Are you ready to create a website? If you are a newbie, then I know that you must be wondering if is WordPress easy to use for a beginner. This is what this article will help you to find out.
If you don’t understand what WordPress is, it’s a free and open-source content management system based on PHP and MySQL. I’ve been using WordPress for 5+ years and I’ve never looked back. Maybe you’re just like me a few years ago. You have a passion for something and you want to jump into the online world. If so, then WordPress is perfect for you.
Is WordPress hard to learn?
In my opinion, WordPress is the easiest CMS and blogging platform to use in the world. Although there are similar content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla, WordPress still wins in the ease of use comparison.
With WordPress, everything is built-in and you don’t have to worry about dragging and dropping. Drag-and-drop website builders such as Wix, Weebly, Strikingly, and Jimdo promote ease of use, but drag-and-drop builders are difficult for some. With drag and drop features you have to build your site and put everything where it needs to be. WordPress has an installation approach which is what makes it so simple compared to other platforms. Setting up a WordPress website can be done in less than 5 minutes with quick installation of WordPress via Cpanel or Cyberpanel. Many people think that you have to be a coder to use WordPress, which is far from the truth. You don’t have to worry about coding and programming to use WordPress. Most people who use WordPress do not know a lick of code, but that doesn’t stop them from making over $80,000 a year on their WordPress website. Not only is WordPress flexible and easy to set up with, but WordPress also offers tons of templates, plugins, and setup guides to help you.
How much does WordPress cost to use?
Nothing! WordPress will not cost you a dime to use their platform. The WordPress.com Premium platform or business platform does cost you money, but we are not discussing WordPress.com in this article. We are talking about WordPress.org. The .org version is completely free to use. All that is needed is a web hosting company. There are various affordable monthly web hosting companies such as FastComet, HostGator, Bluehost, GoDaddy, and A2 Hosting.
I don’t recommend you use a specific web hosting company, you can go with any web hosting company whose renewal prices shoot. A example Digitalocean offers one of the cheapest prices that you will be able to find with quality uptime and blazing speed. Digitalocean cheapest plan which is their StartUp plan costs $4/month. It is rare to find hosting for under $50 a year. This plan is perfect for beginners. Digitalocean most expensive hosting plan can be customized as per your requirements.
Wix vs WordPress in price – Wix is one of the most expensive platforms among website builders. The most popular Wix plan is going to cost you $14/mo. Wix offers e-commerce web hosting for small business websites. However, their e-commerce plan is going to cost you $17/mo. WordPress is half the cost of Wix.
Weebly vs WordPress in price – The Weebly-paid plans cost $8, $12, and $25 a month depending on your needs. Although this is cheaper than Wix, it is still not cheaper than WordPress with SiteGround web hosting.
Jimdo vs WordPress in price – The most popular Jimdo plan is going to end up costing you $20 a month. However, they do have a plan at $7.50 a month and $30 a month.
The simplicity of using a Hosting Company
Many hosting companies offer a wide body of additional features to help you succeed as a blogger and business owner.
5-minute setup – With a reliable hosting company takes just 3 clicks to set up a new website. Through Cpanel, you can literally walk you through everything. They are one of the rare companies that offer a WordPress preinstall wizard.
Free Website Migration – Most of hosting providers will migrate your website free of charge.
Data centers on multiple continents – One of the ways that hosting companies like AWS, Bluehost, and Digitalocean make your WordPress blog faster is by having multiple data centers which increases your page load response time. A global hosting company expected to have data centers in the United States, Italy, Singapore, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Speed features – Hosting Companies have high-quality speed features set in place to help business owners create happy website visitors and a better user experience. Some of their features include SSD drives which means faster hardware. NGINX server speed which means a faster web server. SuperCacher which means a faster CMS. A free CDN which means an overall faster WordPress website. HTTP/2 enabled servers which means faster load speed for your visitors. You will also receive PHP7 and HHVM which means faster PHP.
How to choose a WordPress theme for business?
One of the main reasons why you will want to use WordPress is because of the simplicity of choosing a theme. With other website builders, you will have to build a theme. With WordPress, all that you have to do is go into your site’s dashboard, go to appearance, and go to themes. Once you are in the themes section you can select a free theme from their large theme library. Most site builder platforms make you pay for themes or have a small number of themes to choose from.
However, WordPress gives you over 2000 free themes directly from your dashboard. You can get even more themes by searching for free themes online. If you want an easy-to-use WordPress theme that excels in boosting your website’s SEO, then I recommend that you use the Genesis theme.
This is the top SEO theme in the world to increase your SEO rankings. Once again, it is going to be simple to install to install this theme. You will not have to worry about having CSS or HTML knowledge. All that you have to do is purchase the Genesis Framework, install it in your dashboard’s theme section, and your theme will be installed on your website.
WordPress plugins for beginners
The top reason on my list, why WordPress is so easy, is because you can install any plugins that you desire in seconds. Plugins extend the functionality of your website.
Platforms like Shopify and Wix charge you a monthly amount per app, which can become extremely expensive if you need a lot of different extensions. WordPress offers over 50,000 free plugins. WordPress makes it easy to add features that you never thought you would be able to have. As your business grows add the features that you think you might need. You don’t have to be a techie. All that you have to do is go to the plugins section, go to add new and enter what you need in the search plugins section.
Let’s say that you need a customer review plugin. You could easily install Customer Reviews for WooCommerce. This plugin helps you to get more sales with social proof. Maybe you need a customer support plugin for better customer interaction. You can easily install WSDesk which is a support ticket system plugin or you can install a live chat or virtual chat plugin to talk with your customers directly from the web. With WordPress, the possibilities are endless. If you wanted you could install a plugin for creating a social media-type community site.
With WordPress managing your SEO is easy.
I made a Dreamweaver vs WordPress comparison and the main difference between these platforms is that with sites like Dreamweaver, your brain is your SEO. With WordPress, there are several plugins that you can install to increase your website’s SEO. Plugins such as Yoast help with keyword optimization, breadcrumbs, readability, duplicate content, XML Sitemaps, optimized titles, etc. The top 10 million websites in the world are powered by WordPress and one of the reasons is that WordPress has various speed, SEO, and image optimization plugins that you can use to soar in the search engines.
WordPress is the largest website platform in the world
I was confident in my decision to use WordPress because WordPress was used by some of the biggest names and the biggest brands in the world. WordPress powers over a quarter of the web. No other platform comes close to this accomplishment. You want to use a well-known and proven platform so that you can have all the help that you need. WordPress boasts more developers than other top platforms which means that if you ever need a developer you will pay him at a cheaper price. Also, with WordPress, you will have more blog posts that you can read, more videos that you can watch, more forums filled with WordPress users, etc. With millions of people using WordPress, you will not have a hard time finding friendships, guides, and support for your blogs.
Bottom line
No other platform comes close to offering you what WordPress offers you at the cost that WordPress offers it to you. If you are worried about WordPress being difficult, don’t be! There is nothing hard about WordPress. With WordPress, you can easily install plugins and templates in seconds. Start the fun journey and see what is available to you today. In the next 5 minutes, your site will be on the web.