June 3, 2014

WordPress – The Obvious Choice

Whether you’re a web designer, developer, or marketing professional chances are you’ve encountered WordPress. If not, then we suggest you eject your AOL CD and join the 21st century.

Since its launch in 2003, WordPress has climbed the content management system (CMS) ranks to become the #1 most used platform on the market. It’s versatile, easy-to-use, and extremely customizable.

During the mid 2000s – the “dark ages” of CMSs – various systems began to emerge and evolve, and there were a few that clearly set the pace. Among the leaders were Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress. Adam Taylor, founder of Splendor Design Group, explains, “We worked with several of the systems, read about and researched them, and discussed them with peers in our industry. Our (and our customers’) experiences naturally lead us to WordPress. We found it was much less complicated and much more intuitive for the end user, yet still very powerful. And lately it’s absolutely dominating the CMS market.”

 

WordPress backend

 

WordPress is powered by Open Source Software, which means it is community-driven and free to use. The fanatical legions of devoted users are a veritable army of code writers, programmers, designers, and bloggers. This community of contributors is responsible for creating the 30,000+ WordPress plugins that have been downloaded 665 million times. And they’re all about improving the system – everything from slideshows, galleries, and SEO, to security measures, e-commerce, and form building – the list is endless.

Taylor points out, “We got into the game and adopted WordPress relatively early. Over the past 7 years, our technical director Jeremy and I have worked passionately to learn this system inside and out. We have developed dozens of custom designs, plugins, and integrations using WordPress, covering everything from simple brochure websites to complex database driven portals.”

Whether it’s attending WordPress conventions (known as “Wordcamps”), further simplifying the administration tools, or developing custom templates/themes and plugins, Splendor puts WordPress to the test to deliver elegant and highly customized websites to its clients that also happen to be extremely user friendly. It’s this ease of use that allows clients to quickly learn how to manage their websites without relying too heavily on their designer.

“We’re designers and marketers first and foremost, but it just so happens that we have become specialists in WordPress as well. Given its current popularity, I’d say that’s pretty fortuitous!” As long as WordPress continues to successfully anticipate the needs of its users by releasing updates, enhancements, and plugins, WordPress will continue to be an easy choice for Splendor Design Group.

Want to know more about WordPress and its application at Splendor Design Group? Stay tuned for our series of upcoming articles highlighting the different aspects and components of WordPress that have made it the #1 CMS choice worldwide.