Why choose WordPress for your website content management system

So, to get started, what is WordPress?

WordPress is free, open-source software that’s used as the foundation of your website as a content management system. The company began in 2003. So as of 2023, the company will two decades old. On top of a storied and successful history, WordPress currently powers over 40% of websites on the internet.

Just to give you a few examples, here are some entities that use WordPress:

• The White House
• Microsoft
• The Rolling Stones
• Sony
• CNN
• The New York Times
• The Dallas Mavericks

and many more, including Katy Perry and Jay-Z if that matters to you.

Really what a content management system gives you is a foundation for your website that allows you to do many things such as:

• Adding, editing, and deleting content using a simple point-and-click editor.
• Uploading and manipulating images and files and videos.
• Easily linking pages and documents, as well as creating links to external websites.
• Modifying the navigation of your website.
• And if you’re more technically inclined, the options are endless. You can add plugins and integrate new functionality. You can modify the design of your website and you can even maintain and update the WordPress software on your own when there are feature and security updates.

Long story short, you can either use programming code to build your website, or you can build your website on a foundation like WordPress. WordPress makes it easy for you to turn your website into a living, breathing growth machine that doesn’t require sophisticated programming skills to update and maintain.

There are many choices out there for content management systems. Hopefully the fact that WordPress is the most popular, and widely used and supported system out there goes a long way to helping you feel good about the choice.

But here are some additional benefits that you’ll enjoy when you choose WordPress and Sanctuary to build and support your company website.

• WordPress is open-source software. This simply means that WordPress is free, backed by, and actively improved and maintained by a HUGE, world wide community. This is no “home-grown” software that’s been developed by a small website development company and used by a couple hundred websites. If you use WordPress you’ll be tapping into a massive, open-source community. Sanctuary wants to be your partner to build, market and support your WordPress site. We’ve been around since 2006 and we’re not going anywhere. But, if you ever have a need in the future, you can tap into a HUGE community of people, advice, events and specialist providers around the world to get help.
• Learning WordPress is simple. If you’ve used Microsoft Word or Google Docs, you’ll have no problem actively contributing to and updating your website. You won’t need any programming knowledge. It’s all point and click.
• WordPress can be enhanced and expanded with plugins. When we talk about plugins, we’re basically talking about software extensions that you can bolt on. It could be anything from a simple photo gallery to a robust, world-class, e-commerce system. The point is that WordPress allows you to add very robust, and quite honestly, powerful features that are extremely affordable compared to building and maintaining these features and software from the ground up. We’re able to stand on the shoulder’s of giants and do things that likely wouldn’t be possible with average marketing and development budgets. Many plugins are free. Most are extremely affordable to purchase compared to custom development.
• Speaking of marketing, WordPress is built for SEO. WordPress allows you to easily control, and do all the right things to optimize your site and be found in the search engines. This is great for business owners and marketing teams that need to be actively working on a site all the time. And under the hood it’s got all the technical best practices checked off to ensure that your site won’t be penalized for doing something incorrectly.
• WordPress is extremely secure out of the box. Even if you’re not running an e-commerce website, you still need to ensure that you’re website is not injected or defaced by hackers. At best it could be embarrassing. At worst… well, it could just be really bad. Let’s just leave it at that. WordPress is setup to be secure out of the box, and again, is trusted by millions of websites. Sanctuary can even help to take security and support to a whole new level too. We set up our websites to have “next level” security by default and can even help you with world-class monitoring and security services for e-commerce.
• With WordPress and Sanctuary, you own everything. If we design and develop your website, if we create content, even if we host and maintain the website, you can take everything and go anywhere in the world with no strings attached. You won’t have to pay to license the software, you won’t have to migrate the website to an entirely new content management system, you won’t be held hostage in any way like some companies do. WordPress is free, and anything that Sanctuary does for you is owned by you, and you can easily move it anywhere.

WordPress is an amazing tool. I hope I’ve helped to show that it’s trusted, easy to learn, easy to use, it’s a great tool for marketing your website, it’s secure, and it’s free. But many companies just need a great website, and they need a really good, specialist partner to watch their back and just take care of things. You can host your WordPress website anywhere, and you can update the software quickly and easily if you want to. But if you need a specialized, WordPress partner that provides world-class hosting, maintenance, security monitoring, speed optimization and ongoing support that doesn’t require a complex phone tree, Sanctuary is a great choice.

If you’re interested in designing, developing, marketing and properly supporting and maintaining a world-class web presence, talk to us. We’ll provide a solution for you at a budget that makes sense for your unique business. If we can’t help you we’ll work to help you find someone who can.