At a recent workshop, Joanne Steele from Rural Tourism Marketing recommended that business owners make sure their websites are built using WordPress. We agree! We have been using WordPress for years and have several reasons why we think it is a good choice as a content management system (CMS).
- It is open source. This means that thousands and thousands of developers contribute to the functionality of the platform. What that means for the end user is a highly functional, robust platform that is continually updated and improved. The updates are distributed to all users free of charge. In addition to adding more function, developers are also continually adding more security to WordPress. There are also thousands of plugins available which add functionality to WordPress, many of them free. There are tens of thousands of web designers who use WordPress, so changing web designers is not a problem.
In contrast, if you use a design company that has created their own CMS, they have to update the CMS with more functionality and security themselves. If you are looking for a specific functionality, that company will probably charge you for the development of it. If you should decide you no longer want to use that company, you are out of luck. Moving to another designer means starting over with a different CMS.
- It is easy to use. Once the site is setup with WordPress, the end user only needs some basic word processing skills to make changes and updates themselves. There is no need to purchase any software. There is no need to make the change and then upload it to a server. Changes are easily made on the fly with no programming skills needed.
- It is SEO friendly. WordPress code is clean code that will not interfere with your SEO. It also has plugins that can enhance and help you with your SEO.
- It has built in blog functionality. You don’t have to find a blog platform that is compatible with your website because WordPress has blogging functionality built right in!
WordPress began as a blogging platform but has evolved into a robust, highly functional CMS and is the most used platform as a website CMS in the world.
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HI
I have a tourism business in New Zealand and late last year completed the change from a proprietary CMS to WordPress and now my whole site is run by WordPress.
The benefits were:
1. Much cheaper hosting
2. Improved SEO rankings through regular posting
3. Much cheaper site maintenance, not being locked into one designer.
I had a designer create a template and set it up for me, it is going very well.
Would recommend it to any tourism operators, or all small business operators.