I think most of you who are reading my blog have heard of WordPress. Many know it as blogware (blog software) and some – especially my clients – know it as a full content management solution (meaning you can easily edit your content using it).
But I know there are some people who read my blog regularly who don’t have any experience with WordPress. Perhaps they’ve heard of it and have no idea what it is. Maybe they’ve even used it but haven’t really understood how powerful it can. And yet I know there are others who haven’t heard of WordPress at all.
So I’m going to share a few short screencasts I’ve made over the past year to introduce some of the most powerful user features in WordPress and show you why you want to consider using it for your next website.
Now, just so we’re clear, this set of screencasts are meant for website owners who are running a business and who want and need to manage their websites themselves without having to deal with code. So these videos are made not for the coder or web developer – there’s plenty of that stuff. These videos are for coaches, healers and anyone else who has a service-based business so you can see what’s possible with a WordPress website.
So, let’s get started…
Using WordPress to Create, Update and Edit Your Website’s Content
Being able to publish and edit your own content whenever you want is a vital part of having a successful business website. And with WordPress you can do so without having to know a lick of code or hire a webmaster to do it for you. This saves you huge amounts of money and time. And streamlines you opportunities to make money. Watch how easy it is to edit your own content in WordPress:
Easily Manage and Update Your Navigation Bar
There were ways with systems before WordPress to edit your own content. But there’s almost never been an easy way to put control over your website’s navigation bar before WordPress 3.0. Take a look at how easy you can add, move and rename your nav buttons:
Change Your Design Whenever You Want
You can see from the two videos above that WordPress gives you incredible power over your website without having to know a lick of code. Well, it gets even better. The last feature I want to show you is how easy it is to to change your design using WordPress.
Now you still may want or need to hire someone (I can recommend somebody) to set WordPress up the way you want it with all the features and create for you a custom visual design that brands your business. But once your site is in WordPress, changing designs is as easy a the click of button. Watch…
As I said, you may still want to work with a web designer to get your site initially setup in WordPress or build our customized website design. You may even want to hire someone to create your next design or modify one of the thousands of existing WordPress themes for you. The bottom line of why this is so, as I say, ‘game changing’ is because you’re using WordPress the cost and development time of a redesign is cut greatly. I can’t give you specifics as price will depend on your needs and your developers skills and offer (for instance, I merge website design with business coaching so my clients learn how to use their websites to meet their business goals).
As you can see, WordPress opens the web to you in ways that just weren’t possible just a couple years ago – at least for those who don’t know how to code websites. That’s why I say that every website needs to be in a system like WordPress.
So if you’re website isn’t in WordPress or if you’re about to have your first website built, let’s have a short conversation about how to get you using WordPress. Feel free to contact me and we can discuss your specific needs.
What sort of questions does this bring up for you?
What website do you have that you’d like to move to WordPress?
note: WordPress is open source software licensed under GPL. It is open to the public to freely use and modify and it is never for sale – meaning no one can charge you a license fee for using WordPress. Setup, design, customization, etc – yes. But to charge you for WordPress is against the license.
note: image from Nahh on Flickr, 
some rights reserved)
Great artivle for people who want’s to know about WordPress and what it can do. Do you have a more advanced article too?
@Morten – Thanks. I have a whole series of tutorial videos that I make available to my clients.
This is awesome, I have to get use to wordpress now.
WordPress is a great tool, especially for beginners that don’t know much about web design or development. These videos can also help them out a great deal too. For those looking to have a web presence but don’t need anything too complicated, WordPress is great.
I’ve been trying to get a close business friend to convert her site over to WordPress for YEARS! She has been paying way too much for a fairly terrible 3rd party to maintain her website for the last couple years. I’ve sent her her numerous links to the WordPress website, but I have to say this article might be the clincher. I’d even go so far to say that this post along with the videos are a better advertisement for WordPress than their own homepage!
Our business uses WordPress as the basis for our blog and as per above I would definitely suggest it to anyone looking to start a blog or even a small business looking to put together their first website. Extremely versatile, powerful, and easy-to-use.
@Finally Fast – Why not use WordPress as a platform for complete websites? I’ve built simple, small business sites that integrate a blog up to 500 page ‘static-style’ websites using WordPress. Haven’t found much I can’t do with it.
What could wordpress change at my website? I use my own blog on my website but users are able to import their wordpress blog, but has this sence?
@Beciowa – Not completely sure about your question but I’ll say that I find WordPress to be a full-blown content management platform. And that’s how I think of WordPress – as a platform for websites.
