The use of WordPress is no longer limited to being a simple blogging tool. It has developed into a prime component for website development with these brilliant websites bearing testimony to the fact.

While it was once regarded as nothing more than a blogging tool, WordPress has undergone a rapid development to emerge as a full-fledged content management system, used by agencies and professional website designers on millions of sites all around the world.

However, there are many individuals who continue to look upon WordPress as a tool for hobbyists and amateurs. In a bid to set the record straight, here are some of the best WordPress websites handpicked from around the world for showing critics precisely what this incredible content management system is capable of doing.

This Is Your Kingdom

Professional developer Kim Lawler once said, “This Is Your Kingdom ranks as the proudest WordPress site I have ever built.”

This Is Your Kingdom is a website where style meets substance in order to help visitors find various activities in and around their local area. Simple to conceptualize, the real complex side of the website comes to fore when all of its inner potentials and workings are taken into consideration.

With the design of Katie Marcus and a robust development undertaken by Kim Lawler, the website has been developed primarily to handle growing amount of content at various levels. Lawler made use of WordPress to allow guest bloggers and site editors to update regularly and easily. This gives visitors plenty of reasons to regularly return to the website.

The playful and delicate design on the site is a hint of the wide range of activities that it shares. It also does a commendable job of being eye-catching and appealing to the visitors without being niche-specific or stereotyped as a girly website. Illustration plays a big role in enhancing the site appeal, paving the way for exploration and imagination.

Travel Portland

The Travel Portland website is aimed at inspiring people to visit the city of Portland in Oregon state, USA. It also helps them in planning their trip with content and tools highlighting the unique opportunities that the city has to offer. Every page on this site possesses a clean design with images detailing the various experiences to be had in Portland, from the food trucks to elegant waterfalls.

A beautifully responsive website, it has been built using WordPress and makes use of a customized responsive theme that is based on the framework developed by Zurb’s Foundation. It also utilizes a number of third-party APIs such as ChooseCulture, Weather Underground, MapBox and Storify.

The development team for Travel Portland also makes use of the MaxMind geolocation API. This gives them the capability to customize home page content as per the location of the visitor. It also allows them to serve different information to those in the planning phase and to those who are in-town visitors.

Worry Free Labs

Worry Free Labs is a web agency working out of New York. It markets itself as experts in building remarkable mobile experiences. Could there have been a better platform for it to show off its skills than its very own website?

While monitoring the website traffic the founder of Worry Free Labs, Jason Curry, said,” There has been a dramatic increase in traffic to our website from tablets and mobile devices.” Thus, development of a responsive website was the need of the hour.

Like a number of other web agencies, Worry Free Labs opted for the use of HTML5 in their website design. The site has a number of remarkable touches throughout that makes browsing on the mobile devices a very enjoyable experience- be it an animation of the workpages, easy sliding of the scrolls under services, or the swipe-to-send button featured on the contact form.

I Shot Him

Co-founder Micheal Jeter commented,” From the very beginning, our resources pointed to the use of WordPress as the most useful and quickest route.”

With an intriguing name, this San Francisco-based agency is not too serious about itself as far as becoming the very best is concerned. Jeter explains, “We are a studio that learns on the go. When we first set out learning how to develop websites, we were advised to make use of WordPress as the best development tool.”

“Over time, we have succeeded in learning that when it comes to having an understanding of the backend, our clients are pretty good. As a result, we have continued with the use of WordPress to ensure an easy transition to the new service for our clients. We have taken into consideration a number of other options but none of them have been good enough to convince us to convert to its usage,” the co-founder concluded.

Great Lengths Hair

The Great Lengths Hair website is an excellent example of the powerful and flexible features of WordPress. A fully responsive website for a fashion brand that deals with hair extensions, it was built and designed by Turn Key, an agency based in Leeds. When asked about the project, development-director Andrew Markham-Davies said, “We used a number of frameworks and JavaScript techniques for achieving the infinite loading and responsive sequence on the website.”

While the site is typically image-heavy, the various images are loaded based one the dimensions of the display screens. The responsive navigation is also quite easy-to-use and clean and has a fast response to touch.

Throughout the site it makes full use of a number of new HTML5 elements such as

Tornobambino

A small Italian agency that boasts the likes of developer Pasquale de Luna and designer Fedrica Cau, Tornobambino is renowned for having a colourful and cool site. If Cau is to be believed, it was an obvious choice to go with WordPress for the development. “We believe that for designing a website that is small and needs frequent tweaks and modifications, WordPress is the best solution,” she explained.

“We have succeeded in mastering WordPress not only in terms of the plug-in development but also full-theme design. This allows us to create a customized CMS system over the search engine and keep the development costs at a minimum as opposed to the development of a CMS code from scratch.” The agency usually develops their very own WordPress plugins in-house based on the requirements provided by a client. “If we feel the need for keeping costs at a minimum in the development project, we also opt for the customization of open-source plug-ins,” Cau adds.

E&E

E&E is an agency working primarily with regards to the music industry. However, it has been known to flex its muscles and use its considerable talents in areas that are specific to the digital realm. When it came to the choice of a tool that could be used for developing what eventually proved to be an award-winning website, WordPress was found to tick all the boxes.

“In our opinion, WordPress is an extremely versatile tool,” was the explanation given by co-founder Austin Mayer. “Be it the development of a portfolio site such as Eyes and Ears or some other website featuring full-blown creativity such as The Wall Flowers and A Fine Frenzy, WordPress is always the best solution.”

Moreover, there is an excellent development community at the behest of WordPress. Therefore, if you need some refinement in your code hangup or are encountering some unwanted issues with it, you will always be able to find someone who has worked on it before and will be able to help you out with the same.

Jess Marks Photography

Steve Bliesne and Jess Marks, wedding photographers based in Brisbane, have turned their online home into a whimsical, fun-filled website that is bristling with personality. When the time came to undertake a revamp of the website, Bliesner said that they actually opted to move away from the use of ExpressionEngine and adopted WordPress. “We searched for a long time in order to find the right design house that could help us with our project. In the end we decided to go with Simple As Milk who worked with only WordPress. Hence we had to make the transition as well, “he explains.

“With most of our marketing and web related things being outsourced these days, an increasing number of companies and people are looking to become more proficient in WordPress rather than ExpressionEngine. Thus it was not a very tough decision to make the switch.”

“After moving in from ExpressionEngine, we realized that the way some of the things work are pretty much the same- the way you enter data, create posts, so and so forth, ” Bliesner recalls on being quizzed about making the transtiton from one CMS platform to another. “However, WordPress is well ahead of the chasing pack in terms of availability of plug-ins and ease of use in general.”

As far as developers and businesses around the world are concerned, WordPress ranks as one of the most developed CMS tools. True, it has its fair share of stigma and is always at risk of being outfoxed by some of the other larger enterprise-based CMSes. Nevertheless, as far as ease of use, ease of build and flexibility from the perspective of an admin is concerned, WordPress is always the winner.

If you are looking to develop a website for your business and feel some amount of professional help will go a long way towards improving the look and appearance of the same, you should consider hiring experienced PHP programmers from a reputed hire services company. They are adept at development of various CMS strategies using numerous programming methodologies and can help the businesses in getting an altogether different dimension for their growth towards ultimate success.