There is a whole lot of planning that goes into building a new website, whether for personal branding or for your business. First, you must consider things like what the right target audience for your project would be interested in and how to attract that interest. But you also have to make other necessary technical decisions about the project. One such decision is which content management system (CMS) to opt for. There are a lot of CMS platforms around. WordPress takes the largest share of the market as the most popular CMS platform. For context, over 2 million websites – more than 60% of the world’s total websites – are powered by WordPress. The other CMS platforms, including Drupal, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, and Joomla, have to fight amongst themselves for the remaining 40% market share. Isn’t that huge? You are probably wondering why WordPress is such a popular choice for website owners. You’ll learn about the reasons in this article. Let’s start by understanding what a CMS platform is all about. What is a Content Management System? Some people see a Content Management System as a platform used for publishing, organizing, and editing text and media on websites. While this definition is correct, it is a limited description. This is because a CMS is a lot more than that in reality.
WordPress is the #1 CMS used to build websites for several reasons, including its ease of use and the vast array of themes that can be used to make every website built using WordPress unique. However, most users find the most helpful element of WordPress to be plugins. Plugins are an app or software that can be added to a WordPress website that provides additional features and functionality. They can add this functionality either in the back end to make building and managing the WordPress site easier, or they can add it to the front end to benefit visitors to that website. One slight problem, although some might say this is positive, is that there are so many plugins to choose from, and not all of them have the high levels of reliability that you want for your website. Thankfully, a core number of plugins have proved themselves, and today are some of the most installed plugins on WordPress, with many web designers considering them essential when designing a WordPress website. To ensure you are aware of them, we have outlined fifteen essential plugins below, briefly explaining what each of them does. Note they are not necessarily in order of importance. #1 – Rank Math SEO If you want to rank on Google and see organic traffic coming to your website, SEO is a must. However, if, like most website owners, you are not an SEO expert, it can be daunting. Thankfully, Yoast SEO can help, enabling you to optimise content and web pages with suggestions and actions to take. Get → RankMath #2 – Jetpack This multi-function plugin provides WordPress website owners with tools to create content, enhance the security of their website, and, importantly, improve its performance. It also offers ways to customise your website and enhance its functionality to help it load quickly. Get → Jetpack
Even when you have set up your WordPress website and made it go live, the task isn’t quite finished. WordPress is open-source software, meaning any bugs or problems found are regularly addressed, and the security features are updated and improved. This ensures enhanced user experience and surfing performance and protects your site data against malicious activities, spam and hackers. According to experts, the main reason why 83% of WordPress blogs are hacked is because their WordPress version is obsolete and not updated regularly. So, if you are getting that update notification on your dashboard prompting you to enhance the performance and security of your website, don’t ignore it and get it done as soon as possible! Here are some of the advantages of updating WordPress often: Improved Features With every new version, WordPress comes with exciting new features to make website management simple and intelligent. These additional features help you manage your website and bring a smoother and more seamless surfing experience for your target audience. Increased Rankings Suppose your WordPress isn’t updated and secure against hackers and malware. In that case, it may experience unexpected downtime, drastically affecting its rankings and all the hard work you have put in to optimize traffic.
