‘Which CMS or website builder should I choose?’

It’s a question every entrepreneur and blogger asks themselves before they set up a website.

While there are countless articles on the internet that attempt to answer the question, the choice is ultimately a personal one.

Of course, at Heart Internet we don’t think you can go wrong with a WordPress site.

You can build everything from an ecommerce site to an online news site using the CMS.

Don’t take our word for it, though.

Here are five mega brands and names that chose to use WordPress for all or part of their online offering.

We’ll take a look at the sites before delving into what they can tell us about WordPress.

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone needs no introductions. This American monthly music magazine has been published since 1967 and its cover has been graced by everyone from Johnny Cash to Bowie.

The homepage of the site itself is split into sections for music news, reviews, features, political news, movie news, photo galleries and video content. Plus, it features advertising banners.

Vogue

Arguably the world’s most important fashion publication, Vogue uses WordPress in its online offering.

The website features video adverts, scroll effects, news and features sections and lots and lots of impactful imagery.

The White House

On the official webpage of The White House, you can do everything from learn about the history of The Whitehouse and its administration to read Biden’s speeches and statements.

The theme ensures that the images and details are simply laid out and easy to see and read.

Sony Music

On the Sony Music website, you can read the latest music news, listen to new releases and play playlists and podcasts through Spotify.

The website WP Theme Detector suggests that this site uses a theme called Legion.

William Shatner

To the team at Heart Internet, it came as no surprise that the Star Trek legend – who recently went into space – chooses to use a legendary CMS.

WP Theme Detector suggests that his site is built on the Meshable theme, version 1.5.2.

The website features a calendar dated blog, a newsletter sign up page, and a link to his online store.

So what do these sites tell us about WordPress as a CMS?

Looking at the above sites we can conclude that…

WordPress is versatile

Whether your business is linked to fashion, music, politics or you want a personal site, the above examples show that there’s a WordPress option for you.

In fact, you needn’t have even looked at the list of sites above to see how versatile the CMS is.

The numbers speak for themselves – there are more than 4,000 themes to choose from in WordPress.org’s own theme directory.

They fall into a rainbow of categories from food and drink to entertainment.

Then there’s a raft of independent companies that develop and sell their own bespoke themes.

ThemeForest, for example, sells 11,000 options.

WordPress is customisable

Even if you chose the same theme as the business next door to yours, you wouldn’t have to come away with an identical website.

WordPress themes can be customised in a myriad of ways.

Not least through plugins – and almost 60,000 of these are available through WordPress.org alone.

WordPress makes life easy

No-one would freely choose a CMS or website builder that was hard to use.

The fact that there are more than 455 million WordPress websites in the world in addition to those shown above attests to the fact that the CMS makes life simple for users.

Designing a site, adding blogs, and uploading content can be a walk in the park.

Looking for affordable WordPress hosting for your own website?

Heart Internet offers four types of WordPress hosting packages including options for web pros and ecommerce sites.

Every plan comes with…

• A free domain name for the first year
• A free SSL certificate
• Free email for the first year
• Free daily malware scans
• Free backups
• Free bespoke themes
• Plus, the WooCommerce plans come with a selection of free premium WooCommerce extensions worth more than £2,000.

To find out more about these packages, visit out product pages.