Thanks- Im using WordPress and typo3, but i differently like wordpress the most. Especially if you are new in the www business.
Thanks for the videos
Regards Mark
Hi,
Thanks for the great tips and we are also new in virtual assistant services and we will try to do Word press for our site. Thanks for the videos too.
I’m about to put a WordPress blog set up at the moment. Your post is really good and has already helped me. Your blog is added to my bookmarks.
Just a question (as a fellow web designer/developer): how do you find having all your clients on WP when an update comes along? Do you give them admin rights so that they can perform the update themsleves or did you use WPMU to update only one install or do you just spend a day every couple of month updating the whole thing?
@Leo – I have some clients on a WordPress Multisite (formerly MU) install where I do update site-wide whenever there’s an update – take moments.
Other clients are on individual installs and I’ve given them tutorial videos on how to use WordPress’ auto upgrade feature. And if there’s ever an upgrade I should do (e.g. 2.9 to 3.0) I email my clients and suggest I do it for a small fee.
Basically, I give my clients – most of which are of the non-tech sort – as much autonomy over their websites as I can. I want them to be free to make updates themselves.
Thanks for this great article Dawud, I love wordpress and use it for quite a few years now. It really is amazing how easier things get when you know how to use it.
I have been using wordpress 4 years back and frankly speaking i have never seen such an easy content management system for blogs. I strongly recommend wordpress for the people who looking for CMS which is easy and provide all features they looking for.
I started using WordPress recently, and then I came to knew that wordpress are crawled faster, and so we get more traffic. And this article is just perfect for a newbie like me.
I love WordPress for all my websites. It’s the new “it” and I think WordPress for small businesses is here to stay!
Very good article.It is true that if you are starting your own blog and intend to make money blogging, it is absolutely necessary to host your own blog. And hosting your own WordPress blog is a smart move indeed.
I run a web services company and we LOVE WordPress! You can do amazing things with it, producing top quality websites that clients can update themselves for remarkable prices. Years ago we used to get paid thousands to make what WordPress does right out of the box!
WordPress is really is amazing how easier things get when you know how to use it.
Yes, Sir, My website now CAN Do that!
I stumbled across this blog a few days ago at an opportune moment when i was trying to decide which web software to use on my new website. Thank you for making my mind up for me!!! WordPress it is.
Without a doubt, WordPress is the most awesome blog software as I’m using it too. The problem with it is most people are scared of the coding called HTML, CCS, and PHP. Fair knowledge in it is an advantage…
Thanks Mr. Dawud for explaining WordPress in detailed. Your videos are very useful for beginners. I was also not aware of so many things explained in these videos.
Thanks you, exactly what I was looking for, it’s been a real help. I have been using wordpress blog for the last year and found it to the easiest of all the blogs clients.
Hi,
Thanks for the great tips and we are also new in virtual assistant services and we will try to do Word press for our site. Thanks for the videos too.
@Everyone above – thanks for your comments. And you’re each certainly welcome for this post. More to come…
WordPress is great! My company does a lot of consulting and I’ve been trying to convince more people to go with a platform like this that allows them to make changes quickly with a fairly minimal learning curve. I appreciate the tips and recommendations!
Nice article. I use WordPress too and in my opinion that’s great tool to make your own blog even if you don’t know html, css, php etc
I should probably use wordpress for my website, as I read your articles I was pretty convince on how helpful wordpress is. You can easily update your site, change your navigation site and edit your content.
We used WordPress for our newly launched website, and we could not be happier with the results! I recommend WordPress in the highest regard.
Cool article and great videos. I’m so hesitant to using wordpress because I want full abilities to change things on my blog but I’m noticing there are some high lvl capabilities I may be missing out on.
I love WordPress and it is truly one of the best content management systems out there. I believe the biggest strength is the plugins. You can literally find a plugin to solve any problem you may have.
I use WordPress and I firmly believe it’s the best blogging platform by far. I will definitely refer people to this article who are up in the air on what they want to use to blog.
WordPress looks great when customized. Most of my blogs are in WP. It is easy to use.
If it weren’t for wordpress I wouldn’t be online at all! I love it love it love it! open source rocks!
I also use wordpress and what I like about it is the themes and easy for customization not doing lots of HTML codes.
I really like your post specially the video you have, easy to understand and really appreciate for sharing this.
