WordPress is an off the shelf content management system. It allows you to build a website from a very basic template that already comes pre-installed with it or buy your own theme to upload and amend.

The beauty of WordPress is that there are literally thousands of themes out there for you to choose from so you will often find one that is very similar to what you want. It also has a great backend system that is very user friendly an easy to use. WordPress release updates to the code of the CMS system so that you do not have to worry about doing it yourself.

You can install plug-ins which are essentially bolt on bits of code that provide different functionality such as scrolling header images or contact forms etc.

The options really are endless with WordPress which is why so many programmers choose to use it. If you need a very bespoke website and CMS then you may decide to build your own but this does mean you will have to be prepared to update it every so often to keep it secure. If you are not a very experienced programmer then it is not recommended that you build your own CMS.