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How to Make Your Website Accessible for Color-Blind People
Marketers, website content creators, designers, and developers need to consider how their color choices can impact people both on the web and in print marketing materials. Colorblindness is, unfortunately, an often forgotten disability that can make websites challenging to navigate, use, and read.
This article provides an overview of how to create websites that are easily perceived by people who are color-blind.
What is Colorblindness?
About 300 million people around the world are color blind. Typically, someone who is color blind has problems discerning between two colors. However, color blindness comes in many different forms, degrees, and combinations of color blindness. Because of the many variations in color blindness, it can be challenging to determine which combinations will be worst for all color-blind people.
Forms of Color Blindness
Some of the most common forms of color blindness include:
Red-Green Color Blindness
Red-green color blindness is the most common form of the condition. There are two subtypes of red-green color blindness: Deuteranopia and Protanopia. People with Protanopia cannot perceive red light, while people with Deuteranopia are unable to perceive green light. Both make it hard (or sometimes impossible) for people to see and distinguish between reds and greens.
Blue-Yellow Color Blindness
Blue-yellow color blindness is also known as Tritanopia. People with Tritanopia cannot perceive blue light. This makes it difficult or, in some cases, impossible to see and distinguish the difference between yellow and blue.
Red-Black Color Blindness
Red-black color blindness is less common than red-green or blue-yellow color blindness. Typically, someone with red-black color blindness has problems distinguishing between the two colors when placed on each other. For example, if a web page has a black background with red text, someone with red-black color blindness will not be able to read it.
Total Color Blindness
Total color blindness, or Achromatopsia, is very rare. Someone with Achromatopsia cannot see any color. Instead, they see things in grayscale.
Design Considerations for People Who Are Color Blind
Unfortunately, there are not many forms of assistive technology for color-blind people like there are for people who are blind or have low vision. Content creators and designers need to be mindful of color combinations from the beginning of the design process.
There are two primary design considerations for making your website work for people who have color blindness: color contrast and not using color alone to convey meaning.
Pay Careful Attention to Color Contrast
For people who are color blind, proper color contrast is essential. This is especially true for color combinations like red/green, red/black, or blue/yellow. Without enough color contrast between two different elements, people who are color blind may not be able to distinguish between them.
To verify that you have met the necessary color contrast, try entering your color codes into WebAIM’s color contrast verifier opens a new window. You also want to check to make sure your color palette works for people with various types of color blindness. Here are a few tools we recommend for checking if your website and designs are color-blind safe.
Adobe’s Accessible Color Palette Generator
We recommend using Adobe’s free accessible color palette tool opens a new window to simulate how a color palette will look to people with various forms of color blindness.
Enter your color palette into Adobe’s accessible color palette generator. This can help you identify if there are colors in your palette that conflict with one another for people with different forms of color blindness. For example, in this color palette, the two colors in columns D and E have been flagged as not being significantly different for people who have Deuteranopia and cannot perceive green light.
Adobe’s accessible color palette generator denotes colors that conflict with one another by adding a bar to the colors in your palette and adding a message to the left of the color selector above your palette.
If this were your color palette, you would want to change one or both of the colors in columns D and E to ensure that people with Deuteranopia color blindness can adequately distinguish them. By slightly darkening the color in column E, for example, we can make this color palette work for everyone.
Stark
Stark opens a new window is a plugin for Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD that allows you to test for color contrast and simulate color blindness as you design. It has a free tier that is great for getting started and affordable annual pricing well worth the $60/year fee.
Organizations that “shift left” with accessibility and address potential accessibility problems before coding save a lot of time and money, as there are fewer items that need to be remediated or reworked later. Adding a tool like Stark to your design process and checking to see how your designs appear to people who are color blind will reduce dev work later on.
