WEBSITE DESIGN - INPUT NEEDED

[Karen Margrave]

We are real estate developers, licensed in real estate and construction. We don't really work real estate as agents, other than to list and show our own properties, and purchase land for projects. Same with construction, we only build our projects, we don't do contract jobs. 

I have had two websites, one for the development/construction business, and one that is specifically as a gallery of projects we are currently building or on the drawing board. 

I had the sites with Vistaprint, because it was easy and it integrated a blog, email marketing and the website. I am now changing to someplace else, possibly Godaddy. 

QUESTION: 

There are options for "Website" or "Wordpress site", I'm told Wordpress allows more data, should I want to add a feature like IDX search later, etc. 

1. Can you help educate me on the differences. What is Wordpress? Then not only do I see "Wordpress" there's various "themes for Wordpress", and "Genesis" etc. What the heck is all of that? 

2. What's the difference between a 'website" and a "wordpress site"? 

@Brandon Turner and anyone else that can help, please jump in!! 

[Hattie Dizmond]

@Karen Margrave 

A Wordpress is installed on a standard website and gives you a Content Management System (CMS), Blog support, mobile functionality, SEO management, themes (these allow you to easily change the look & feel of your website, without altering content), plugins that allow you to offer things like portals (imagine you have partners on specific projects, and you want to allow them to securely login and see the current progress, financials or other information on the projects they are involved with), search engine friendly permalinks, etc. on top of the standard features of the website.

Wordpress is free and offers so many benefits there's simply no downside to creating your website utilizing it, even if you don't use anything of the advanced features for years.