because so many websites are actively using WordPress, it is constantly being tested, developed, and troubleshot. If you come across a question or something you can’t quite get to work, chances are highly likely someone else has had the same idea and has come up with a solution or answer, meaning you can often find them yourself with a quick search saving you time.
Easy To Build & Customize Without A Developer
WordPress makes it easier than ever to build and customize your website with a steady supply of plugins, endless themes, and, most recently, the implementation of WordPress Gutenberg.
WordPress Gutenberg has come a long way from its first strongly criticized release. Not only can it be used to write articles, but it can completely customize your website’s layout, too—all without a single line of code.
And in the near future, there will be less of a need for additional plugins and page builders to design your website.
WordPress Is Reliable, Updated & Has a Strong Focus On Security
WordPress has been around for a long time since it first appeared in 2003, yet it is still steadily getting used on more websites year after year.
Why?
Because despite WordPress being old, it is still frequently updated to provide the best reliability, tools, optimization, and security possible.
If you use WordPress for your website then you can be confident that it’s not going to vanish tomorrow because WordPress has proven time and time again that it’s a powerful tool for creating your website.
WordPress Is Free & Open-Source, Resulting In A Huge Library Of Plugins
WordPress is an open-source platform and it is free to use on any web host that supports it. This has made it incredibly popular and easy for developers to work on.
Since WordPress has a feature called a plugin, this has resulted in a massive library of custom add-ons that you can add to your website.
If there’s something specific you want to do with your blog, you’ll probably find there’s a plugin for it already as the WordPress plugin library currently hosts over 57,000 addons you can use. This is the kind of feature that other platforms either don’t have or are lacking in terms of options.
With this level of customization through plugins, and the fact that WordPress is open-source, your only restrictions on what you can do with your website will be based on your developer, designer, and plugin usage.
SEO Friendly
WordPress can benefit your search engine optimization (SEO) so your website can be found more [easily] on Google as it comes with key SEO settings that are easy to access and customize through the WordPress dashboard. Not to mention WordPress websites are structured to make crawling and understanding your website as easy as possible.
Furthermore, let’s not forget about the SEO-specific plugins you’ll have access to that will help you optimize for on-page SEO even more.
If you are considering what platform to use to build your website then WordPress should definitely be a top consideration. Due to its many benefits including:
- Free to implement and use
- Widely supported and easy to troubleshoot
- Complete customization
- Easy to build without the need for a developer
- Frequent updates
- A proven platform
- Strong security
- Huge variety of plugin addons
- Google and search engine optimization friendly
It’s a smart (and arguably the best) platform
WordPress is without a doubt a superb choice for a platform to build a website on. It’s easy to learn and work with, very well maintained and documented. And on top of that, it’s free (if self-hosted).
You can create a website without any coding or designing skills. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always good to have them but it’s not necessary.
You can choose from tons of different themes and plugins – free or premium – so you can create websites with modern designs and functionality. That makes the platform really flexible.
It doesn’t matter if you want to build a corporate website, real estate portal, online store, or just a simple landing page. WordPress should do the trick.
The fact is that WordPress is the most popular open source content management system with a large community of users and developers.
So it’s a smart (and arguably the best) choice for a platform to build your website on.
Rumen Simeonov
Kymberly Smith Tiller
WordPress stands out
Appearance.
WordPress gives you the autonomy to build on its platform as you see fit for the vision of your company. The theme offerings (if you choose not to build from scratch) I’ve found on Theme Forest, Creative Market, and Etsy can spice up any website. The customizations you can make based on what you need cause WordPress to stand out from the rest with very minimal investment. It takes only a few quick minutes to go from drab to glam.
Affordability.
WordPress does not have a monthly fee much like its competitors, Shopify and SquareSpace. With a self-hosted WordPress website, your only costs are a theme (if applicable) and hosting. Not to mention, you can leverage several versions of FREE plug-ins to enhance the user experience and increase functionality. Also, there’s no fee to connect WooCommerce, my go-to e-commerce platform. It makes it easy for creators looking to sell physical or digital products; low overhead = more revenue in your bank account. Lastly, with a WordPress website, you can build opt-in and sales pages on the backend of your website. See ya later, LeadPages.
Accessibility.
WordPress is a low-cost barrier to entry for any level of entrepreneur. One of the features I enjoy the most is the never-ending list of integrations with email autoresponders, chat boxes, social media platforms, and more than business owners can use to leverage their online home. And if you really want to be extra, you can build your own “Members Only” area that resembles Facebook on the backend of your website. In addition, WordPress is SEO-friendly. Take all those traffic-driven hashtags you use on Instagram and use them in your content [to] draw the masses without being shadow-banned.
The top reasons are…
There is no question that WordPress is the best platform. There are umpteen reasons for it, but the top reasons are:
- More than 30% of the websites are built on WordPress so there is a wealth of information available. You can find information easily if you want to implement something new.
- As WordPress is a widely used CMS, technical support is easily available, and it’s cheap. WordPress doesn’t put a hole in your pocket.
- It is also available in more than 70 languages. So if you want to build your website in another language it is quite easy.
Neeraj Arya
Norhanie Pangulima
WordPress so far is the best.
When building a website, the most critical thing to decide on is what platform to use. As a digital marketing executive, I can say that I have worked on several platforms, but WordPress so far is the best.
Here are 3 reasons why WordPress is the best platform to build a website on:
WordPress is completely free.
Who doesn’t love to get free products or services? The WordPress platform is entirely free so there’s one less ongoing service cost to worry about.
WordPress is user-friendly.
It is good even for beginners. You wouldn’t need any knowledge in coding to create a website. The dashboard is so simple and easy to understand.
WordPress has superb security features.
This platform was made with security in mind, so it is safe to say that the makers of WordPress really put security on top of their list. It protects your information and content. They are also updating their security measures to fix any issues or concerns.
Its popularity and simplicity
WordPress is the best platform to publish a website with not only because of its popularity but because of its simplicity. In the past, it was quite impossible to create a website without knowledge of programming languages like HTML, CSS, javascript, and other website-related programming languages. [Here are] reasons why WordPress is the best platform to create a website:
WordPress is beginner-friendly.
This is the major reason why most people, especially newbies, tend to love WordPress. WordPress [lets you] create a website in a few steps as they have software called plugins that make things relatively easy for anyone to use.
WordPress is easier to optimize for SEO.
Without proper SEO (on-page/off-page), your site will not rank on Google and users will not see your website. WordPress is SEO-friendly and makes it easier for you to do things like submitting your sitemap, adding a meta description to your post and pages, and other things that would help your website to rank higher.
WordPress has an easily navigable dashboard.
The dashboard is where most of the things on the website are done, and if it is not navigable, it is very difficult to understand. The WordPress dashboard has menus that can all be seen on the left-hand side of the screen. Hence it is easy to see what you are looking for quickly.
Eddy Abasi-Ada Nnabuk
Eddy Abasi-Ada Nnabuk is a freelance writer and the owner of educationtoday.com.ng, a website that helps students on subjects which they find very difficult.
This is a crowdsourced article. Contributors' statements do not necessarily reflect the opinion of this website, other people, businesses, or other contributors.