You’ve finally decided to start your own blog, well done! But how to do this one? What’s the best way to start a blog? Blogging with WordPress, blogger, Drupal or what? So many questions and you get confuse, okay then read this guide you will get your answers for sure.
Here, I’m not going to be original by telling you that you have to choose WordPress. Millions of people have turned to this CMS. But why choose WordPress one over another?
With more than 70 million sites across the planet, WordPress no longer has to work on its reputation. If so many people have chosen it, it is not for nothing.
Before working exclusively on WordPress, I personally tested several CMS. To be honest, I even got started with the web by creating my first sites from A to Z, with my hands dirty (or rather in the code) back to 2008. But that was before. Before working with WordPress !
Before we tell you why you should go with WordPress, let’s see why to start a blog. If you’re still hesitant, there are a few reasons you might want to take the plunge.
Spoiler Alert: This is a long post, and if you don’t have enough time my recommendation bookmark it and you can also check the table of content option and jump over your desired read.
Why Create a Blog?
In this section I will show you some major reasons that why you create a blog for yourself, I am not going to make it large, if you need to know more about blogging then read this article. links
To share passion / expertise
Are you a fan of seahorses, music or whatever, why not share it?
A passion is lived and shared. A blog is the best way to share your passion with a large number of people, but also to find other enthusiasts with whom to chat.
Likewise if you are an expert in a field, your advice will always be welcome from people looking for information or tips.
To show off your skills
Whether you are a photographer, writer, designer or even a musician, starting a blog to show off your talents can be a great idea.
This will allow you to have visibility on the internet and show your skills to the world.
To make ends meet (and why become a full-time job)
And yes why not make some money with his blog? With a little patience and work, you will be able to monetize this one and make yourself some extra income.
And why not? Maybe one day you will live off your blog!
To promote a service / product
In the article “earn money by selling a service or a product”, blogger name + links explained what can be the role of a blog in the sale of a product and / or a service.
I invite you to read it, but to summarise offering great piece of content for totally free on a blog allows you to create targeted traffic base, you can show your expertise and make a relationship of trust that works fine for long run. It will be much easier to sell your product or even services later when your targeted customers are interested and already convinced by your work.
These different reasons for starting a blog can also be associated with the fact that getting started in blogging is very rewarding.
Blogging has led me to discover different areas that I might never have been interested in:
- The languages html, css, php, sql
- Tools like Photoshop
- Marketing
- Personal development
- Entrepreneurship
Obviously, you won’t necessarily be interested in all of this, but blogging will arouse your curiosity and send you to other horizons.
Okay no more on this topic, hope you got the enough idea why you start your own blog. This long problem is now finished, and now let’s talk about the reasons for creating a blog with WordPress?
Why Choose WordPress to Create a Blog?
Today, to create a blog, there are several solutions. As I told before as other blogging oriented CMS. You can also turn to solutions such as Blogger. But I personally recommend WordPress.
Tips: Small businesses have the passion and the ideas but often little money to promote them. However, most of them know that a web presence is essential and can bring them notoriety and credibility. Choosing the right tool is therefore essential. WordPress meets the expectations of the most demanding.
WordPress in Numbers
WordPress has been around since 2003. So, it’s not a newcomer. It is a proven open source platform supported by a large community of thousands of professional coders, testers and developers.
Used today by 30% of all websites in the world, it has evolved a lot since its inception. WordPress is the most used CMS in the world (70%). Even its popularity is very clear compared to its competitors (Joomla, Jimdo, Wix, etc.).
Which Version of WordPress to Choose?
Before going through the arguments that should help you make an informed decision, I would like to draw your attention to a big difference between the wordpress.com platform and wordpress.org.
The first is rather reserved for novice bloggers who are satisfied with a restricted version of the CMS while the second allows you to create a fully personalized and self-hosted site (on the server of your choice) after downloading the latest version of the software. at www.wordpress.org.
The following arguments relate only to the downloadable version of WordPress that you can configure and configure according to your needs.
Ready-to-use software
Easy to install, even for a (almost) neophyte. You will find many tutorials and installation guide in all languages. But be aware that before installing the latest version of WordPress you will need to buy a domain name and find a successful host.
The administration interface is rather intuitive and a brief initiation will suffice to allow the various contributors to add content and modify existing pages. The learning curve is rapid. You will learn in a few hours how to create pages or articles, to upload photos or videos, to organize the structure of the site, etc.
WordPress is Free
The WordPress CMS is free. If you install and manage it yourself, your website will only cost you a few dollar per year (cost of the domain name + annual hosting price). You can even turn it into an online store by adding the free WooCommerce extension.
In addition, you will have access to regular updates (all free), thousands of themes and more than 50,000 free plugins. This will save you a lot of money (no need to hire a developer or an integrator… If you decide to do everything yourself). However, if you are unfamiliar with WordPress, it can all quickly take up a lot of your time and energy. Better to know that to determine what your priorities are.
