The first time I witnessed a geeky friend in the web development business create a website, I swore I would never do anything like that as long as I lived. Wouldn’t you know it, ten years later that’s precisely where I ended up – building websites for business owners. “Never say never,” as the saying goes. With the amazing advances in Internet technology I could not imagine a more efficient way for companies to find more customers and increase sales. As a matter of fact, there is one system I love above all others and each time I am asked about a new site, I recommend it. Think of two words: “word” and “press.” (WP)
To make a long story short, WP is a content management system (CMS) for websites. CMS-based websites have become very popular because they allow regular non-geeky staff members to login and edit the material on the website without needing to know HTML or any such thing.
If you can send an email or make a post on FB, you can use a CMS. Even a business website with a shopping cart can be managed from your own computer. No need to hire a team of programmers to run your site and no need to worry about someone breaking the site. WP is a free, open-source CMS that you can download and install in a few minutes.
A website that looks amazing, is easy to navigate and is coded so beautifully it practically drops into the laps of the search engines can be ready to go in a day or two. With the best use of plugins (modules) for search engine optimization, I have experienced WP sites getting to the first page of the 3 major search engines in no more than 6 weeks, but in as little as 24 hours. Having the same site built using HTML would take weeks and would cost many thousands of dollars. You will save at least $3 – $5k by having a developer build it with WP.
If you currently own an HTML-based website, you can convert it to a WP site. The time it takes is proportionate to the number of pages, links and URLs on your current site. This could be a rather massive project if you have a large website now, but once it’s done, you have a site that is “future-proof.” This is to say that your content is now easily backed up and portable in a single XML file. As the WP technology is refined, your website can be seamlessly updated. It becomes a perpetually state-of-the-art site, again saving you buckets of cash on upgrading a site that used out-of-date coding.
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