Colorblindly
What if your website is already launched, and you want to test it for color-blind accessibility? Colorblindly is a free Chrome extension that we frequently use when auditing websites. If you install it in Chrome, you can turn it on any website and simulate different types of color blindness. This will show you what the website would look like for those people. Here’s an example of the Colorblindly simulation of how our home page looks to people with Tritanopia or blue blindness:
When doing color-blind simulations on your website, check that everything is legible and understandable, even if website visitors can only see some or none of the colors. Regardless of the form of color blindness, they still need to be able to engage with the website fully.
Don’t Use Color Alone to Convey Meaning
Another critical aspect of color-blind accessibility is ensuring that crucial information on a web page is represented by something other than color. This applies to various elements on websites, including graphs and charts, icons, and buttons.
Colorblind-Friendly Data Visualizations
In their post announcing the addition of color-blind checks to their software, Datawrapper, a SaaS for creating charts, maps, and tables, provides this example of how a density map may look to people with red-green color blindness opens a new window:
Bar charts and other graphs can also be difficult for people who are color blind. If your website includes complex data visualizations, you’ll want to think about ways to convey the information in the graphs without relying on color alone. This chart, for example, makes use of both color and patterns on the bars so that it’s easier to match them to the key:
Towards Data Science has a great article on making data visualizations colorblind-friendly opens a new window. We highly recommend it if you include graphs and charts on your website.
Colorblind-Friendly Buttons and User Interface Components
Beyond maps, charts, and graphs, when designing the user interface components for websites and web applications, it’s also important to not rely on color alone to convey meaning.
For example, suppose you are creating a scale where green, yellow, and red indicate the difficulty level for games. In that case, you shouldn’t communicate that just with colored circles, especially if you don’t have a key or are describing the difficulty with written text that relies on the color alone (such as “all the games marked with green are easy to play”). As you can imagine, this sort of key could be challenging for some people to understand.
A better example of how to convey meaning in this example would be to use a color and shape combination, such as is used to represent the difficulty of ski slopes.
There are three different ski slopes in the image above, and each one has a difficulty level that utilizes more than just color to label the difficulty. Here, the easiest trail is a green circle, the more difficult trail is a blue square, and the most difficult is a black diamond. The inclusion of shapes and words describing the difficulty level ensures that everyone can choose the slope that matches their skiing abilities, even if they cannot see every color.
When designing user interface components for websites, it is equally important to make sure that color alone is not used to denote important information and to, similarly, include shapes, icons, and words in your designs.
Example Scenario: How Accessibility Helps Color-Blind Web Users
This is Sean. He is red-green color blind. Sean works at an architecture firm with several other designers, who meet regularly to discuss their projects and plans for new developments.
Now that Sean is working from home, he has to make many video calls to talk to the other designers on his team. The video conference software uses text to tell Sean when his team members are online and ready to chat. The video conference software also has a feature that allows Sean to view only the person who is speaking, switching video each time someone new speaks.
So what if Sean’s video conference software didn’t have these features? What if there was simply a red or green dot instead of text denoting whether someone is available? Since Sean is color blind, he would not be able to tell if his team members were online just by looking at the dot. Instead, Sean would have to send individual messages to his team members to see if they were online and ready to join the video call.
Additionally, if Sean’s video conferencing software simply highlighted the speaker in green, rather than switching to the video of whoever is talking, Sean might not be able to figure out who was speaking as quickly. This could cause Sean a lot of frustration and even cost him valuable time that he could be using for other work.
Wrapping It All Up
In our scenario with Sean, we described how accessible design made his team meetings efficient and straightforward. Additionally, if colorblindness were not considered in his video conferencing software, it could cause frustration for him at work or lead to a loss of valuable time.
When website owners and developers think about accessibility, they don’t always consider the needs of people who are color-blind. Accessibility features on websites benefit a broad audience – many of whom are people you may not frequently think of as “disabled” – and it is essential to consider how to make your website usable for everyone.
Don’t forget other Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
In addition to these color blind-specific considerations, it’s also important to remember other guidelines and standards for general accessible design, such as those laid out in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) opens a new window.
