The Sally Walker team is made up of core team of 3 people, with experience in all fields of PR, marketing, branding, IT and website design. With over 1000 websites built from the ground up, We have been using WordPress since it started in 2003 and are proud to be an official WordPress beta tester, support engineer, theme and plugin creator.  Every website that is built here by Sally Walker is proudly built using the self hosted version WordPress, but isn’t WordPress just for bloggers and blogging? Nope! Let me give you a guided tour of just how powerful WordPress is, what can be done with it and why you really should be using WordPress for your business website.

WordPress is awesome because…

1. Free – It’s free. It costs nothing, nada, nowt, not a sausage. Whether you have it hosted by WordPress.com (their own hosted version is a cut down version of the self hosted version but still extremely powerful) or you host it yourself or with a host as a self hosted version (very powerful) downloaded from WordPress.org, it is free. FREE!
2. Out Of The Box – Once WordPress is installed (which is also easy to do!), it works straight out of the box. You don’t have to do anything fancy to get it working if you want a simple site or blog.
3. Stats – There are approximately 810 MILLION websites built using WordPress in the world and WordPress based websites run the percentage ranges anywhere from approximately 44% to 65% depending on which data study you read. Amazing huh? The reason for this is simply because of the huge customer base and the way it can be extended. The more people use it, the larger the developer community becomes and the more ways to grow WordPress happens.
4. Ease Of Use – A basic WordPress website is very easy to use from a client side point of view. With instructions all over the web and informative blog posts (like this one of course 😉 ), you can find out a wealth of information about WordPress. You do not need to know how to code (although it is helpful is you want a more complex site) and you can download plugins that allow you to drag and drop content around to change your design,
5. Tutorials – WordPress does have inbuilt snippets of information and you can also add tutorial plugins to help you step by step. There are also a vast number of tutorial websites and videos out there.
6. SEO Friendly – WordPress has the largest number of SEO addons and plugins available for a platform. and inbuilt options that certainly help with your SEO. Over various tests between CMS systems such as Joomla, Magento, Drupal and WordPress for SEO using the same search terms, WordPress wins hands down every single time.
7. Extendable – With over 58,000 FREE plugins (addons) and almost 40,000 paid plugins at your disposal, WordPress can be extended to do pretty much anything you want.
8. Secure – The WordPress community is so large that it is constantly on the look out for viruses, bugs, issues and of course hackers. No website is 100% secure but WordPress certainly does a good job of trying. With extra security plugins you can add too, you can be safe in the knowledge you are doing all you can to try and keep your website safe.
9. Photos – With WordPress you can add pictures, graphics, photos etc throughout your website and even create multiple galleries and photo albums.
10. Audio – Have an audio or music clip you want to add? No problem! You can even create a podcast website!
11. Video – Have YouTube videos you want to add to your website? Easy. Want to upload a video direct to your WordPress website? Easy!
12. Themes – With over 120,000 themes (paid and free) to choose from, you can find a design that suits your needs. There are also WordPress designers, just like us here at Sally Walker who can build a theme just for you!
13. Community Support – WordPress has a HUGE community of developers, support staff and users all willing to help you out. There are also personal support engineers like us here at Sally Walker who can give you one to one help.
14. Mobile Friendly – Straight out of the box, WordPress is mobile friendly meaning that your website is easily accessible and viewable via a mobile device such as a mobile phone, tablet etc. Most themes these days are also mobile ready. If you are using an older theme then you can add a free mobile theme over the top too!
15. Integration – WordPress integrates with thousands of other platforms and applications such as MailChimp, ConvertKit, Dropbox, Google apps and extras, SendInBlue, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram just to name a tiny few.
16. Schedule Posts – Want to write a few blog posts in one go before you go on holiday and then post them automatically over a period of time? Want to drip feed your blog posts? With WordPress post scheduling this is quick and easy to do.
17. Multi Users – WordPress can work with multi users. So if you have a team of people (there is no limit of how many!) each team member can have their own login and create both posts and pages in their own name.
18. Multi Sites – One WordPress installation can also host multiple sites using the ‘MultiSite’ option, great for teams, families and corporate departments.
19. Multi Lingual – With over 100languages available to install, WordPress is certainly multi lingual.
20. Universal Dashboard – No matter what kind of PC, laptop, tablet or mobile you are one, the admin dashboard always has the same menu so you will always know where things are.
