I remember the day I first discovered WordPress. I had taken a career break for a few years to try something new, and then to have my wonderful daughter. I was thinking of getting back to web and graphic design and someone showed me their brand-new website and let me have a look at the dashboard and how it worked.

I was hooked, it really was love at first sight or site ;). I had installed and was tinkering with a WordPress website by the same afternoon. It took a while to understand how the templating worked, and of course, I didn’t want to use what was available off the shelf. I am a designer after all. I love to make things look and work the way I think they should, not some other designer’s idea of how things should be.

Before my career break, creating a website that could do all things a WordPress website could do was expensive and involved a lot of databases and learning PHP, it wasn’t easy for someone like me.

I mean I am a bit techy and geeky at heart despite my art college background. I had taught myself about relational databases and PHP programming using tutorials. Building websites with content management dashboards from scratch for various companies from plant hire and recruitment companies.

But to be honest, I never liked that part of the job. Apart from the bit when it was done, and I could look on amazed that I had worked out something tricky and made it work the way my client needed it to. I am a visual person; I love making things look great. All that coding was getting me down!

So, discovering WordPress, its capabilities and the number of users was a revelation. I would no longer have to sort every problem when a browser updates or a PHP version is retired or a security problem is discovered. There are millions of users, big and small driving change and improvement. It is a community, a nation in a way. And I find it supportive and inspiring in equal measure.

I know it has made my business better.  I know I have built real web solutions for businesses with it that we would never have been able to achieve at a price they could afford before WordPress came along. I have been able to build e-commerce sites, online quote wizards, recruitment job boards and really simple business websites with the same engine behind it all.

WordPress is powerful and the fact that so many use it from giant corporations to one man (or woman) bands, and the fact it is free to all seems wonderful to me. Reminiscent of the inventor of the web who made no charge for his invention and give it to the world. WordPress has been revolutionary and helped to level the playing field a little for so many small and medium-sized businesses.

No wonder I love it so. Why do you love it?