WCAG helps content authors, designers, and developers create accessible websites by laying out a framework for success. For your website and its content to be considered accessible under WCAG, it should be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust enough for users with all types and abilities to access it.
WCAG success criteria and levels of conformance help content creators, web designers, and developers ensure they are meeting the necessary requirements. As you’re working to make your website accessible, we recommend reviewing these guidelines and becoming familiar with them. What we have listed here are just a small part of building accessible websites.
Get Help Making Your Website Accessible
If you have questions about making your website accessible for color-blind people or other user types, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Our team of WordPress accessibility specialists are here to help you.
If you have a WordPress website and would like to scan it for accessibility problems, check out our free WordPress Accessibility Checker plugin opens a new window. Accessibility Checker can identify color contrast and other accessibility problems you should fix to make your website more accessible to everyone.
A woman’s guide to a safe day in Egypt
Welcome dear, is this your first visit to Egypt?
No problem, it is OK. You just have to know all the rules and laws to stay safe during your trip.
I think that this software is inborn with Egyptian women, whether through education and personal experience, or even the common experiences that girls of different ages pass through.
The harassment dictionary
Let’s start directly with the dictionary of harassment. Do not think for a moment that you are exempt from harassment throughout your stay in Egypt. The only solution for that is not to get off the plane as soon as you arrive, and instead to go back to where you came from. But if you decide not to give up quickly and continue your adventure then let me get started.
‘Don’t cheer up for visiting Egypt, this is a country that is not easy on women.’”
Usually, airports are one of the safest places with regards to reported cases of sexual harassment. But I cannot promise you that at Cairo Airport. Our friend Raghad has an experience that she would like to share with you, on the first day she arrived in Cairo from Saudi Arabia to join university and start a new phase in her life after the end of high school.
“I finished high school in Saudi Arabia and returned to Egypt in order to join university. Once I arrived at the airport, and while I was bending to take my luggage from the baggage carousel someone grabbed my butt. When I turned, I saw that he was an old man, and he was looking at the other side as if nothing happened. I was shocked. I took my luggage and walked quickly. It was my first day in Egypt and the first time ever someone sexually harassed me in my life,” Raghad told Al-Manassa.
“I came with big dreams that I finally became a university student and returned to Egypt. But after that incident, I realized that, given such a welcome, dealing with people will be difficult. I remembered what my close friend said after she visited Egypt for months. She told me: ‘‘Don’t cheer up for visiting Egypt, this is a country that is not easy on women.’”
Of course, I don’t need to warn you that taking taxis in Egypt is an adventure of a special kind. Do you not believe me? Then let my friend Maha* tell you about her experience with a taxi driver.
“I was 17 years old. I took a Heliopolis taxi because I was going to take a course and learn like everyone in my age. It was 4 pm. I was looking from the windows. I had headphones in my ears. When I turned, I saw the driver totally immersed in the act, with his pants unzipped, while looking at me from the mirror.”
“My reaction was that I was very nervous and scared to ask him to let me get off the taxi. I waited until there was a traffic jam in el-Khalifa el-Maamoun street. I opened the door and ran away. I entered the toilet of Hardees restaurant. I collapsed in tears.
It’s okay. It’s not that bad. You can always order a car from a private company like Uber or Careem, although I cannot fully guarantee your safety. There are hundreds of experiences of women who have been harassed by private company drivers.
Let’s hope you have a friend who can save you these steps and drive you to the hotel.
I forgot to ask you about your financial condition. It will definitely have a great influence on your experience in Egypt. If you are someone who can afford to stay in a 5-star hotel, then you probably will not face many problems there. But if you, my dear, are from the middle or working class and decide to go to a 3 or 4-star hotel in Cairo, I regret to inform you that most hotels do not allow room rent for a single lady.
