WordPress is the most popular content management system of the world, powering millions of websites and blogs, so we decided to dedicate our last Twitter Chat to WordPress. Why choose WordPress over other content management systems? What are the most common mistakes that WordPress users make? What are the most popular plugins and how to use them in the right way? Let’s explore the answers to these questions from our participants and special guest Harsh Agrawal, professional blogger and entrepreneur.

Why Wordpress?

WordPress is the most popular and widely used content management system. What is the secret of its success and which advantages prompt a majority of users to choose it over another CMS?

First of all: it’s free and easily accessible, it has an intuitive interface and it’s understandable even for beginners who have never dealt with a CMS.

In addition to its simplicity, WordPress is quick to install and easy-to-use, so it would be the best choice if you want to launch a new website as soon as possible.

You can easily use WordPress to customize the design of a website to your needs. Do you want a built-in event calendar or video gallery, or maybe some e-commerce features? The many WordPress plugins make these all possible. “So many of our clients use a difficult CMS that doesn’t allow enough flexibility. WordPress gives you access to everything!” — Sarah Kelly ‏@Sarah_S_Kelly.

So WordPress is adjustable and, most importantly, it’s scalable. You can develop, enrich and expand your website without compromising its performance.

Unlike other CMSs like Joomla or Drupal, WordPress doesn’t require technical skills like PHP or HTML knowledge, and it would be the best choice for an inexperienced user.

With responsive WordPress themes, you can easily adapt your website to Google mobile update. Ecreativeworks ‏@ECWseo shares their experience: “I wanted to make a site responsive; a quick theme switch did the trick.”

This is an SEO-friendly CMS with that allows you to customize every page or site post to increase your chances of ranking in SERPs.

And last but not the least — you can easily find a lot of Internet advice, ready-made solutions and free guides that will help with any WordPress problem or question.

You can also find some interesting tips on managing a WordPress website from the article “5 HTML & WordPress Hacks for Non-Coders” by Kathleen Garvin @KGarvSEO.

WordPress checklist

Now let’s turn directly to the process of website creation and discuss the most significant steps. Good hosting is one of the fundamental components of website success.

The construction of a house begins with plans and blueprints. Likewise, before you actually start building your website, you need to make a clear plan and the structure. “Design your URL structure with care.” — Ian Lurie @portentint.

When planning for a website, always keep your users in mind, as a poor user experience will cost you customers and money in the long run.

By lending too much variety to your template, you run the risk of jumping to another extreme – overusing plugins.

Content creates real value for your website, so invest the time, money and resources to fill your website with content that is truly worthwhile. According to Ecreativeworks ‏@ECWseo, “WordPress makes it super easy to add new content, so make sure to write good stuff!”

WordPress offers two types of content that you can choose for your website — posts and pages. They will look almost the same on your site, and there is very little difference between their dashboards. Yet there are some key differences that you need to consider when creating content.

Do not forget to consider website security, this should be your primary concern! Even if you think there’s nothing on your website worth stealing, it still may get hacked and used to broadcast spam, for example. “SECURITY. Make sure you choose a secure password & regularly update plug-ins. Hacking is more prevalent nowadays.” — Tripp Hamilton ‏@Tripp_Hamilton. 

So, if we have launched a new website step-by-step. What’s next? There’s no limit to perfection — continue developing it, look for new tactics and tips, and analyze your users’ behavior.

Here’s a comprehensive plan suggested by Harsh Agrawal ‏@denharsh:

Must-have WordPress plugins

The Must-Have WordPress Plugins

Common WordPress mistakes

Even experienced marketers aren’t immune to making mistakes when working on a project, and beginners are almost doomed to make some.

We all have to learn from our mistakes, but it is definitely better to learn from others’ experiences. Here is some useful advice from our participants:

There are countless WordPress plugins — one to meet the needs of almost any website owner, and most of them are free. But this can lead to the temptation to stuff your website with as many plugins as possible. As Andrew Epperson ‏@eppand suggests, “Be careful with your plugins. The more the add, the more your site has to work to load.”

However, using too few plugins is another extreme. The solution here is balance.

It’s important to constantly update your WordPress to keep your website secure. “Update everything often. Remove plugins and themes you don't use, even if inactive” — Thom Craver ‏@thomcraver.

Using the child themes, you can make changes to your website without changing the original code, and you won’t have to delete your changes when updating your parent theme. Working directly on a parent theme may cause you a lot of problems.

Joe Cayetano ‏@GameofJoes warns of “going with a ‘pretty’ template rather than one with good UX and is responsive and mobile-ready”. Besides being good-looking, a website should possess a clear structure and be navigable and understandable for users.

Since mobile-friendliness has become an official ranking factor, it would be unwise to not use responsive templates.

Check out the article “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web” recommended by Bill Slawski @bill_slawski:

WordPress pro tips

SEO pro tips for WordPress Websites

WordPress features

WordPress is deservingly considered king of all content management systems — many of our participants claimed that WordPress has everything a website owner may need.

Although even the best CMS has its imperfections. Some of our participants wished WordPress had more developed social connectivity:

Others suggested that it should have a better comment system.

Today, semantic search is booming, so it would be very convenient if WordPress had some plugins for semantic markup. “I would like better schema markup plugins for WordPress” — Bill Slawski ‏@bill_slawski.

A lot of e-commerce websites that use WordPress face problems at some point. WordPress might be a good start, and it has enough settings to build a decent ecommerce website, but as the site begins to grow in scale, WordPress will not be able to maintain it. What’s more, many specialists mention security issues. “Maybe delving more into becoming a stronger contender for ecommerce functionality? That would be sweet.” — Rachel Howe ‏@R8chel_Marie. 

For many websites moving from HTTP to HTTPS is crucial, especially since Google has started considering HTTPS as a ranking factor.

That's it for today, hope you will join our next Twitter Chat!

Special thanks to the following participants whose tweets we used to create images:

@leegermeroth, @jakebohall, @bill_slawski, @fighto, @mysiteauditor, @Beymour, @emoryrowland, @riskycontent, @denseymour, @UXcelsior, @denharsh, @ThinkSEM, @KGarvSEO, @TaraMClapper, @AdeelMSami, @thomcraver, @hst, @MilwaukeePPC, @digitalcurrent , @portentint, @larryprevost.

Author Photo
Elena TerentevaElena Terenteva, Product Marketing Manager at SEMrush. Elena has eight years public relations and journalism experience, working as a broadcasting journalist, PR/Content manager for IT and finance companies. Bookworm, poker player, good swimmer.
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