This is the first post in the series The Complete Guide to WordPress for Newbies.

Simply put, WordPress is a website building program, and once you get used to it, you can make beautiful and powerful websites as you like.

In fact, in addition to WordPress, there are many website building programs on the market, such as Wix, Strikingly, Weebly, Drupal, Joomla, etc., but why do you say that if you can only build one website in this life, I suggest you choose WordPress?

global popularity

First of all, the popularity of WordPress is high. Whatever we learn, we should pick up the popular things to learn. Just like learning English, you can’t go wrong when learning a language.

As can be seen from the table below, the market share of WordPress is far ahead.

Even though a hundred flowers are blooming and various CMSs emerge in an endless stream, the market share and search popularity of WordPress have always remained the first:

Even in the retail field where it is not good at, it has maintained the second share:

Learning one of the most popular technologies in the world is very beneficial. Not only can you build your own website, but one day you will be unemployed, and you can also find work on international outsourcing websites, because the demand for people to build WordPress websites on these outsourcing websites is too high. many.

The most important point is that it is very easy for you to modify a website made with WordPress, because there are so many people who understand WordPress, and you can hire a large number of developers from all over the world to help you solve problems.

Here is a small case.

I have a friend on WeChat. His website is built by a domestic website building company using their own system.

One day, my friend wanted to add a statistical function to the website. He hoped that after all inquiries were sent, the data could be transmitted to Google’s analysis tool, so he asked the website building company to help him add this function.

As a result, the website building company rejected my friend on the grounds that “it can’t be realized”.

Then my friend found me and asked me to help.

But what can I do in the face of this situation? I can’t do anything, because my friend’s entire website is automatically generated based on a set of templates from the website building company. If you want to add statistical codes, you must add this function to the entire template of the website building company.

In addition to paying money to the website building company and asking them to develop a customized function, otherwise there is no way.

And no matter who my friend asks for help, the result is that he can’t do it, and if he can’t do it, he can’t do it, because the self-use template of the website building company is too small, and no one can do secondary development as soon as he gets started.

Therefore, it is very dangerous to use an unpopular platform to build a website, because if something goes wrong, no one can help you except the website building company.

Moreover, it is very inconvenient to add any functions in the later stage. Except for the website building company willing to help you customize development, few people in this world know how to develop.

But if we use WordPress to build a website, it will be completely different. WordPress is popular all over the world, so you want to add any functions, want to modify a certain place, the flexibility is very high, you can do it yourself, or you can hire a world-class platform. Freelancers can do it for you, and the cost will be so low that you dare not think.

Therefore, it is very important to choose the right platform before building a website. How popular the platform is, how easy it is to solve problems in the later stage.

The opposite is true when choosing a platform with low popularity. Although the money may not be much at the beginning, for example, we searched on Taobao and found that the website made with templates may only cost a few hundred yuan. It is a huge trouble, and many times you have to pretend to be a grandson and ask the website building company to add functions for you.

Ecologically strong

Secondly, the ecology of the WordPress website is very strong, just like many people do not want to use Linux, but only like to use Windows. When someone asks him why, he will probably say that many Windows software cannot be used on Linux.

This is because the ecology of Windows is very strong. Based on this operating system, there are countless useful software, and these good software jointly build an ecology.

Then why are few people using Linux? The key reason is that there are too few software above. If you want to download an input method, you must first be familiar with a set of download commands. After downloading, you need to be familiar with a set of decompression and installation commands. Even when installing an input method, you must first be familiar with the system Knowledge of the path…

Therefore, for ordinary users, Linux’s ecology is too weak.

ps: For operation, maintenance and development, Linux has a very strong ecology, far more powerful than windows.

Ecology and popularity are a chicken-and-egg problem. You don’t know whether the chicken or the egg comes first, just like you don’t know whether it is because WordPress is so popular that it has a strong ecology, or because it is a powerful ecology. That’s why it’s so popular.

So for WordPress, which has a very powerful ecology now, don’t think about it, just learn it directly, because after you learn it, all the things in its ecology will be useful to your website.

• Want to send emails from your website? No problem, a form plugin does the trick.
• Your website wants to live chat? No problem, a live chat plugin will do the trick.
• You don’t want Chinese people to visit your website? No problem, a plug-in that blocks IP will do it.

As long as you want it, the WordPress ecosystem can help you do it, and most importantly, most of the plugins are free.