Bassem Halqa, the head of the Tourism Workers Syndicate, told Al-Manassa that there are instructions from the Morality Police (Vice squad) and the Tourism Police to hotel owners not to allow the reservation of a room for a female alone, and these instructions do not apply to men or even groups of women, if they are more than one and despite the absence of a law stating that room renting isn’t allowed for a single woman. But these instructions are due to security measures and concerns regarding extra-marital sex.
Did you arrive at the five-star hotel with a friend’s car?
Well now you’re safe, at least temporarily.
Of course, I understand your desire to visit the city’s landmarks. You did not travel all that way to see Cairo from the balcony. But first you must pass some tests to make sure you are ready to deal with the Egyptian street.
Are you ready to take to the street?
The phenomenon of harassment is not new to Egypt. However, in recent years, the country has witnessed both increasing activism in Egyptian society as well as an increase in recorded cases of sexual violence, even in its intensity. This could indicate a new wave of social violence, for which women pay the price. In Egypt, having a system is very important. That’s why we have the so-called “counter-harassment guide for newcomers.” According to your age, skin colour, social status, the type of your clothes, economic status, the type of harassment (which will most likely happen in the streets of Cairo) can be predicted. Thus you can avoid it, or at least not be surprised by it.
The first question: What is your age?
Oh, you are young. This increases the risk.
Second: What is your skin color?
Why? Of course, to determine the type of threat you will be exposed to. The darker the skin tone, the more vulnerable women are to violence.
The United Nations estimates that about half a million migrants, half of them refugees, live in Cairo. A Reuters report indicated that female refugees were subjected to rape in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. One of whom is 17 years old. She has been a victim of several rapes, until she discovered that she got pregnant.
She is one of the African migrant and refugee women in Cairo who are subjected to daily abuse, human rights organisations described it as an epidemic of sexual violence.
The third question: What is your social status?
Of course, this is a very important question. If you are a mother, you will have to redouble your attention to ensure the safety of your child in addition to your safety. And if you wander around with your husband or partner, you must make sure all the time that you do not have an appearance that attracts attention, and brings you accusations of committing a flagrant act on the public road.
Actions like what? You might be wondering.
To put your head on his shoulder while sitting, or to kiss him or hug him in the street, may God forbid. Yes, I know that he is your husband, but the street does not know that, which will undoubtedly cause you headache, and you may find yourself in the police station trying to justify your heinous act, before making a report of a “blatant act on the public road”, which begins with kissing and extends to include any act that does not correspond to the wishes of citizens on the street at this time.
And if you are pregnant, my dear, I regret to inform you that the risk has doubled. The most beautiful months of your life may turn into the worst experience of sexual harassment.
Expect someone to yell at you with one of these sentences that pregnant women face on the Egyptian street, quoting true testimonies of pregnant women: ‘Now you can’t deny that you have been f*****’, ‘glory to the man who blew you’, ‘did the person who f***** you stay with you or did he run away’, ‘This is the result of playing on beds’, and other phrases that are difficult to write here. Pregnant women hear them every day, not only when they are alone, but also in the company of their children. Mothers are also like other females in Egypt. Just a piece of cheap meat in the eyes of street males.
Fourth question: What type of clothes do you wear?
Do not think for a moment that this question is to prevent harassment, it is only to determine the justification that you will hear after the harassment, if you do not wear the hijab then you are the reason, because your clothes are immodest and arouse men’s desires.
Do you wear a hijab? Your clothes must have been tight or describing your body, as it is not a proper Islamic hijab.
Islamic veil or burqa? Do you wear cosmetics? What about your eyes? Do you wear eyeliners? Do you wear colorful shoes or carry a catchy bag?
It’s okay, even if your features completely disappear under the black clothes, the justification still exists, because being a female is a sufficient reason to provoke instincts and a justification for harassing you, as men cannot control their lust.
The fifth question: what’s your economic situation?
