Why we love WordPress

Most websites we’re currently building are developed with a so-called Content Management System (CMS). This gives the client easy access to update the website themselves without the need for any coding (HTML) knowledge.

With 90% of our projects built on the popular WordPress system we’ve pretty much become a WordPress only shop.

Here’s a list of some WordPress features we like

Let drop some facts first

• Proven – WordPress powers 25% of new websites today. Some notable WordPress users.
• Backed by Community – The latest version of WordPress has been downloaded more than 16 million times since its release (the prior version was downloaded more than 32 million times).
• Flexible Developer Choice – WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems around. Backed by a huge developer community so if Good Websites got hit by a tsunami, someone will be there to take care of your website.
• Open Source – WordPress is truly open source. No hidden stuff. No charge when your website hit a certain size. No closed off code. No fees. No gotchas. No nonsense. We like that!
• Secure – It’s constantly being developed and improved. The WordPress core files and plugins are updated almost on a monthly basis to keep up-to-date with the latest security fixes, new features and much more.

Back-end stuff we like

• Content Management System. Easy access to update your website. No need of any knowledge of coding. WordPress is continually improving its back-end, adding new features with every upgrade.
• User Friendly – I taught my mom how to manage her own site in about 20 minutes. Enough said.
• Photos, videos and/or audio – Easy upload photos and videos. From a computer or hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and/or Picasa.
• Visual Editor– The WYSIWYG editor gives you everything you need to edit your websites content. From Italic or bold to left-align, publish a post or schedule it for another day. Simple as.
• Search Engine Optimisation – WordPress makes it easy to optimize a website for the search engines (SEO). Create keyword-rich meta tags very easily from the back-end.
• Standard Web Compliance – Every bit of the generated code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. It follows the rules and that makes the search engines happy.
• Beautiful URLs – goodwebsites.nz/?=p#4cdd4525&^#gg? Not with WordPress. URLs are readable and describes what the content says, not where it sits in a database. This makes sharing links a lot friendlier.
• Plugins – There’s a wide choice of plugins if you need special functionality. And if there isn’t any it’s easy to build one.

Some features we like

• Blog/News section – the blog functionality is still the best in the business. With categories, tags, threaded commenting, gravatars, widgets, moderation controls, anti-spam solutions, and plugin infrastructure, it’s pretty hard to find anything better. If you do know one drop it in a comment below. Curious to find out.
• Drag-and-drop – Love this one! A drag-and-drop image uploader.
• Distraction Free Writing –Another favourite! Full screen editor. While writing the back-end literally fades away letting you concentrate on your content.
• Schedule ahead – Schedule posts for some time in the future or backdate a post.
• Save Drafts – Save unfinished articles, improve them later, publish when ready.
• Previewing Posts/pages – Before you hit ‘Publish’, have a look at the preview to check if everything is the way you want it.
• Multiple Personalities – Multiple users? Not a problem. Define different roles for different users.
• Comments – Visitors to your site can leave comments on posts (if you want).
• Spam protection – Out of the box WordPress comes with very robust tools to eliminate comment spam.
• Full user registration – Built-in user registration system that (if you want) can allow people to register and maintain profiles and leave authenticated comments on your blog. You can optionally close comments for non-registered users.
• Moderation – For full control WordPress provides an array of comment moderation options.
• Notification – WordPress can keep you in the loop by sending you an email each time there is a new comment or a comment awaiting moderation.

Feel free to drop any questions about WordPress as a comment below, or simple send us an email.