As more Ugandan’s go online, more and more government agencies, businesses and even individuals are investing more resources to strengthen their online presence especially through websites. According to Data Reportal, the number of internet users in Uganda grew by over 15% between 2021 and 2022. There were 13.92 million internet users in Uganda as of January 2022.
The choice of platform to use when building a website largely depends on the developer because few clients even know which options are available. The web development field in Uganda is also growing steadily with experienced developers openly sharing their preference over which platform to use.
One of the most popular platforms used in Uganda and world over is WordPress. According to W3Techs , the CMS powers 43% of all websites. To put this into perspective, the next competiter, Shopify powers a distant 4%. The statistics clearly indicate that WordPress is still by far the most prefered choice of CMS when building your next website as seen in the illustration below.
In this article, we share only 10 of the common websites in Uganda that use WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS. We shall also indicate the themes and plugins used on each of the sites listed in this article.
1. State House
State House is the official residence of the President of the Republic of Uganda and for all the right reasons must have a website. A quick check showed that the website if also powered by WordPress. The website which is the official source of all the president’s tours, speeches, bills, statements and initiatives is also packed with key information about Uganda’s past and present. It must be the flexibility of WordPress that the most popular CMS was chosen.
Theme & Plugins
On this website, the theme of choice was Hello Elementor, the fastest WordPress theme ever created according to the theme description. To extend functionality accross the website, 20 plugins were installed among which are extremely popular ones like Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed, Contact Form 7, Elementor Page Builder, Jetpack and Yoast SEO. Other plugins included Jetpack Boost, PDF.js Viewer, My YouTube Channel, Jquery Validation For Contact Form 7 and a few others.
2. Great Lakes Safaris
If there is a person who has single handedly marketed Uganda to the World, that is arguably Amos Wekesa. And for more than 2 decades, Amos has practiced his trade through Great Lakes Safaris. It is even obvious that you can’t run a tourism business without a website. The Great Lakes Safaris website is powered by WordPress!
Theme & Plugins
The Great Lakes Safaris website has the Kadence theme installed. This freemium theme is one of the top 25 WordPress themes. You could think that this site would be packed with dozens of plugins but our tools detected only 6. These included Kadence Blocks to work hand in hand with the theme, Gravity Forms and Flying Analytics. For SEO, Rank Math was used while spam protection was done with the help of Akismet Anti-spam.
3. Uganda Revenue Authority
Recently, Uganda’s tax body took the bold step and chose to redesign their website with WordPress. We choose the word bold, because, why on earth would someone decide to abandon a platform that is running the country’s tax collection database at the risk of disrupting services. Nevertheless, the decision was taken and offcourse, the benefits of switching to WordPress must have outweighed any negatives at play.
Theme & plugins
The URA website is built with a custom theme by Kalen Web Consultants and uses several plugins to extend its functionality. The sites SEO is powered by Yoast, the most popular SEO plugin, WordFence Security, Cookie Yes and more than 20 other plugins. These include; AI Related Posts, CBX Bookmark & Favorite, Download Manager, PhotoGallery by 10web, Search & Filter, Sign-in With Google, Subscriber by BestWebSoft, Survey Maker and more.
4. Uganda National Examinations Board
Anyone who has passed through Uganda’s education system knows what UNEB is to the country. The Ntinda based body in charge of assessment at PLE, UCE and UACE was established in 1983. Unlike many related entities, the designer of this website has a good eye for design given the creative approach seen in its layout and backgrounds of the different sections of the homepage. This is another website powered by WordPress!
Theme & Plugins
UNEB’s website has The7 theme installed and a couple of plugins to extend functionality. 3 of the plugins used feature in the most comony used plugin list i.e. Contact Form 7, WPBAkery and Slider Revolution. Other plugins include; Modern Events Calendar, GoPricing and others.
5. MTN Uganda
As of 2022, MTN Uganda held a 54% share of mobile subscirpions in Uganda. And, what is a telecom provider without a website? The MTN Uganda website is also powered by WordPress. The black and yellow themed site loads fast and shows all the signs of expert and creative craftmanship in whoever designed it.