Believe me, I am just trying to reduce the possibilities. I will pray to God that you will never need to take public transport and the metro. They are safe havens for harassers. I also hope that you do not have to walk on your feet in the streets of Egypt a lot, because that will not help you much, and I cannot promise you that your presence inside one of the famous compounds with its high walls will protect you. The prosecution is now investigating an incident of rape that took place inside one of those compounds under the knowledge of security personnel and their cooperation with the accused young man.
I do not advise you to go to one of the classy cafes, as the incident “the girl of On the Run” is still very present in our minds.
You can, of course, go see a movie at the cinema, but you are entirely responsible for the gazes of the ticket man and the usher who gets you to your chair when they know you are entering the cinema on your own, especially if it’s a night party.
Report a harasser
Yes, my lady, I know that you are strong and will not surrender your right and insist on going to the police station to report harassment, which is a right guaranteed to you by the law and the constitution of course, but first let me walk you through the procedures that will take place in this situation.
The first and most difficult task is to guard the harasser or the aggressor. The Egyptian street will do its best to persuade you to turn away from the matter. They will use every possible means to prevent you from going to the police station. They will first try to gain your sympathy by telling you that the harasser was ‘just a stupid kid’ and that ‘you will ruin his future’. Then they will attack you personally: ‘look at what you are wearing!’
If all of these attempts fail, they will try to forcibly save the attacker, which often results in bodily harm to you.
Electronic defamation
Are you thinking of writing on social media to expose the harasser, or making a video to express your anger?
Have you completely lost your mind? Or have you never heard of Amal Fathy?
On May 9, Amal Fathy posted a video clip on her Facebook page in which she spoke about the extent of the phenomenon of sexual harassment in Egypt, and criticized the government’s failure to provide protection for women. In the early hours of May 11, Egyptian police forces arrested Fathy, along with her husband and their three-year-old child. After being held in pretrial detention for a period of four months, the court sentenced her to two years in prison on charges of broadcasting false news and publishing a video ‘offensive to public modesty.’
A country that fights women
Of course, I could not cover all the difficulties that you will face on your trip, but I hope that I helped you a little in understanding what women are exposed to in Egypt in general and Cairo in particular. In an international opinion poll conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2017, Cairo ranked first as the most dangerous major cities for women In the world.
I see you wondering why women are fighting in Egypt?
From birth, the female is treated as a lack of joy.’ If the newborn was a male, parties and banquets would be held, but if she was a female, she would bring disappointment to the family, and everyone prays for the mother to be blessed with a good boy.
From day one, concepts such as honour and chastity are attached to women’s bodies, and then they are respected or not according to those concepts. Although most of the concept of honour is related to the girl’s virginity and hymen, women’s behaviour and clothing are evidence of that honour, and women’s behaviour and morals are a measure of the degree of violence they deserve.
It cannot be claimed that Egypt is the only country in which harassment of women takes place, but certainly, Egypt is where everything that helps and encourages harm to women is combined.
Women in Egypt are considered the property of the family, and subjugating women to the men of society is the state’s way of imposing its control over these men in the first place before it controls women and their bodies. Violence against women in Egypt is a normal matter. It is even encouraged, while moral and religious justifications are created for it in many cases as long as it does not exceed the authorities of the state. The suffering of women in Egypt comes in different shapes. They are subject to circumcision, underage marriage or forced marriage, harassment, violations resulting from independence attempts, the suffering of the girl with society after independence, and the deprivation of inheritance, legal flaws in incidents of marital rape, honor crimes, and encouragement of beating a wife or daughter under the pretext of recklessness or upbringing.
In conclusion, my dear, you will find hostility in Egypt towards women, up to the point of preventing them from controlling their bodies in every possible way, and this is a fact that cannot be ignored.
Returning to your first question, about how to spend a safe day in Egypt, the answer is: it never worked.
9 Most Important Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress in 2024
Are you on the fence about using WordPress for your website? You’re not alone. Many people are unsure about whether WordPress is the right choice for their website, especially as new website building platforms and technologies continue to emerge. The market is crowded – from Wix to Squarespace, the options are endless and all of them promise to be the best option for you. So often the question clients come to us with is ‘why should I use WordPress?’.