In fact, I haven’t seen a website building program that is easier to use than WordPress. For example, there is a very good website building program farbox in China. After using it for two years, I returned to WordPress. Why? Because too few people use farbox and the ecology is too weak, every time I want to add a function to the website, there are only two ways.

Either study its documentation and write out the code by myself, or spend money on an outsourcing platform like Programmer Inn, find a programmer who understands its programming language, and help me make the function.

Simple functions are fine, and I can spend time doing them myself, but for slightly more complex functions, I have to hire someone to do secondary development, and the development cost can be several thousand…

But returning to WordPress is different. I search for the functions I want in the plug-in store, and I will definitely find the plug-ins I want, and most of them can be tried for free. On the one hand, I don’t need to spend energy writing code myself. I also don’t have to pay for a programmer.

Therefore, an ecologically powerful platform is too important for normal users, and it can save you a lot of time and energy.

Many people resist WordPress because WordPress is too popular, or because the WordPress learning curve is not smooth, and making a website is not intuitive, and they switch to platforms like wix and weebly. This approach is actually a loss.

Although using wix or weebly to build a website is very fast, and you can create a website with just two clicks and drags, but you will face endless troubles later.

• Want to add a form? Yes, add money (and it may not be easy to use).
• Want to add live chat? Yes, add money (and it may not be easy to use).
• Want to do SEO optimization? Yes, add money (and it may not be easy to use).
• Want to block Chinese people? Sorry, I can’t add money.

It can be said that building a website is cool for a while, and running a crematorium … In the end, my dilemma will arise. I either find a programmer to write a plug-in to help you realize the special function, or spend time studying the documentation of the platform and implement it by myself.

Therefore, there is nothing wrong with using WordPress to build a website. The super high global popularity and super ecology ensure that WordPress is a technology worth mastering.

easy to learn

The most important reason why many people use wix or Strikingly to build a website is that these platforms can “drag and drop”.

A piece of text, a picture, can be dragged around on their customized canvas, what it looks like when dragged out, and what the front desk of the website will look like in the end, it is a very foolish operation.

But there are two points that make the advantages of these platforms disappear.

Bad for SEO

The reason why these tools can be dragged shows that it has made a lot of compromises at the code level. Originally, a picture is written in a normal layout, and only one line of code can express it clearly. However, in order to make the position of the picture exactly the same as the position dragged and dropped by the user, these drag and drop platforms use a lot of code to help the picture to be positioned.

Originally, one line of picture code can be written clearly, they need to use more than ten lines of code to realize, and even for the accuracy of the position, there will be many “blank lines”.

These codes that are not streamlined are very bad for SEO. When Google’s little spider crawls to the website to crawl content, it will take several times longer than other websites. Secondly, for a large number of codes that should not exist on the website, it will also Get confused, and in severe cases think you’re cheating.

But WordPress is much better. In many excellent templates, there are not many components to assist in positioning, such as a row (row), several columns (columns), and nothing. A picture, in the most complicated case, use Three lines of code can also be used to assist in positioning.

So why does WordPress often rank better than other platforms for the same website? It is because of the excellent template based on the WordPress platform that the code in the background becomes super concise, and Ding is Ding, Ding is Ding, and there are very few invalid codes.

In addition, the WordPress platform has a large number of SEO plugins, no matter what functions you want to add to help SEO, such as:

• do xml map,
• Write robots file
• Add featured snippets

The WordPress plugin store can help you get it done in minutes.

So in 2020, there are still people who use niche platforms to build websites to compete for rankings. It’s not that it’s not advisable at all, it can only be said that if you enjoy the convenience of niche platforms, you have to bear the inconvenience in operation of niche platforms . Doing a good job of SEO on multiple platforms will cost several times that of WordPress.

Similar great tools in WP

Then, similar drag-and-drop tools appeared on the WordPress platform, such as Elementor、Diviwait.

The drag-and-drop function of these tools has achieved a real balance. On the one hand, it can really allow users to drag and drop to build a website. On the other hand, it also ensures the simplicity of the code. , dragged column by column, but can ensure the simplicity and high degree of unity of the background code.

Of course, it is not impossible to remove the “seal” of such tools. As long as you are brave and set all elements to relative positioning, you can indeed drag and drop any element on the page.

But the corresponding price is the same as other niche platforms. You have to bear the messy page layout and the messy ending of the background code… From this perspective, you will know how worrying the layout and code quality of the niche platform are.

So the emergence of such drag-and-drop tools also makes WordPress easier to learn, making WordPress the same as Strikingly, just drag and go. In fact, those who finally learn WordPress will find that WordPress is very similar to building blocks.