Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress allow higher education institutions to manage their digital presence effectively. Here are 13 great reasons why WordPress should be the CMS of choice for your university’s website or blog.
We have previously written an in-depth article covering why WordPress is ideal for running a university website. and provided a list of the top 50 university websites running on WordPress.
In this article, we cover thirteen benefits and advantages of choosing the WordPress CMS platform to power your University’s website and/or blog:
- WordPress is the World’s Leading CMS Platform
- User-Friendly CMS
- Content Management Efficiency
- Cost-Effectiveness
- Flexibility and Customization
- Large Community Support
- Regularly Updated Software
- Security
- SEO-Friendliness
- Optimized for Mobile
- Multilingual Capabilities
- Commitment to Accessibility
- Scalability
Let’s jump right in…
1. WordPress is the World’s Leading CMS Platform
WordPress is by far the world’s most popular and widely used Content Management System. WordPress powers many of the world’s most visited websites and blogs, including university websites.
As the graph below shows, according to the latest CMS comparison figures from w3techs.com, WordPress is also the most popular choice when it comes to CMS platforms for powering university websites.
The popularity of WordPress as a content management system capable of handling the complex and diverse content requirements of university websites is best demonstrated by the number of top universities using WordPress, including Harvard University, MIT, Boston University, and a host of other globally recognized academic institutions.
So, what makes WordPress such a popular and trusted choice with universities for managing their content?
Let’s start with the platform’s ease of use.
2. WordPress is User-Friendly
Most content creators in universities are academics and admin staff, not web developers and programmers. In other words, non-technical end-users.
WordPress is designed to be simple, intuitive, and easy to use while remaining accessible and manageable for users with little to no technical expertise.
The WordPress platform combines a powerful CMS with a user-friendly interface, allowing anyone to create and manage content on the website as easily as if they were working with a word processing application like MS Word or Google Docs.
3. WordPress Makes Content Management Efficient
WordPress offers an efficient platform for creating and managing content. Multiple users can contribute and collaborate on the website with features like easy publishing, content uploading, scheduling posts, user roles, and more.
University staff and users assigned access to the website through various roles (e.g. editors, authors, contributors, etc.) can easily be trained to create new pages, publish, edit, manage, update, and organize various types of content from academic research and news articles, to campus events, timetables, and information pertaining to specific faculties or departments.
WordPress includes powerful built-in content management features like an intuitive dashboard with organized menus and submenus, a modular content editor, internal media library, import and export tools, and various other collaborative and workflow features and functionalities to make content production and management efficient.
4. WordPress is Cost-Effective
As a free open-source platform, WordPress offers a cost-effective solution for universities, eliminating the need for expensive licenses or proprietary software and allowing for budget allocation to other essential areas.
WordPress software is released under the GPL (General Public License), which grants users specific freedoms and rights, such as:
- Freedom to Use: Users can freely install, use, and run WordPress for any purpose without any restrictions.
- Freedom to Study: The GPL allows users to access and study the source code of WordPress, providing transparency and enabling them to understand how the software works.
- Freedom to Modify: Users are permitted to modify the WordPress source code, tailoring it to their specific needs or preferences.
- Freedom to Share: The GPL ensures users can distribute both the original and modified versions of WordPress. This promotes a collaborative environment where improvements and customizations can be shared with the community.
This can be a significant advantage when seeking to reduce expenses in digital infrastructure and an attractive option for educational institutions with budget constraints.
5. WordPress is Flexible and Highly Customizable
WordPress supports a range of functionalities, making it a suitable CMS for everything from small departmental blogs to extensive university sites.
This adaptability ensures that WordPress can grow and change according to your institution’s evolving online presence.
A key feature of WordPress, for example, is its vast selection of themes and plugins, which allows for extensive customization. This enables universities to tailor their websites to specific requirements, including departmental needs, faculty profiles, student portals, or branding guidelines.
Whether for aesthetic preferences or functional necessities, WordPress’s customization options are designed to meet the diverse and often changing requirements of educational institutions.
6. WordPress is Supported by a Large Community
The core principles of open-source software and the freedoms of the GPL license outlined earlier foster a community-driven ecosystem where users have the flexibility to adapt and share the software.
This has not only contributed to WordPress becoming the world’s most widely used CMS platform, but also to the growth of a vast and active community of users and developers worldwide making available an abundance of resources like documentation, forums, tutorials, developer guides, user manuals, and more.
The WordPress community serves a dual purpose. They are an invaluable resource where university webmasters and users can find robust support, troubleshoot issues, and learn how to use the platform effectively, and they are also responsible for enhancing and improving all areas of the platform.
For example, over 600 developers from countries all around the world worked on the version of the software that WordPress released while this article was being written.
This leads to the next benefit…
7. WordPress Software is Regularly Updated
Having a large community of active web developers ensures that WordPress is continuously evolving.
This allows WordPress to release regular updates, ensuring in turn that your university website stays current with the latest web technologies and trends.
As you can see from the table below, WordPress releases a new version every 4 months.
With each new release, WordPress introduces new features, improvements, and bug fixes.
This leads to the next benefit and reason for choosing WordPress as a content management system for your university website and blogs.
8. WordPress is Secure
Being the world’s most popular CMS makes WordPress an obvious target for hackers and malicious agents.
Fortunately, having a global community of tens of thousands of active developers working to improve and update the software and hundreds of thousands of users providing constant feedback creates a very robust and secure environment where security breaches and vulnerabilities are quickly detected and shut down.
With each major and minor version release, WordPress continually updates its software to enhance security features, providing a safe web environment for universities to handle sensitive data and remain protected against online threats.
Choosing secure enterprise managed hosting with expert management and support and following best security practices will also help to ensure that your website, blogs, and other digital assets remain safe, secure, and protected.
9. WordPress is SEO-Friendly
WordPress is built with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. This feature is crucial for universities looking to improve their online visibility, rank on search engines, and reach a broader audience to attract prospective students.
WordPress sites are optimized for search engines right out of the box but can be further optimized using SEO plugins.
10. WordPress is Optimized for Mobile
Since almost 70% of the world’s population use mobile phones on a daily basis, responsive mobile design is essential in today’s mobile-first world and multi-device user society.
Most modern WordPress themes are mobile friendly, providing university website users with an optimal viewing experience across all devices and web browsers.
11. WordPress is Multilingual
For universities with an international student base, WordPress’s multilingual capabilities are invaluable, allowing for the creation of content in multiple languages.
From on-page translations using multilingual plugins to creating entire translated sites on subdomains, WordPress enables your university to cater to a global audience in over 200 languages and dialects.
12. WordPress is Committed to Accessibility
Making websites and blogs usable for people with disabilities is an essential consideration for public institutions like universities.
The WordPress accessibility team is comprised of community members who follow best practices and have developed tools to ensure accessibility in its code, and approved themes and plugins.
13. WordPress is Scalable
WordPress can easily scale to meet the growing needs of a university, from handling a small departmental site to managing a large multi-site network for an entire institution with thousands of daily users.
With WordPress Multisite, for example, you can manage multiple websites (like departmental sites) from a single WordPress installation. This makes it easier to maintain consistency in branding and navigation across the university’s digital presence while allowing each department to have its own unique space.
Get Your University Website on the WordPress CMS
When you consider factors like ease of use, customization options, cost-effectiveness, community support, scalability, SEO friendliness, security, and commitment to accessibility, WordPress emerges as the top CMS choice for universities.
CampusPress can meet whatever your University requires to run a successful online presence. We provide everything from dedicated and secure enterprise-grade hosting to expert WordPress Multisite network management, custom development, and training and user support.
For more details, visit our plan options or contact our team.