“Why WordPress” is a question I get asked quite often by friends and clients. My answer varies but it’s always some version of “because it’s simple.” WordPress is the website building equivalent of an automatic transmission. You’re always going to have those drivers that want to take care of the shifting themselves, but for the majority of us, the car just needs to move forward when we push the peddle and move forward a little faster when we push it a little harder.
When I discovered WordPress as a blogging platform almost two years ago more than one lightbulb exploded in my head. Here was a content management system that was simple to use with tones of untapped potential. I could offer clients an awesome webspace that they could manage on their own.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with that thought because between 2008 and 2012, the market for WordPress developers went BANANAS! In that time, the web has seen a 1000% increase in available work for WordPress developers, designers, coders and trainers.
So here we are, just a few short years later and the web is embracing WordPress as more than just a blogging platform. There is no limit to what you can do with a WordPress site, just look here to see the huge businesses that have embraced WordPress as the backend of their web.
Alright, so I’m passionate about WordPress but what does this all mean for YOU? The WordPress Starter. Thanks to this wonderfully easy to use blogging and site management platform, you can finally take control of your webspace. No more calls to a developer at $100/hour for help with simple things like putting up a new page or posting a new blog post. It means I can offer you a website and access to training for FREE where it would have cost you $1000‘s only a few years ago. With WordPress, you’re in control and the harder you press the gas, the faster it will go!
Here are a few fun WordPress facts for you:
- According to PressTrends between 70,000 and 80,000 new WordPress sites and blogs come online everyday
- WordPress sites make up almost 20% of all websites on the internet but 24% of all new sites each day.
- WordPress.com reports they have nearly 60 million WordPress sites and at the time of writing, WordPress.org reported almost 26 million downloads of its latest release.
- There are 20,000 free plugins and 1,700 free themes available for WordPress.org installs, not to mention the thousands of awesome premium themes and plugins out there today.
- In 2008, odesk.com reported less than 100 jobs posted for WordPress developers and related work. So far in 2012, the popular freelance site has seen over 100,000 WordPress related job postings.
