Really, why WordPress? With (seemingly) so many options out there, what is it with WordPress that puts it ahead of other CMSs?

One never knows what action, or post, or a sentence can move others to add to the conversation and maybe inspire to some great things. I sure hope Lawrence’s LinkedIn post starts as a step one toward much needed marketing team reviving, while I stick to two specific comments that sparked me to write this piece.

The context before the why

Matt Medeiros said something spot-on and true:

“I addressed this last year: we can’t wait for the formation of a Make team and the natural overhead that will bring.

I’ve been urging those who want more positive awareness for WordPress to start with a simple blog post “Why WordPress?”

I’ll be happy to help promote every post that encourages the adoption of WordPress. Please get into touch with me if that’s you!”

Followed by Alex Sirota, who wrote:

“What is it that you’re marketing exactly? What pain does WordPress solve today? For most it is a jumbled mess of code written by so many people that by now it needs a total rewrite. But the human capital and actual capital has gone to their corners to protect their golden geese.

We wrote a plugin to integrate WordPress with WildApricot and all I saw was devs promising the world to their clients without the actual necessary budget or even the knowledge to deliver on their promises.

The fact is WordPress competes with their own ecosystem and has all sorts of single points of failures that makes it unattractive today in a world of hundreds of attractive and modern choices open source and closed source.

So then — what are the pains WordPress addresses to today’s solution makers? What are the jobs to be done? Speed? Cost? Flexibility? Scale? I still can’t really tell. Back in 2010 it was the best free option you could use to build a reasonable business on top of as a designer. And the most available hosted system at near zero cost. Today? I am not so sure.

And this got me thinking.. We in the WordPress community are so caught up and consumed with it, we tend to overlook the bigger picture. Stuck in the forest, we don’t see that one tree. Something that, in a way, WordPress Credits understood and is trying to change – only – it can’t go without marketing and without pinpointing the specifics both Matt and Alex are mentioning.”

Why indeed WordPress and what does it solve today?

Why WordPress

To say WordPress powers 40 something percent of worldwide sites and be done with it is not nearly enough. So what?, would be and is (I’ve received it!) the answer from people outside the WordPress bubble. Just because something is popular, doesn’t mean it’s automatically good (although, in this case – it is). So, we need something else, something different, something contextually that sticks. I thought about it, debated in my mind and concluded with the following overall take:

People do not care about the platform, they care about getting their thing (whatever that might be) done. And done in a way that suits them.

In this equation, WordPress needs to be re-positioned as the go-to tool that serves them done. How?

By stating the obvious:

People don’t wake up wanting a CMS, they need tool that works. Think website that can be changed without needing to start over. A site that doesn’t collapse the moment the business grows or new people come. That doesn’t break when ownership changes and themes switch. That doesn’t lock users in with what and how a website should be. And while WordPress may not be the easiest way to build a site today (as there are some easier, cleaner even options for that), it does solve the pain of running that site over time and with freedom to make what you need from it, without worrying whether the next integration or change requires a higher pricing plan.

While most modern platforms optimize for the moment of launches and have strongly defined rules of how things work, WordPress is there for everything that happens after (with the limit being your knowledge and imagination).

The first redesign, SEO and content strategy change, that first „Oh, we need to add this, but also keep that“. It’s when the site stops being a project and starts being infrastructure is where WordPress earns its well deserved place. It keeps your stress levels low and sanity intact – I should know, I’ve worked with Joomla, Typo 3, Drupal – all back in the day 😊

Big bonus to why WordPress

So, while it might not be the easiest to learn from the get-go, WordPress still is (and will be for long) the number one tool because it just works. No matter the type or size of idea or business you have. It works because it’s supported by the countless number of worldwide community members. Developers, designers, marketers, educators, engineers, everyone and anyone in between who’s been making WordPress to what it is today.

Other tools are just that – tools, products, WordPress is far from it. It’s a system supported by a global, long-living community. People who build on it, fix it, extend it, document it, teach it and pressure it to be better.

While other platforms have users, WordPress has contributors. People who volunteer their time, expertise and energy to fix when something is broken, update what needs to be updated, explain when there’s confusion.

This might not be perfect (far from it), nor always elegant – but it’s resilient and you sure need it when you want your business (see how I didn’t say site?) to last.

Final takeaway

WordPress doesn’t decide how your site is allowed to work, it gives you a base and says – you’re responsible for what you build on top of this. As stated on the official site:

The freedom to build. The freedom to change. The freedom to share.

That’s my take on it, from experience and if it made you pause and think about WordPress a bit differently, then it did its job. You might think different and, in that case, curious to learn your take in the comments below.