I’ve spoken extensively over the years about the many benefits of investing in a WordPress website. Browse back through my blog, and you’ll find loads of articles that sing its praises in terms of its flexibility, scalability, and its extremely intuitive CMS.
(And, to bust a common myth, it’s actually one of the most secure platforms available, too.)
Another thing that makes WordPress such a no-brainer for many of my clients is the fact it’s so simple to maintain in the long term. While there are many advantages to asking a professional designer to handle your site on your behalf – and I’ll go into these later! – you can normally keep it performing at its best just by setting aside a couple of hours a month for basic maintenance tasks.
Here are four reasons why WordPress is one of the easiest platforms to look after:
1. It’s easy to learn
Because WordPress is such a widely used platform, there are countless tutorials, training videos and full-blown courses online to help newbies get to grips with all its amazing features. You’ll find lots of tips and tricks on YouTube, you can sign up for more comprehensive programmes on sites like Udemy, and WordPress itself has curated its own learning hub that covers core topics for beginners.
2. It’s easily editable
Unless your WordPress site has been built with a particularly fussy template, changing its page content is much like editing a Word document. Everything is neatly laid out, so you can see exactly which section goes where, and you can create previews and drafts before you make any permanent changes to minimise the risk of anything going wrong. It’s the ideal system for people with little to no development experience (but it also offers more enhanced features for those who are more confident in their coding abilities).
3. It’s easy to improve
Like most businesses, you’ll need more from your website over time. If you started out with a basic brochure-style site a few years ago, and now need to create more content or add Ecommerce functionality, you can just add more pages as you see fit, and use the Woocommerce plugin to set up your very own online shop with as many products as you like. WordPress’ scalability is one of its biggest selling points, in my opinion!
4. It’s easy to maintain
To make sure your WordPress website is performing at its best, and all its elements are safe and secure, you’ll need to update your themes and plugins every now and then. This sounds like a big job, but it’s not at all. As long as you log in and update everything on a regular basis – once a week is best – all you need to do is click a few buttons and you’ll be good to go. WordPress will download and validate all the necessary files automatically.
Do you need extra help?
Most of my clients are more than capable of looking after their own WordPress websites. But the funny thing is, they don’t want to; they want to outsource their maintenance tasks platform to me.
Why? Because it might be easy to keep a WordPress website running, but it’s also time-consuming. Not all business owners have enough hours in the week to focus on the technical aspects of their digital shop window, and, quite understandably, they would rather be focusing on driving their company forward than getting to know the ins and outs of their WordPress platform.
Plus, if something does go wrong, getting to the root cause of the issue can be tricky. Having a knowledgeable WordPress website designer on hand to iron out any problems will save you valuable time and will stop you missing out on sales or enquiries because of a back-end error that could be quickly fixed.