Thanks for this post. This is very great post and great explanation in the post. Thanks for the helpful information on this post I really want this information because your explanation very clear to this post.
I prefer to use wordpress.com than blogger.com. I think it is more reliable in every aspect.
Do you give them admin rights so that they can perform the update themsleves or did you use WPMU to update only one install or do you just spend a day every couple of month updating the whole thing?
Yes WP is the one or is THE best software available online to create a business…look at the plugins we have! I just discovered a new one today : SEO smart links. Give a shot people it worth it.
I started using Word Press recently, and then I came to knew that word press are crawled faster, and so we get more traffic. And this article is just perfect for a website.Thanks
WordPress is a great tool! Many people write it off as “just” a blog but with plugins and a good theme it can pretty much do anything you want.
I´m not using WordPress at the moment, but I´m beginning to wonder whether I should. Especially since I´m planning starting my own blog, next to my homepage. It sounds very simple and effective, the way you and others describe it.
Have you ever considered adding more videos to your blog posts to keep the readers more entertained? I mean I just read through the entire article of yours and it was quite good but since I’m more of a visual learner,I found that to be more helpful well let me know how it turns out! I love what you guys are always up too. Such clever work and reporting! Keep up the great works guys.. This is a great article thanks for sharing this informative information.. I will visit your blog regularly for some latest post.
Thanks for the great tips and we are also new in virtual assistant services and we will try to do Word press for our site.
Thanks for the videos too.
Hi,
Thanks for the tips, this wonderful article, I love wordpress.
I have been using wordpress 2 years back without a doubt, WordPress is great!
Oh God i never knew that WordPress has so many applications. My heart felt thanks to the author I will like to know what other tools are available, what other guides and video tutorials are available.
Informative post indeed. We need to understand the fact that Blogger.com and WordPress.com are blogging platforms which can actually “host” your blog for you on their server. This basically means that you ultimately have to abide by their rules when it comes to what you’re saying on your bolg and the way you’re advertising on your blog.
For all those who would like to have a blog that you have complete control over then your best bet is to get a WordPress blog at WordPress.org instead. By setting up your blog through WordPress .”org” rather than “.com”
I met with WordPress about two years ago and from that moment, I have been building all my websites with WordPress, it is a great blogging software and easy to use.
I have tried many CMS before, but what I really enjoyed using is wordpress, specifically because of its SEO-friendly features and its so easy to optimize sites built from wordpress.
And one other great thing about wp is that there evolving to offer more sophisticated features for websites (not just blogs), and I can’t wait for them to finally offer HTML5 functions, well, if that will happen.
Nice article. These guidelines are pretty useful for me and so for those who are new to WordPress open source platform. The videos are easily understandable, thanks for putting up in a video formats other than long stories which may take time to understand.
I recommend WordPress in the highest regard. Thank you for word press team for providing the nice informative articles.
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Nic
I’ve just started a wordpress website. I love it, such a great change from static HTML
These videos are great. I’ve been using WordPress for just less than a year and I find it to be one of the easiest, most intuitive pieces of software out there
As kind of an expansion on Lisa’s comment, I’ve been bugging my parents to start blogging for a long while now. Just to keep them busy (they’re both retired now). I set my mom up with a WordPress blog and she’s been all over it ever since. I don’t know how much of a following she has, but she loves to just get behind the keyboard and gripe. It’s funny for me and good for her. I feel like it keeps her mind active and engaged day to day. All thanks to WordPress!
Great outcome WordPress is great! My company does a lot of consulting and I’ve been trying to convince more people to go with a platform like this that allows them to make changes quickly with a fairly minimal learning curve. I appreciate the tips and recommendations!
Ohh, this suddenly makes me feel sorry I have blogs on Blogger. Er, can anybody tell me how I can carry all those Blogger blogs into WordPress?
When I started my blog about three years ago, I had no idea what I was doing (I was a complete techie novice). I installed WordPress on my blog–or, rather, my hosting company did it for me–, and it was love at first sight. WordPress makes everything simple. I would definitely agree with you that it’s a must-have.
WordPress is a powerful blogging platform. Not only that, but it is a powerful content management system in a whole. It’s probably a major tool that web developers can use to really maximize their content management features. I think the thing that makes it insanely valuable is it’s countless plug-ins that install with just the click of a button.
WordPress is great when you are starting out. I use it but now I can see the full potential. Thanks!
It’s a great ideally to create website using WordPress,since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.
WP still rocks, I think you should also check out WIX’s exciting features.
