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WordPress has long been renowned as an excellent website builder. As well as being completely free, the platform offers everyone – from beginners to experienced developers – an intuitive way to create and manage professional websites. What’s more, it’s constantly being updated with new and improved features. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at WordPress and discuss what it can do for you in 2024.
A multifunctional CMS
WordPress is essentially a content management system that helps users with little or no technical knowledge to create and manage professional websites. The platform’s control centre is the admin dashboard, an easy-to-use feature that provides access to all the software’s various functions. From here, you can create, edit and delete posts, pages, menus and media, as well as adjust settings and customise the website’s appearance. The dashboard is also where you can manage plugins and add-ons, which provide a vast range of additional features and functionalities.
Plugins are an essential part of the WordPress experience. There are around 60,000 free plugins available from the WordPress repository, and thousands more paid plugins available online. Plugins are designed to enhance your website with additional features and functionality, and they cover virtually every conceivable need, whether it’s turning WordPress into an e-commerce site, improving security, boosting SEO or automating marketing emails. The selection is vast, with new plugins constantly being added, and most of them are updated regularly.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an important aspect of website management, as it helps your website appear in search engine results and thereby drive new visitors to your site. The developers of WordPress are well aware of this and have equipped the platform with features that help websites achieve better rankings in search engines. Nevertheless, there are now all-in-one SEO tools, ideal for beginners, that take WordPress SEO to the next level.
WordPress also gives website owners complete control over their users. Its user management features allow you to assign different roles to people, and each role dictates what they can and cannot do on the website. For example, an administrator can have full control over the site, whilst a subscriber can only manage their own profile. This level of control is essential both for security and to prevent others from making unauthorised changes to the website.
New features
WordPress is constantly being developed, so we can expect regular updates. One of the most significant recent developments is the block editor, a feature that has transformed the way pages are structured and content is edited. It is extremely flexible and easy to use, removing the limitations of hard-coded templates and allowing you to create customised layouts and designs to suit your needs.
Artificial intelligence is one of the most sought-after technologies, and plugin developers have been quick to integrate it into their software. Although we are still in the early stages of this evolution, and there is no doubt that major advances lie ahead, you can already use AI-enabled plugins to improve SEO, automate and personalise content curation, recommend products and make predictions based on user engagement data. The most useful aspect of these plugins is that they perform complex functions without requiring users to have any technical knowledge to implement them.
Performance improvements
Website performance is an area that website owners need to bear in mind, as issues such as slow loading times and crashes can seriously affect SEO, sales and brand reputation. Although website speed and performance are influenced by numerous factors, including the quality and type of web hosting, WordPress is constantly developing its software to make it faster and more reliable.
In the past, using too many plugins posed a problem for WordPress, as each plugin increases the number of server resources used by the website. WordPress is therefore focusing on optimising resource management to minimise the impact of plugins. As a result, caching has been better integrated and image optimisation has also improved; both help websites to load quickly without compromising on quality. Other improvements, such as lazy loading and compression, also help to minimise loading times.
Built-in security
Given the sheer number of threats prevalent today, WordPress has worked hard to tighten security. This includes features such as mandatory strong passwords, two-factor authentication and regular automatic updates to the core and plugins. There are also improved monitoring and notification systems, so you’ll be alerted quickly if a potential security risk is detected.
In addition to WordPress itself, WordPress hosting providers have also developed security solutions that specifically address threats related to the platform. These include daily backups, web application firewalls and malware scanning.
Building online shops
Although e-commerce features aren’t included as standard in WordPress, anyone wishing to build an online shop using the platform can do so easily with the WooCommerce plugin. This free, industry-leading software, which can be installed in just a few clicks, has been used by numerous leading brands to create the most effective online shops. WooCommerce integrates seamlessly with WordPress and provides a user-friendly dashboard for managing products, orders and customers. At the same time, it offers a wide range of product listing and payment gateway options, as well as the ability to integrate stock management and delivery solutions.
Furthermore, WooCommerce is one of the few plugins that comes with its own set of extensions, whilst e-commerce developers provide a range of additional features to enhance your online shop, from product recommendation engines and subscription services to product search functions and members-only areas.
What can you use WordPress for?
Although we’ve already mentioned using WordPress to build online shops, the platform is actually so versatile that you can use it to build almost any type of website. It was originally developed as a blogging tool and remains ideal for this purpose, but it has moved with the times and can now also be used for vlogging and podcasting.
One of its primary uses is the creation of business websites. With thousands of professional themes and plugins covering SEO, social media and customer relationship management (CRM), it is ideal for both small and large businesses looking to establish an online presence, interact with customers and manage content with ease. It is also ideal for creative professionals, such as artists, architects and designers, who need a website where they can showcase their portfolio and attract new clients.
WordPress is also ideal for building online communities and forums. With plugins such as BuddyPress, you can create community sites for various groups, whether it’s a local community project or a global website for those looking for tips on using WordPress – and there are plenty of these.
WordPress hosting solutions
WordPress is a unique platform, which means it has its own specific requirements when it comes to web hosting. One of the biggest advantages for WordPress users is that some web hosting providers have developed hosting solutions specifically designed to boost WordPress performance, enhance security and improve SEO. Others have gone a step further and provide tools such as the WordPress Toolbox, which make managing your website even easier.