But is using WordPress a good idea for school websites? You may have heard some differing views on this so we wanted to give you 8 reasons why WordPress is a great choice to power your school website.
WordPress is popular, widely used and well supported
Because WordPress is so popular and widely used to power all kinds of websites there’s a massive community of people using, testing and improving it all the time. This means that WordPress continually moves forward making it a robust and modern and future proof platform and a great choice to power your school website.
In contrast, many proprietary website CMS systems are not actively developed and stagnate over a period of years making them harder to use and full of security holes.
WordPress on the other hand is the industry standard for website CMS software and, if kept up to date, is the best choice for most small to medium sized school websites.
WordPress is free and open source
WordPress itself is free to download and use, which means building your site on WordPress could cut the operating costs of your school website compared to using an expensive proprietary website CMS.
There are no setup fees or renewal fees for using WordPress and because WordPress is open source, it makes it easy to transfer to a new provider if necessary.
This is in contrast to companies who use proprietary content management systems which can’t be moved or adjusted. Basically with one of these systems, you’re just renting your website and if you ever wanted to move away from the company who built it, you wouldn’t be able to take your site with you – you’d have to have the site completely rebuilt.
Using WordPress means that you own your school website and if you have someone who knows how to use WordPress on your school staff, they can easily manage the website or move it to a new host if necessary.
WordPress is fast and secure
Because WordPress is so popular it’s constantly under development, so when new security threats develop on the internet (as they constantly do) the WordPress team are on hand to release patches and updates to keep your website safe from these potential security threats.
This means that, providing you keep your WordPress system up to date with the latest software updates, your site should run smoothly and securely for the long term.
WordPress offers infinite design possibilities
WordPress is a modern, open source CMS and is used by developers to create many different types of websites all across the internet. From a small templated site, to a large custom designed school website, WordPress can handle it all.
A well built WordPress site can also adapt as your school website grows and changes. This means it’s a great platform to build your school website on as it can be flexible to your school’s needs.
This makes a WordPress site a smart investment as it’s future proof and will lessen the likelihood of the site needing to be rebuilt in a year’s time to incorporate changes or additional functionality.
WordPress makes it easy to add new features
WordPress is an incredibly flexible system on it’s own but there are also thousands of additional add-ons available to provide increased functionality when required.
Need to add a new feature? No problem! The likelihood is that the functionality you need is already available and can be easily added.
WordPress integrates with the other software you use
From your school app to your email system and other school software, WordPress is a flexible system which has many add ons available.
This means your school website can easily integrate with the other software you use in your school to create the best user experience possible for parents and other website users.
WordPress is easy for your school staff to use and manage
WordPress is used by millions of people all across the globe to manage and update their websites themselves. This is easy for anyone with a basic level of computer literacy to achieve because WordPress is straightforward and easy to use.
From editing text to adding pictures, news posts and even new pages and menu items, using a well built WordPress site is really easy for school staff to pick up and cuts the website support required from your IT company or website provider.
This also benefits your school as it means your school website is more likely to be kept up to date if your staff find it easy to manage the site without the need of a website developer or IT support.
WordPress is easy to optimise for search engines
Another huge benefit of using WordPress to power your school website is that WordPress is structured in a way that makes it easily accessible by search engines like Google.
Also, because WordPress is always developing and moving forward they provide regular updates to the system in line with Google’s recommended best practices.
This means your website doesn’t fall behind on Google’s guidelines and parents and other interested parties are more likely to be able to easily find your website now and in the future.
I hope that this article has provided some new perspective on the benefits of using WordPress to power your school website rather than an expensive, non flexible, proprietary CMS system.
If you’d like to have a chat about how a WordPress powered website could benefit your school, just get in touch.