Theme & Plugins
The MTN website is based on MTN Vivid WordPress theme, a custom theme develoepd by Plus Narrative. Unlike some of the websites we have listed here, the MTN site is packed with only 7 plugins including Yoast SEO, Akismet Anti-spam, Jetpack Boost, Two-Factor and a few others. This shows you that you don’t need a basket of plugins to come up with a powerful, secure and fast loading website.
6. Trinity College Nabbingo
Established in 1942, Trinity College Nabbingo is one of the premier schools in Uganda. The girls only school has a rich history that inevitably has to be archived online. Like many other schools in its league, a website to serve all stakeholders both locally and internationally was necessary. And without guessing, their website is also built on WordPress.
Themes & Plugins
The choice of theme by the designer was Hello Elementor, a light weight and minimalist theme known for its fast loading. A couple of popular plugins are used on this site including; Elementor Pro, Sush – Optimise for images, The Events Calendar and Yoast for SEO. Other plugins include; Akismet, Jetpack, SiteKit by Google and a few others.
7. Uganda Communications Commission
Uganda Communications Commission, UCC, is mandated to regulate the telecoms and broadcasting sector in Uganda. The Bugolobi based autonomus agency has a website where all announcements, official communication and industry information is shared. Just like URA and UNEB, their website is also powered by WordPress.
Themes & Plugins
Like you must by now have known, you will need a theme to start with and on this website, the TOTAL Drag & Drop theme was chosen though it was customised by a one Kirya Ronald. TOTAL is a premium theme. As for the plugins, WP Theme Detector will show you a list of 8 of them including Elementor, Elementor Pro, WordFence Security and FacetWP. The FormCraft plugin was used to create the forms used on UCC’s website.
8. Kabale University
Uganda has 11 public universities and Kabale University is one of them. The university, based in the South Western region Uganda also has a website built on WordPress. The University, started in 2001 has Diploma, Undergraduate, Post Graduate and Doctoral programs some of which are delivered with a mix of physical and an online classes.
Themes & Plugins
The university website uses the Portal theme by P-Themes. Unlike UCC which had only 8 plugins, this university website is packed with more than 20. Noticeaby, there are 2 extremely popular page builders i.e. Elementor Pro and WPBakery Page Builder. For SEO, the also very popular Yoast SEO was chosen.
Other plugins on this site include Titan Anti-spam & Security, Contact Form 7, Download Manager, Jetpack by WordPress.com, Slider Revolution, WordPress Download Manager and more.
9. Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB)
If you ever intend to start a company of any sort in Uganda, you will be obliged to formalise its existence with URSB. And, in this digital era, many of the services of URSB can be accessed on line through their website. The URSB website is also powered by none other than WordPress.
Theme & Plugins
Apart from detecting that the site uses WordPress, we couldn’t identify the theme or plugins used on this site. Details about these can be got from the site developer Bsystems, a Ghana based agency with offices in Uganda, Kenya, Canada, Dubai, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Malwai and Liberia.
10. Movit Products Ltd
Movit Products Ltd is Uganda’s leading manufacturer of hair care, body care and baby care products. The company that has been in business for more than 2 decades boasts of serving a market of 8 countries in Africa. And surely, this journey and its expanse accross borders necesitates the presence of a website. Their choice? WordPress!
Theme & Plugins
This website uses the Razzi theme developed by DrFuri. Like majority of WordPress sites, the use of plugins is next to unavoidable. The choice of plugins for this theme was the extremely popular WooCommerce and Elementor Page Builder plugins. The only other plugins are Awsm Team Pro and Elementor Pro, the premium version that works alongside Elementor Page Builder.
Conclusion
There have always popped up concerns as to whether WordPress would be a good choice for a serious website. But numbers don’t lie. When these numbers are reinforced by big names choosing WordPress over other options, you might be left with no choice but to admit that for now, WordPress is ahead of the game. While the examples given in this article are local to Uganda, we’ll in another article look at some of the top brands worldwide that chose WordPress. – Code is Poetry.