21. Hosting – MOST web hosts will host WordPress. Our own Sally Walker server can host WordPress so when you become a client you will automatically receive FREE WordPress hosting for a year!
22. Content Management System (CMS) – A CMS system is a platform or application such as WordPress that allows you to create content easily and efficiently, usually web based such as a website or intranet and quite often using multiple users.
23. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term that refers to practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth, all of which can be achieved by using WordPress.
24. Blogging & Personal Website – OK let’s get this out of the way! WordPress is excellent for blogging. It is what it was originally designed for. WordPress was a blogging platform and it is still by far the most used blogging platform in the world simply because it allows you to be as simple or as complex as you want with your blog.
25. Business Website – Your company website is your shop window to the world. Whether you are selling physical products or just announcing your services, WordPress can do both with ease.
26. Portfolio Website – Maybe you are a photographer, model or graphic designer where the things you need to show are mainly photos or graphics rather than huge chunks of text? WordPress can be created into beautiful portfolio websites.
27. Membership Website – Would you like people to sign up to a membership or subscription scheme? You can do that too.
28. Ecommerce (Online Shop) Website – More powerful (with the right plugins) than Magento, With plugins, WordPress can host ecommerce, stores, retail shops and wholesale online warehouses more powerfully and with more functionality than most ecommerce only platforms such as Magento.
29. Community Website – Want a community style site? Maybe a social network? A Forum? WordPress can create your very own community.
30. Arcade Style & Gamer Clan/Guild Websites – With various arcade plugins, you can create your very own arcade gaming center! Maybe you play a well known online game such as World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Call of Duty or Halo, where you build, grow and work as a clan or guild, then WordPress can create a home for all of your members and with integration of addons from well known game authors.
31. Intranet Style Website – An intranet is a private website (blocked from public view) for a company or business that is used to share information, ideas, tasks, messages, calendars etc. WordPress can be built as a fully working private intranet using plugins
32. Directory Website – Want a directory of hotels? B&B’s? Classifieds? Tourist attractions? Anything you need a directory for, WordPress can be used with various plugins.
33. Job Board Website – Do you need to list a range of vacancies? Or do you want to create your own job board? WordPress can do both easily using various free and paid for themes and plugins.
34. Q&A Website – Want a Questions and Answers board style website like Quora? WordPress can handle this.
35. Tech Support & Customer Service Website – Need a website to create and host tech support tickets or customer service department with live chat systems? Now you can using WordPress and plugins.
36. Events Website – Want to host events, sell tickets, post about others events? Maybe create your own EventBrite? With various plugins you can do this using WordPress.
37. Wiki & Knowledge Base Website – Do you love Wikipedia? Or do you have a lot of information you need to pass to your clients or customers with a knowledge base system? WordPress has lots of lovely plugins just for you.
38. School & eLearning Website (Online Courses) – For both education (school, college, university) and online course systems for eLearning, WordPress plugins can create a safe place for you to not only learn but also write, create and take part in online coursework.
39. Religious, Charity & Non Profit Websites – Because WordPress is FREE it is a great choice for non profit websites.
40. News & Magazine Websites – With various plugins, themes and the integration of world news systems, WordPress is the top choice for the WorldWide leaders in news and magazine style websites such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Variety, LinkedIn, Reuters, BBC and more.
41. Review Website – Do you need to hold reviews of customers for businesses or services like TrustPilot? Then WordPress and it’s plugins can create this.
42. Booking Website – Need to book online for tickets, a hotel room, restaurant, doctors appointment, hairdressers etc? Then WordPress is what you need. With various booking plugins, all of your appointments can be managed online via your website.
43. Coupon Website – If you are a fan of Groupon, VoucherCodes or other coupon sites, then why not start your own with WordPress.
44. Do It All – WordPress can do all of the above and more. And what is even better, you can potentially do all of the above ON THE SAME WEBSITE should you wish!
45. Support Engineers & Designers – This may all sound daunting, but this is why you have support engineers and designers just like us here at Sally Walker. We can build a WordPress site for your needs incorporating any of the items above, pic and mix the tools you need to create the perfect site for you. We have a passion and knowledge of WordPress that spans 20years and the reason is, it’s just the best (in our opinion, and 810 millions of other users..) platform out there for our clients 🙂