WordPress

About five years ago, when I decided to launch a personal blog, I vetted almost every high profile CMS and decided on WordPress for my blog and I'm so glad I did. I knew I wanted the ability to add custom code and edit CSS and WordPress allows for complete customization. Please note: I am not a web developer and I had never coded before, however, WordPress has incredible tutorials and even templates that you can apply and modify to your website that are extremely modern, sophisticated, clean, and also affordable. The plugins are endless - there's truly a plugin for anything you can think of and WordPress integrates seamless with my affiliate marketing platform, LikeToKnow.it so I have the ability to add custom feeds, HTML code for widgets, and a live Instagram feed to earn commission from products I link. As a beginner, I dedicated a lot of time learning as much as I could about WordPress and would never switch to a different CMS. Their learning tools and tutorials are excellent resources for self-education. I also really enjoy the new live editing dashboard when adding new content.

I'm a beginner so editing CSS was a little tricky for me when I was first beginning. I purchased and applied a template and wanted to further add customizations and finally found the right CSS code. However, I wish the templates had a bit of a drag and drop layout feature the way Squarespace makes it so simple to design, especially for beginners. However, WordPress is one of the best and most sophisticated CMS tools available on the market and as someone who isn't a web dev, I respect the features and am excited to learn more. It's mostly user error from my end because our dev team raves about WordPress.

Wordpress is a free CMS that allows you to create many kind of websites.
It has a lot of templates and plugin (both free or "premium") and you can build your website in many ways. I usually prefer using Elementor plugin.
Setup is easy, you will need an already configured database to be linked to Wordpress.
Even newbies can start producing websites, the learning curve is about one week or less.
There is a lot of documentation on internet in case of need.

Too many advertisement and reminders in every section, I always have to close them because the fill the entire page. The mobile preview may not reflect what you will really see on your tablet/smartphone

I used this software to build a website for a Non-Profit foundation for some fundraising events. I got an account with Bluehost server and wordpress was included in it. For someone who has never built a website before, wordpress did make my life very very easy. It has numerous features that can definitely help a novice like me get a basic website up and running. I enjoyed the following things while using this
- Themes
It comes with some basic theme templates which can be used to build the website. Just fill in some information that relates to your website and it will populate it. Think of it as a powerpoint template with boxes and design
- Easy to upload pictures
I was able to create folders and stores pictures on there and name them accordingly so I can go back and use them on different pages.
- Widgets and Plugins
The main attraction for this software platform I believe is their built in widgets and plugins. You can download from so many options. It is kind of like exploring the app store on your phone. Since it is an open source lot of users create their own widgets and plugins which are either free or you can purchase it. Needless to say purchased ones are much better but I got by with all free ones.
- Edit code
yes if you are a very savvy css html developer and you understand the code, you can go in and change their code and make adjustments.
Warning: Don't mess with it if you don't know what you are doing

The cons that i noticed in my website after it went live was
- Speed
The website was just slow. I am not sure if it is because of the widgets and plugins running on wordpress but I hated the speed.
- Updates could ruin website
Their themes get constantly updated so if you do not update it properly or if the new build released has a bug on it, it could mess up certain things on your website. This happened to many times where the plugins that worked fine on the older build wouldn't work the same on the new.
- Time consuming for beginners
Yeah it's not as simple as I was expecting it to be. I did spend quite an amount of time understanding the features and how to make best use of them. It was a lot of trial and error so be ready to put in some work at least.

It's so versatile WordPress really is. All kinds of cool things you can add with apps and plugins, though. It gets a bit tricky to learn at first, but has beginner tools that can be used. I like that it can be simple or complex.

Word-press will need its plugins in everything. It's hard to perfect, but it's super easy to start a basic site. WordPress is great! I've used it for ages.