Useful information, it will be helful for the newbies, using a wordpress , anyone can easily create a blog. WordPress tutorials will guide you, how to create a blog in matter of seconds.
WordPress is way much better than Joomla. You can optimize your wordpress inbound links, add meta tags and have a great CMS. But mostly, it’s free and easy change template design
WordPress has been bringing people closer into the world wide web. Even casual people with little or no knowledge on HTML/PHP can now create their own websites which was impossible years back.
Great article – I’ve literally just “built” my first WP site this week, having previously built static sites either by hand or with WYSIWYG editors.
It’s like a whole new world of possibilities have opened up!
All the best
Mack Michaels
Word press CMS is easy to use but only suitable for less complex website. But definitely good for intermediate webmasters.
I’m about to undertake converting my neighborhood association website to wordpress because of the flexibility you’ve outlined above. I’ve built a personal photo site in WP before but I’m looking forward to integrating forms, calendars etc.
WordPress is one of the best and user friendly CMS for bloggers and site owners! It’s very easy and simple to use and the plugins are just awesome.
I have used word press it is very easy to use and post our content.but i doesn’t know about changing the over all themes of the wordpress blog.Thanks for posting this information.
Thanks for the great videos. WordPress is a great resource indeed. Keep on with the great job you`re doing here. I am looking forward to read more WordPress information.
These videos are awesome. I have a designer friend who makes videos similar to this for his clients.
Videos are where it is at online to prove how easy something is.
Keep up the great work
I´m Using WordPress too and its fantastic! I can recomment it! Its so userfriendly!!
I wasn’t aware with these facts. Thanks for sharing these video it was really helpful for me.
Great article, WordPress is great, just wish we had more knowledge for ourselves to make it much more active and lively to our consumers. Your videos provide some great information on how we can start using WordPress more to our advantage.
Thanks!
WordPress is very powerful. The main part of its power is that many webmasters have worked with him, and thus make it more comfortable, interesting and useful. As well as fast and with minimal errors. As well as developing useful modules. For example, I love to come up with useful module and implement it.
i have been thinking to use wordpress from long time but didnt got much time to work on it. After reading your article i am really impressed by WordPress. i have a domain available with me and i am going to install wordpress on it. can you also suggest some good and user friendly wordpress themes?
Hello there!
Thank you so much for sharing the info above. I’m quite new with WordPress. I find your post very helpful especially for beginners. Thanks!
I’m pretty new to blogging as I spent most of my time making sure my websites were up to scratch. I now use WordPress and I’m really getting into it.
Since my site moved over to WP, my customers have used it more than ever. They’ve especially been better about using our service forms.
WP is great. I use it for 3 of my websites and it’s cool. Very good article and useful. Keep up the good work.
I am a big proponent of WordPress. I used to play around with Joomla but it just doesn’t make sense anymore. Everyone uses it, search engines love it and it’s totally customizable.
Appreciate the overview!
I really loved your article and videos WP really is fro my the best and most versatile to make and update a blog
and its very easy to use
I completely agree. In the case of a blog platform, it also helps that WordPress is the biggest out there. It means more options for plugins and themes than the other platforms have.
the only prob with wordpress you can download only the latest version and most of useful seo plugins just do not work with it((
I am a new WP user and i can say that it is working fantastic, above my expectations!
We love wordpress not just because of the all the SEO power within the platform but mainly the ease of use.
I love blogging and sharing my own experiences. So recently I bought a domain and then I also had to buy hosting space for it. I maintainted it as a blog for some months and then I lost interest over it totally 🙁 ..Its not a personal blog though and so I was not sure what to post and how to make it grow…..I
All i was doing is getting some content and rephrasing for my own blog…how could this help me in the long run…?
Yup, I use WordPress and it rocks! Well, except that it isn’t as customizable as I’d like. But it’s as easy as pie for me to use and manage my posts/comments.
WordPress seems to be the one of the best CMS when it comes to managing a big site, we are also currently thinking about moving to WordPress, because it seems to be easy to handle.
Thanks for sharing these video it was really helpful for me, and make it a lot easyer to understand
WordPress has been bringing people closer into the world wide web. Even casual people with little or no knowledge on HTML/PHP can now create their own websites which was impossible years back.
I keep in mind doing this to myself for time and I completely run and was overcome myself in the end.
WordPress is definitely my favourite when creating websites
We’ve been using a template for our WordPress blog, but I think taking the time to personalize will pay off in the long run. Time to get to it!