WordPress – ideal platform for the best charity web design

What is the best content management system (CMS) to use for a charity website?

We’ve been asked this question many times by our clients and people who are working in the Internet marketing area. While there are a couple of top-notch CMS systems that stand out (e.g. Drupal, Umbraco, Joomla), we believe that WordPress CMS is the best option for a charity related website development project.

ArtDriver has developed a number of WordPress websites for charities. Our most recent WordPress development project was for the Somali Relief and Development Forum. The website uses a number of custom programmed widgets and incorporates a custom design. You can view the site at www.srdf.org.uk.

WordPress, as any other publishing platform, has its pros and cons; however, its advantages significantly outweigh its flaws. Let us list some critical elements that tend to make WordPress our winner:

• WordPress is open source, which means you do not have to pay for this software to use it on your website and this can be a significant incentive for many small charities who struggle financially.
• WordPress is extremely popular and its popularity growing very fast. This means that it is easy to find and hire people who are familiar how to maintain a WordPress site and therefore, it can prove to be an efficient solution for charities in terms of administrative costs.
• Due to WordPress’ popular demand and open source license, there is a large web developer community that constantly generates new ideas and new add-ons (plugins) that get incorporated into the core software features and make WordPress develop by following step in step with the most recent technological advances.
• WordPress constantly issues new software updates and allows you to easily update the software on your website without knowing programming. This can prove to be beneficial for charities who do not have a web design in house but want to make sure that the site is cross browser compatible, social media friendly and search engines friendly.
• WordPress (originally being created and used as a blogging platform) has a built in RSS feed that can be used for charity news or events.

In terms of disadvantages of using WordPress, we can only point out that it may not be as flexible as Drupal, for example, if someone tries to create a complex layout and add a lot of dynamic functionalities to the site. Check out WordPress CMS usage stats here.