“37% of the web is built on WordPress” …..WordPress.com
WordPress.org VS WordPress.com
WordPress.org is self-hosted while WordPress.com is paid. Created for blogging we now use it for websites. It is the simplest, most popular way to create your own website or blog. Furthermore, WordPress is one of the best CMS or Content Management Systems there is and used by many websites to manage the creation and modify their digital content.
There is a learning curve to use WordPress.org whether you design on WordPress alone or use a theme builder. You can build your website through coding HTML, CSS or you can purchase a theme builder such as Divi Theme Builder, Elementor, or Beaver Builder. WordPress comes with themes and theme builders do too. You can go to WordPress.com and get a paid site for your domain.
The Divi Theme Builder was created by elegant Themes is one of the most used theme builders. My site uses Divi on WordPress.org which is self-hosted instead of WordPress.com which is a paid site. I use the Divi Theme Builder which comes with dozens of themes. I have also found many themes on various sites such as Divi Life which included free as well as paid.
Plugins
Yoast SEO which handles many functions besides SEO
Rank Math also handles SEO on your WordPress site. It will help you add keywords among other things.
Constant Contact is a very good and reliable email tool
UpdraftPlus is used for backing up your website which makes it easy to restore your website if something should happen.
WP Rocket is a plugin for caching which will improve the website speed.
SEMRush will help you improve your SEO, keywords, and many other things.
WooCommerce is a plugin used over 4 million times and will turn your website into an online store
W3 Total Cache is a plugin that will help you increase the load speed for your WordPress sites
Akismet will help keep you from getting spam by checking the comments and the form submissions
Smush is very good. It will compress images so that your site will not slow down
Wordfence will scan your website and will help keep SEO spam, malicious malware and bad URL’s away.
And there are dozens more to check out.