Out of all the options, WordPress remains one of the most popular and powerful website builders on the market, and for good reason. In this blog post, we’ll be discussing 9 reasons why you should consider using WordPress in 2024. From its ease of use to its search engine optimisation capabilities, there are many reasons why it’s the perfect choice for your website. So, whether you’re a business owner, a blogger, or just someone looking to build a website, read on to learn why WordPress is likely the right choice for you.
Contents
What is WordPress?
9 Reasons to use WordPress
What makes a good website builder?
What are the potential disadvantages of WordPress?
Concluding thoughts
WordPress FAQs
What are the benefits of WordPress?
What is the main purpose of WordPress?
Is WordPress the most popular CMS?
Should I still use WordPress in 2024?
Is WordPress Killing web design?
Does WordPress Support e-commerce?
Is WordPress easily hacked?
Is WordPress easy to use?
Is WordPress a CMS?
What is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?
WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS – accounting for 62.9% of websites that use a CMS.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that provides an interface for users to create, manage and modify digital content on websites without requiring any coding knowledge, typically through a backend admin panel. First launched in 2003, WordPress has grown to become the most popular website building platform in the world, powering over 62.9% of all websites that use a CMS (W3Techs.com).
9 Reasons to use WordPress
So, why should you choose WordPress as your website building platform? Here are 9 compelling reasons that make WordPress the right choice for your website in 2024:
WordPress is customisable, flexible and scalable
WordPress is easy to use & maintain
WordPress has a super helpful and friendly community
WordPress is free
WordPress is popular
WordPress is receptive to search engines & great for SEO
WordPress can be used to build any type of site
WordPress is secure
WordPress has a great selection of themes & plugins
WordPress is customisable, flexible and scalable
WordPress is a highly customisable and flexible website building platform. The large variety of templates, themes and plugins available makes it easy to create a website that is tailored to your specific needs.
The platform is built on an open-source codebase, which means that it can be customised and extended to meet the unique requirements of any website. This functionality also makes WordPress an extremely scalable platform that can be easily adapted to accommodate the growing needs of your business. You might be a small business right now, but by building your website on WordPress, you future-proof it – enabling you to scale up and become a large enterprise with a complex e-commerce platform (should you wish!). WordPress can handle it.
For optimal performance, you can custom code features onto your website, but there is also a vast array of plugins and integrations available that make it easy to add new features and functionalities yourself, regardless of your knowledge level.
Mia showcasing a new website design built in WordPress
WordPress can be used to build beautiful, highly customised websites due to its open-source codebase
WordPress is easy to use & maintain
WordPress is designed to be user-friendly, making it easy for even those without technical skills to create and manage a website. The platform’s intuitive interface and user-friendly dashboard make it simple to add pages, posts, and media to your site. The layout is well organised, making it easy to navigate, and the editing tools are straightforward, allowing you to make changes quickly and easily. Even if you have a web development company build your site initially, you should be able to pick it up and edit bits after should you wish.
The user-friendly interface also means WordPress is also easy to maintain. The platform is regularly updated to ensure the security of your website and its users and it has a feature called “auto-update” that can ensure your website is always running on this latest updated version of WordPress. This eliminates the need for manual updates and reduces the risk of security vulnerabilities.
WordPress has a super helpful and friendly community
Of course, there might be times when you get stuck – but fear not! One of the biggest benefits of using WordPress is its large and active community of users, developers, and experts. The community provides a wealth of resources, including tutorials, videos, and forums, that can help you set up and customise your website, troubleshoot any issues that may arise, and learn new skills.
And if you can’t find the answer you’re looking for – just ask! The WordPress community is known for being super helpful and friendly. If you have a question or need assistance with something, you can easily head to the community’s forums, social media groups, and other resources to ask. You can also find a WordPress developer or expert to help you with your project if you need more specialised assistance.
