WordPress? Website? What is all this?
Yes, it’s techy but I promise you, you can understand it…
Simple run down – websites are built on platforms (website creation tools and content management systems) like WordPress, Jommla, Wix, Foursquare, etc. or they can be created from scratch using website building protocols –the code.
After being in the industry for almost 10 years, having built many websites myself and tried a majority of popular platforms, this one still remains – WordPress websites kick ass!
Me and my team, we exclusively build only WordPress websites…
Here is why:
1. Wordpress Accounts For 18.9% Of All Websites In The World
That’s a lot of websites, meaning it’s popular. Why should you care – As many people use it, WordPress platform always gets updated, follows security and technology innovations, and many web developers use it, so they can help you build your website and manage it.
Which brings me to the next point…
2. You Don’t Need A Professional Coder/Web Designer To Manage Your WordPress Website
Professional web designer are people with a lot of knowledge and skills for which they will charge you respectable, high web designer fees – which they deserve.
With that said, your 14year old nephew can manage your site – whaaaat??
Yes, it’s that simple to make changes, updates, etc. on WordPress website.
Maybe you don’t have a tech crazy nephew, fine, but you do have millions, I mean, millions of people who know how to use WordPress.
And they don’t charge high web developer fees either.
You can find them here, there, your country, town, village, city, India, Austria, France, UK, Philippines, Spain, Germany, US, Canada, Upwrok (what’s that? A place where you can outsource a lot of work from freelance professionals all over the world), Fivver (same like Upwork only cheaper) – you get it – basically you can find WordPress skills anywhere you want.
In fact, if you don’t like your web maintenance guy, you can find another one in like 5min.
And get this – if you have some time on your hands, you can learn basic stuff quite quickly yourself.
But who wants to do that, it’s tech stuff, right? Perhaps it’s time someone in your office can learn that and you don’t need to rely on external help anymore.
Anyway, you get the picture – it’s very affordable to run a WordPress website.
3. You Don’t Need To Depend On Your Web Developer
Here’s a sneaky trick those doggy web developers do:
They sell you up on really great deal to build you a custom (coded from scratch) website and host it on their servers. More often than not this means they have locked-you-in with unreasonable hosting contracts, skyrocketing website development costs and other hidden fees.
The problem is that not only you are overpaying, but you are also not in control of your business assets as you don’t have full access to your website files, sometimes even your domain name.
And you’re hooked – you don’t know anything about websites, and you depend on them.
More often than not you also need to put up with poor communication and service delays every time you want to change something on your website. (By the way, have you ever waited for weeks just to change an image or prices on your website?!?)
So what do you do then?
You start selling yourself on the idea that “this is how it is”, “they are not that expensive” and you still have a “good deal”.
Let’s assume that one day you want to redesign your website and you want to use a different web developer, or simply move the website to another hosting provider that has better service. Two things will happen:
- Your web developer is a normal professional that will happily give you all necessary logins and wish you well. (If you’re dealing with such person you would highly likely not be looking for a new developer); or
- Your web developer will be a very unhappy person and punish you for leaving, so he/she will play all sorts of tricks, such as not giving you the right logins, not answering your calls, suspending your account, dragging situation to extract another cycle of payments from you, corrupt files of your website etc. The list of childish behavior is endless…and I’ve seen it all in the past months.
All this is bullshit, or should I say – a blackmail!
Personally, I don’t mind people charging their worth but there is time and place when to do and how to do and there is time and place where it is not.
For example, there’s no the way for any developer to justify their fees only because you might not be tech savvy, and they take advantage of you.
I feel sad for those guys and gals, thinking they have to use those kinds of practices to make money.
Oooops, I’m going on a rant here…
This is why, if you have a WordPress website you have control; you can have your own hosting account with an independent provider and you have control to work with whom ever you want. So if someone is not performing to your standards, you have control to fire them, and move to someone else.
Great or what?
Does it feel like you just saved a ton of money? And nerves? Good…
4. You Can Back-Up Your Website
What does it mean? Like you save photos from your phone onto your computer in case something happens to your phone, you can do the same with your website. This comes handy, if your website gets hacked or if something else happens and your website is broken and not working anymore.
With WordPress you can automatically back up your website regularly (daily, weekly etc), so you never lose your precious work.
For example, let’s say the building with your server burns down, meaning your website is ‘gone’…well, it’s not gone, you have backed it up so you hire one of those very affordable WordPress developers and for less than €100 you have your old website up and running again.
Now, that’s super cool!
Just imagine the cost, and the time, and the hassle of building a new website without the backup.
Yep, it’s a major pain it the b***
5. You Can Change The Design Of Your Website Quickly
That’s not super cool, that’s mega cool.
You see, if one day you stop liking the looks of your WordPress website or you rebrand, you can simply upload a new theme and change the design of your website.
Ta daaaa! A brand-new toy, well, maybe not a toy…
There are thousands, and thousands, of themes available for WordPress, and when technology evolves (e.g. Mobile, tablets) or “fashion” change new themes get developed immediately.
I do suggest to hire a developer, WordPress specialist, not the doggy one, to do it for you – it’s easy to change a theme but optimisation of the theme can be challenging. So, leave it to people who know what they are doing. Unless that’s you…
6. There Are More Than 40,000 Plugins For WordPress
What is a plugin?