Running a website takes time. And time is money. In addition, beyond the domain name and hosting, you will probably have to plan for certain expenses such as the purchase of premium themes or plugins, as well as the costs related to the design, copywriting or SEO of your site. Granted, these costs aren’t unique to WordPress, but they are necessary to get a really profitable site.
Open Source and Royalty Free
Since WordPress is an open source platform, you will have access to the source code and a large community that will help you achieve your wildest projects. In short, you can make your website exactly what you want!
Like Wikipedia and Ubuntu, WordPress doesn’t belong to anyone. It is supported by a billion dollar company, Automatic, but also by thousands of volunteers around the world who are committed to constantly improving it.
WordPress is licensed under the GNU General Public License. Which means anyone can use it to build as many websites as they want.
A Constantly Evolving Tool
Updates are frequent. This is proof that the community is very active and ensures that all security vulnerabilities and bugs reported by users are corrected as quickly as possible. Each update is backward compatible and duly tested before being published.
This is too much, detractors of WordPress will tell you. Because even if it is not essential to set them up systematically (your site will continue to run smoothly), it is better to develop your site according to the major updates. Because an obsolete version of WordPress presents increased risks of piracy or risks of incompatibility with the latest versions of themes, plugins, etc.
Your Site Belongs to You
Some publishing platforms block you with proprietary data formats. Not here. WordPress relies on open standards to let you take your data with you, and even comes with tools to import seamlessly from many popular sources.
In the case of a self-hosted WordPress, all of your data belongs to you. And if you want to migrate your site to another platform (Drupal, Joomla or other), your data will remain intact.
You can outsource all or part of your site or change provider whenever you want. The only requirement is to have your “admin” access (login + password).
Pro Tips: If you entrust the creation of your site to a freelance or to an agency, I could not advise you too much to include in the contract / estimate which binds you to the external provider the delivery of the keys of your site and not to make the payment final only after reception and testing of the admin codes . You will then be totally free to do what you want with your site, which you are 100% owner of.
Deployment at Your Own Pace
In the beginning, you want a simple site that is available quickly. You are not necessarily considering all possible developments. No problem. Developments can be spread over time and even be integrated by different service providers.
WordPress is a very scalable platform. The addition of functionalities is easily done in the admin interface by installing plugins or apps that meet each new need (security, performance, translation, socialization, monetization, etc.).
Your site can grow to hundreds or thousands of pages without the need to migrate to a more robust system. WordPress works just as well for small personal blogs as it does for large businesses. Big names like Microsoft News, The Walt Disney Company or Mercedes-Benz use it for their website. In these cases, it is better to switch from shared hosting to high-end dedicated servers to ensure the speed and reliability of the site created with WordPress.
WordPress is Versatile
Let’s kill an old myth once and for all: WordPress isn’t just for blogging. Certainly, he started there but he has grown so much that he now serves any type of website. You can use it for everything:
- Corporate websites (small VSEs or complex multinationals)
- Catalog or portfolio sites (artist, architect, designer, etc.)
- Online stores (all forms of e-commerce)
- News sites (webzine, media, newsfeed, etc.)
- Membership, online booking, appointment booking sites (medical or other)
- Travel sites, for the hospitality industry, for liberal professions, associations, etc.
- With the proliferation of themes and plugins, WP offers exceptional functional coverage: forums, directories, wiki, intranet, e-learning, file sharing, special applications, etc.
Switch to E-commerce without Worry
The popular WooCommerce plugin is the leading e-commerce technology for the web, and can power any online store, whether it has tens or thousands of items. And if you are selling downloadable products, the Easy Digital Downloads plugin will help.
If you need even more features for your e-shop, hundreds of free and premium extensions help you grow your online store.
Your responsive and mobile friendly site
Most free and premium WordPress themes automatically adapt to the user’s screen size. Using a responsive theme will ensure that your website displays correctly on smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop.
WordPress is Optimized for SEO
WordPress is designed for Search Engine Optimization. Many plugins help you in this regard. Yoast is THE benchmark in this field.
Of course, if you don’t follow the basic SEO rules, there won’t be any magic… your pages will fail far from Google’s first page and top positions. This is the reason why many sites are vegetating and attract only a few visitors per week or per month.
SEO is a discipline in its own right that many entrepreneurs (and even specialists) overlook!
Page Builder and Endless Customization
Most of the themes equipped with a page builder are easy to customize. By using a child theme you are free to modify the base theme as you wish, while making sure that updates to the theme will not erase your customizations.
And if you need additional features, you can tap into the huge catalog of free or premium plugins: you can add forms, Google maps, integrate an appointment booking module, a member’s area, a live chat etc.
Most of the themes offer loads of customization options: colors, logos, fonts, almost any element can be customized from the backend. You preview the changes live before saving them.
