Learn How WordPress Is Not Just Limited To CMS
Many myths surround the use of WordPress, and this has led to many uninformed website owners and builders to forego WordPress despite it being the best option for their web design and development project.
Also, the fact that WordPress exists as WordPress.com and WordPress.org is confusing but don’t worry we are going to debunk the myths from the facts.
So what is WordPress? WordPress is known to many as just a blogging software which is not true. It is a CMS and also a website builder that you can use to create almost any type of website you may want. As of February 2019, over 33% of all live websites were powered by WordPress and include not only weblogs but also e-Commerce site, corporate sites, institutions, governments and even Fortune 500 companies websites such as Disney.
WordPress Market share 2011-2019
When it comes to content management, WordPress is even more dominant with numerous website powered by other platforms still relying on WordPress for content management. According to W3Techs, WordPress accounts for 60% market share for Content Management Systems on sites with a known CMS. Over 14.7% of the top 100 websites in the world use WordPress as their CMS.
Market share of the top 10 popular content management systems 2010-2019
What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org? – WordPress.com is simply as a hosting service offered by WordPress with Free, Personal, Premium, Business, and VIP hosting plans. WordPress.com is most popular with hobby bloggers, has limited themes and limited plugins/apps. On the other hand, WordPress.org also known as the “Self-hosted WordPress” or “the real WordPress” is a free website platform with all the flexibility web designers and developers needs to create custom websites. On WordPress.org developers can build nearly any website, use the suitable plugins among the 45,000 WordPress plugins/apps, incorporate any tools necessary such as Google Analytics, and customize their websites as needed. With WordPress.org you own what you create with all the website data in it, and you can monetize the site and earn an unshared revenue.
WordPress.com v/s WordPress.org
| WORDPRESS.COM | WORDPRESS.ORG |
| ✓ Hosted by WordPress | ✓ Self-hosted by the site owner |
| ✓ Free subdomain | ✓ Custom domain name |
| ✓ Customization limited to surface/cosmetic level | ✓ Full customization |
| ✓ No additional plugins allowed – only the preloaded plugins. | ✓ Unlimited plugins |
| ✓ Options limited to a few WordPress themes, no uploading themes | ✓ Unlimited themes uploads and customization |
| ✓ Zero ongoing maintenance | ✓ Requires ongoing maintenance done by the site owner |
| ✓ Limited free storage | ✓ Host determined the storage |
| ✓ To remove ads run by the WordPress you have to pay | ✓ You control and run own ads |
| ✓ Little to no technical control | ✓ Full control over the database and files |
| ✓ No e-commerce option | ✓ E-commerce supported |
| ✓ Limited income generating options and revenue is shared | ✓ Unlimited monetization options from ads, subscriptions, sales, etc. |
| ✓ Suitable for new hobby bloggers or online resumes | ✓ Perfect for business and advanced career bloggers |
| ✓ Limited scalability | ✓ Fully Scalable |
| ✓ Single site | ✓ WordPress Multisite |
What can you do with WordPress?
WordPress comes in handy in many things not just limited to CMS and among the things you can do include:-
Design and develop a custom website – WordPress.org platform facilitates building almost any kind of website including e-commerce websites, corporation websites, small business websites, membership websites, government websites, education institution websites, and entertainment websites among others. To create a website on WordPress.org, you can adopt the suitable WordPress themes and customize it if necessary, upload an external theme compatible with WordPress or code a website from scratch. Some themes require additional plugins to function as needed or to supplement their functionalities.
The option of Adding a new theme on WordPressCreating invoices – On WordPress you can create different types of invoices and incorporate them into your website. There are several plugins available for creating invoices such as Sprout Invoices, WooCommerce PDF Invoices, and Sliced Invoices among others. The plugins come with an extra added advantage as some have free payment systems such as Paypal.
Manage more than one site under one roof – WordPress Multisite facilitates management of a network of WordPress sites under a single installation. The site owner and other site administrators can manage everything under a single password including creating new sites. This feature is essential for big business and institutions that manage multiple websites under the same WordPress network.
WordPress Multisite option of managing multiple sitesEditing and saving PDFs – Yes, there is a whole bunch of WordPress plugins for editing PDFs on WordPress that comes in handy when working with PDFs. Some of the plugins include: WordPress Advanced PDF, WordPress PDF Light Viewer Plugin, PDF Image Generator, DK PDF, PDF Viewer, PDF Thumbnails, PDF & Print by BestWebSoft, PDF Embedder, and BSK PDF Manager among others. You don’t have to wonder how to edit PDFs any more.
Use existing or create your plugins – WordPress today has over 45,000 plugins that its user can incorporate into their websites. The plugins are either free or available at a fee to achieve specific functionalities. Besides WordPress also allows its user to develop their unique plugins to meet their need and those of others.
Conclusion
As you can see, WordPress is more than just a blogging tool. In addition to content management, you can use it in numerous other ways. Website developers can build new websites using WP, creating website’s themes or developing new plugins. WordPress can also come in handy in creating invoices, managing multiple sites under one roof and editing, using and saving PDFs on a website among other uses. It is unfortunate many people are only aware of WordPress as a blogging platform which is just a single aspect of WordPress.com and miss out the hundreds of other uses and advantages available on WordPress.org.