WordPress is free
Another major advantage of using WordPress is that it can be completely free to use. Anyone can download, install, and use WordPress without having to pay any licensing fees or other costs which is obviously a huge benefit to small businesses, individuals, and non-profit organisations who may have limited resources and budgets.
Of course, while the core software is free, you might choose to pay for some additional services or features. These can include premium themes and plugins, custom website design and development, website hosting and domain name registration, and additional support and maintenance services. These services can help to enhance the functionality and performance of your website, and provide additional support and assistance as you build and maintain your website but it still means that a site can be created for a low price if you are willing to do the work yourself.
WordPress is popular
WordPress is the world’s most popular website building platform and this popularity is a testament to the platform’s versatility, reliability, and ease of use.
The fact that WordPress is widely used means that it is widely supported, and, as previously mentioned, there is a large community of developers, designers, and users who can provide support, advice, and resources to help you set up and customise your website. This large community also means that there is a wealth of knowledge and experience available to you, which can help you to make the most of the platform and build a website that meets your specific needs.
Additionally, because WordPress is so popular, it is also well-respected and recognised by search engines, other web developers, and businesses. Search engines will find and index your website, it makes it easy to change web development management company, and it also makes your website or business more valuable should you ever wish to sell it.
WordPress is receptive to search engines & great for SEO
WordPress is optimised for search engines, which makes it a great choice for website owners who want to improve their website’s visibility in search results and gain website traffic organically. The platform is designed with search engine optimisation (SEO) best practices in mind with built-in features such as the ability to create clean and organised permalinks, add alt tags to images, and create custom titles and descriptions for each page and post (to name just a few). These features help to improve the visibility of your website in search results, making it more likely that people will find your site when they search for keywords related to your content.
This ease also works well if you want to find an SEO expert to help you with your website rankings. Most SEO specialists know and understand WordPress, giving you a larger selection of agencies to choose from. This familiarity also means their work will be faster and you should see results quicker than other builders with limited options which are much more time-consuming to optimise.
Laptop screen showing Google Analytics data for a website
WordPress is great for building optimised websites
If you’re looking to optimise the site yourself, WordPress is receptive to various SEO plugins that can be easily integrated to enhance the functionality of your website. These plugins can help to automate the optimisation of your site, making it even easier to improve your website’s visibility in search results, and can give you suggestions or hints as to what could be improved to increase keyword rankings.
WordPress can be used to build any type of site
WordPress can be used to build any type of website, from simple personal blogs to complex e-commerce sites, and everything in between. This is possible due to the large variety of templates, themes and plugins available that can be easily integrated to enhance the functionality of your website which make it customisable and flexible (as mentioned in reason number 1).
While WordPress started off largely as a blog creation platform, in 2024 the options are endless. Whether you’re looking to build a simple brochure website, a portfolio site, an online store, a social network, or a membership site, WordPress can do it. It can support various types of content, such as text, images, audio and video, handle different types of functionality such as forms, calendars, and forums, and can be integrated with various third-party tools, such as CRM, payment gateways, and marketing automation tools should you require it.
Here at Solve, we have used WordPress to build many of these website types. Some of our WordPress website examples include:
9 Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress in 2024 1
An e-commerce website for CBD company EthicaCBD. Solve built a bespoke WordPress website that encompasses the EthicaCBD branding down to the letter. The website features custom e-commerce functionality that provide a high-class and streamlined user journey.
9 Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress in 2024 2
A portfolio website for commercial property development and investment company MRMU. Solve built a super fast WordPress website that showcases all of MRMU’s previous and future developments and perfectly reflects their luxurious, high-end offering.