WordPress and Security
Security is a major concern for any website. However, we often hear that the main flaw of WordPress are its security gaps or flaws. What is it really?
No platform is 100% secure. But it is true that the popularity of WordPress does indeed make it a prime target for hackers. But the WordPress team is constantly on the lookout for security threats and the community is quick to report them. Which explains the countless updates.
Security updates are released quickly and even, on newer WP versions, are performed automatically. It may seem restrictive to constantly update their site and many neglect to do so. But by not doing so, you open the door to hackers as soon as the obsolete version is deemed vulnerable to vulnerabilities.
Prudence and respect for a few basic rules make it possible to avoid many setbacks: choosing a complex password, restricting the number of possible identification tests (to protect against “brute force” attacks), make regular backups, protect your files, switch your site to https, choose a reliable host, etc.
There are many plugins to secure your site .In short, the security of your site is largely your responsibility. If you take the right steps, you will drastically minimize the risks.
Learning and Ease of Use
Initially intended for bloggers, and therefore designed for users rather than developers, the WordPress platform combines simplicity and user-friendliness.
Without knowing any code, you can create web pages from a user friendly interface. Working with WordPress is (almost) as easy as working with a word processor. Of course, it helps if you knew a bit of basic code, especially when you have a technical issue. But even then the WordPress community should allow you to quickly find an answer.
There are countless trainings, tutorials, videos, podcasts, and blogs to help you out. You will learn in a few hours the basics of managing a WordPress site.
Fluid Project Management
If you want to manage an editorial workflow that brings together multiple authors, proofreaders, translators, illustrators, etc. it is quite possible with WordPress.
Thanks to a project management plugin, you can configure a number of projects and tasks directly in the WordPress admin.
Besides, by using custom fields and conditional logic, you can automate a number of WordPress tasks.
Add as Many Languages as You Want
In just a few clicks you will transform your site into an international war machine, thanks to the addition of a plugin managing translations. The best known and most used is WPML
WordPress is the Friend of Content Marketing
Post an urgent message? No problem. Once your content is created, you can publish it with one click. And there are even mobile apps that let you publish your content from your smartphone, wherever you are.
Plan your publications? This is possible with an editorial calendar. Choose the plugin that matches your need, test it and professionalize your content production.
Need to validate your content? No problem. Several extensions will allow you to set up a personalized workflow.
Collaborative Work has Never been so Easy
If you need to accommodate multiple people to update and feed your site, WordPress is once again the answer. You can indeed assign different roles to each contributor:
- Super Admin: he has access to everything and can manage a network of sites
- Admin: he has access to all the functionalities of a single site
- Editor: can publish and manage comments
- Author: can publish
- Contributor: can prepare content but cannot publish it
- Subscriber: does not have access to the backend of the site, only to his profile (useful for the GDPR)
GDPR Compliance
Like all sites, WordPress stores a certain amount of data relating to logged in users (profile, IP address, etc.) but also on unconnected users (for example, those who leave comments).
Since version 4.9.6. WordPress has integrated new features into the backend aimed at bringing every site owner into compliance with the new European regulations:
Page relating to your privacy policy – WP offers ready-to-use text, translated into many languages and even includes some paragraphs specific to the extensions used
Function export and deleting private data of users of a site
Check box below the comments to obtain the user’s agreement to the retention of their personal information.
WordPress Connects to (almost) Everything
The heart of WordPress is its own API (commonly known as dogfooding) which allows developers to quickly and efficiently customize the app to suit their unique needs. Many aspects of the essential WordPress experience can be replaced or modified by user-generated hooks and filters.
Thanks to these APIs, WordPress integrates seamlessly with third-party systems, a necessity in an increasingly rich digital environment. Need to launch an emailing campaign? You can use a service like Aweber or MailChimp. Want to get paid for a product or service? WordPress can work with the most popular payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal).
Support from an Enthusiastic Community
Led by volunteers from around the world, the community is made up of local groups of WordPress enthusiasts. Hundreds of thousands of developers, designers, entrepreneurs, content editors, and site owners.
There is a series of events each year for people who love WordPress and want to share their knowledge, experience and meet other users in the area. These WordPress meetings are open to everyone!
A CMS resolutely Turned Towards the Future
With its thousands of volunteer coders, WordPress just keeps getting better. Gutenberg is proof of this. This is the new editor that will be introduced in version 5.0, A real revolution.
At the heart of Gutenberg is the concept of the block (like Medium, Wix, and others). From a technical point of view, blocks elevate the level of abstraction of a document to a collection of meaningful elements that can be placed anywhere. Gutenberg is configured to replace widgets, HTML UI, shortcodes, and blocks previously offered through the TinyMCE toolbar. The change worries many users, which is after all quite normal for such a radical development.
Final Note
No doubt these reasons will convince you to choose WordPress for your website. It is really an efficient and scalable solution to quickly and inexpensively set up a high-performance website that can grow at the same time as your business.
Thanks