“A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress.” – wpbeginner.com
In short – you can “pimp” your site!
Plugins are simple and easy to install, well, most of them…
Please remember: only use plugins you really need since there are so many, you might find yourself like kid in a candy store.
What happens next, you get a bunch of them and they break your website; what?
Yep, not all plugins like each-other so, if you put them together they don’t like it and start to create problems, sometimes big problems.
You: “But Tea, you said WordPress is so great” …
Me: ”Yes, but I never said “perfect”…
Then you’ll need your web guy/gal again. Or if you are savvy enough, you will need to go in the backend of your website, deactivate them all, then activate them one by one to see which one is causing the problems.
It shouldn’t be a hard problem to fix yet better not have it at all.
So – only use the plugins you need, read reviews before you upload them and test them too.
There are plugins for anything you can think of and 500x more for things you don’t even know they exist, nor need so learn to say ‘no’ to your ‘inner-geek’.
7. Extended Functionality
With plugins, you can extend the functionality of your website without having any knowledge of programming – that’s the “pimp” part.
E-shops, media sharing, SEO, forms, payment forms, captcha, backups, membership areas, slideshows, portfolios, pretty much anything you can imagine.
As your business grows, so can your website with quick, cost effective solutions.
8. WordPress Is Mobile Friendly…
Technology changes, and with that, the websites have to change too. Who would have thought few years back that most people will access website through mobiles and tablets? For this to work, website have to become responsive to various phone and tablet screen sizes to offer the best visitors’ experience.
Today, most of WordPress themes, especially premium ones (the one you have to pay for) are already mobile friendly.
You don’t have to pay web developer extra money to make your website mobile friendly.
With premium themes your website already IS mobile and tablet friendly.
In the past, I’ve witnessed rude bastards trying to charge clients extra developer fees to make their WordPress websites, mobile friendly, yet the themes they used were already automatically mobile friendly, what?! (Humans never disappoint, right?)
As a side note – with WordPress you want to use premium themes because they will have less glitches, better speed performance, best design and usually great technical support.
Google loves mobile…and they say:
“We will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”
That, plus:
Did you know that people are five times more likely to leave a site, if it isn’t mobile-friendly? I’m sure we all have done it…
9. WordPress Is A Free Platform…
“So is WiX” you might say. True but if you have a website on WiX, your website only works while you use WiX, which can be a big problem.
Imagine something happens to WiX, and they no longer exist, or WiX decides to charge massive fees…your website aka online business is kaput, game-over…or at least delayed until you move on.
As your website is WiX dependant you cannot move your existing website to a different platform – as the elements used to build your website only work on WiX. You’ll have to build complete new website, if you decided to move away.
With WordPress, the story is different. You only have to pay for your domain name about €10 per year, and hosting about €100 per year.
You can choose where you buy the domain name and hosting and you can at any time, changed your providers. If you do that, then all you need to do is clone, or move your website to your new account.
You can also sell your website, and do whatever you want with it– because YOU own it, you own the website files, not just the content.
You might be asking “If it’s free why do you, and other developers, charge money to build it?”
I thought you’d never ask.
Think of it as a painting, so WordPress (a free platform) is a frame that holds your canvas, the canvas is the design of your website and the drawings on the canvas is optimization of your theme to make your website look the way you want it.
You have your own ideas and needs how your website should be – your branding (logo, colors, etc.) and the functionality that suits your business needs.
Themes are different, some more complex than others. Then, add to the looks the functions your website needs to perform…
In short, that takes time and knowledge, so that’s why it ‘costs’ to build a WordPress website.
Imagine this – normally, to get the same website, but to code it from scratch it would cost you minimum 5x more…
10. WordPress Platform Is Secure
Many web developers would tell you the contrary, and that’s true, because most people don’t manage their website properly once they’re built. They only update their content, but never pay any attention to the website files that need to be regularly updated to be secure and safe from hackers.
But let’s be real – if a hacker what’s to hack your site – he or she will.
Hackers hacked into the FBI, CIA, most secure banks in the world and stolen billions of dollars etc.
We are mere ‘mortals’ for them aka not interesting. They may use your website to practice and for that reason, the only safe bet is to back-up your site regularly, so that, if anything happens you can restore it in a matter of hours.
With that said security has nothing to do with platforms – WordPress, Joomla, Wix – it has to do with your firewalls and other protection with your hosting company.
They are the ones who you should talk, if you want an extra security for your website.
And if you want to really secure your website just buy/rent your own physical server, so only your website sits on that server.
On a normal hosting account, your website is hosted together with other websites so you might get hacked, when another website gets hacked but I would worry about that.
Most hacking happens automatically through an un-updated themes and plugins – meaning you have to maintain your website regardless of the platform.
It’s also in WordPress’s interest to have their software very, very secure and for that they regularly release secure updates and you should make them as well.
I could go on and on why you should have WordPress website, but to summarize it:
You’re in control, it’s simple to manage, and millions of people can help you do the same.
You’d probably be amazed, but some of the biggest websites in the world are built on WordPress platforms (TechCrunch, The New York Times Comnay, Facebook Newsroom, The Walt Disney, Reuters, Harvard, to name just few…)
Anyway, the choice is yours…
Tea