WordPress is secure
WordPress takes security seriously with a host of features to keep your business and its data safe. With the addition of just a few free and well-supported security plugins, WordPress can be hardened in a number of ways. These security features include, but are not limited to:
The ability to create secure passwords
The ability to create backups of your website automatically
“Two-factor authentication” can be enabled to add an extra layer of security to your website
Regular updates to the core software and plugins, which address security vulnerabilities as soon as they are discovered
WordPress “auto-update” feature which ensures your website is always running on the latest version of WordPress
File permission and ownership management controls
SSL/TLS encryption installation
Limited login attempts
Security plugin options such as malware scanning, firewalls, audit logs, and intrusion detection.
Of course, it is important to note that no website is completely immune to hacking attempts, but the security features offered by WordPress, along with implementing best security practices, mean you can greatly reduce the risk of a successful hacking attempt.
WordPress has a great selection of themes & plugins
Not everyone is a designer, which is why it can be super useful that WordPress offers a large selection of themes and plugins. The platform has thousands of professionally designed and developed themes that can be easily installed and customised to create a unique and professional-looking website. Themes can be used to change the overall look and feel of your website, and many of them offer a variety of customisation options to help you create a website that is tailored to your specific needs.
The wide selection of plugins on offer can also help in further editing and tailoring your site. WordPress’s open-source nature means there are masses of well-supported plugins offering bespoke features and functionalities for your website (although do consider that plugins will slow your site down so be selective of the ones you install).
The default plugin screen in WordPress where a user can search for and add plugins to add functionality to the website
WordPress has a large library of images
What makes a good website builder?
A good website builder should have several key features and capabilities. To name just a few: ease of use, user-friendly interface, a wide variety of templates, themes and plugins, the capability to handle different types of content and functionality, optimisation for search engines, and responsive options for mobile devices to ensure a good user experience.
WordPress is considered a good website builder because it has all the above-mentioned features, capabilities and more. In our opinion, no other website building platforms offer the same functionality, ease of use and flexibility that WordPress does. Options such as Wix and Shopify are also popular, but they have some limitations to customisation and are just not as versatile as WordPress when it comes to handling different types of content and functionality.
What are the potential disadvantages of WordPress?
While WordPress is a powerful and popular website building platform, no CMS is perfect and it would be an unfair blog if we didn’t give some disadvantages of WordPress that do need to be considered:
Learning curve: While WordPress is relatively easy to use, it does have a bit of a learning curve. Some users may find it challenging to navigate the platform and take full advantage of all its features, especially if you have limited experience on computers.
Maintenance and updates: We mentioned that WordPress has an auto-update feature which is usually great for keeping your site up-to-date and secure. However, it does need to be considered that sometimes these updates can break other aspects of your site or may not be compatible with some plugins straight away which does mean you will need to monitor your site or have a WordPress maintenance plan with a web company to ensure it still continues to function correctly.
Vulnerability to hacking: As with any website, a WordPress site can be vulnerable to hacking attempts. It is important to keep the platform and any plugins and themes up to date, and to use strong passwords and other security measures to protect your site.
Customisation limitations: While WordPress is highly customisable, it does have limitations when it comes to customising the platform beyond what is possible with themes and plugins. If you require highly custom functionality, you may need to hire a developer to create custom code for your site, which can be costly.
Performance: A website built on WordPress may face performance issues such as slow load time if it is not optimised properly. This could be due to poor hosting, heavy themes or too many plugins installed. You need to ensure your website is hosted on a speedy server to get the most out of your website.
It’s worth noting that many of these disadvantages can be mitigated with proper maintenance, updates, and security measures. Additionally, many of these issues are common among all website builders and platforms, not just WordPress. Choosing the right hosting provider, themes and plugins can help to overcome some of these challenges and make the most of the platform’s advantages.
Concluding thoughts
WordPress is a powerful website building platform that offers a wide range of features and capabilities. It’s popular for good reason. Whatever site you are looking to build, we truly believe that WordPress is going to be a great option. If you decide to build the site yourself, there is loads of support and information online to help you do this, but if not, a WordPress web developer is a great option and you can choose to have as little or as much input as you like.