Five Common Misconceptions About Using WordPress to Build Your Business Website
Here at Love Local Design, we proudly build a majority of our websites on the WordPress framework. WordPress has been around for almost 15 years, is used by 75 million websites worldwide, and we’re confident that it offers the most secure, versatile and user-friendly platform for almost any website. Whether you are a startup just getting off the ground with your first site, or a large corporation who deals with sensitive customer information (and we’ve built sites for both), WordPress is most often the best solution. Nonetheless, we often experience resistance from clients who may entertain common misconceptions about the platform, so in this post, we’d like to address each of these concerns so that you can rest assured that WordPress is an excellent solution for any website, large or small.
Misconception #1: All WordPress sites look alike.
One of the most common questions we hear from prospective clients is, “If you build it in WordPress, won’t it look like a WordPress site?” We believe that this question stems from a fundamental confusion between WordPress.com, which is a blog site, and the WordPress platform that we build our sites upon, using its advanced underlying technology. It’s true that sites on WordPress.com are very limited in their website design capabilities and functionality, but the WordPress platform used on self-hosted sites is really nothing more than a solid PHP framework, coupled with an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS.) This gives you, the client, the best of both worlds: a solid, secure codebase upon which practically anything can be designed and built, and a way to easily update your content without having to pay your developer to do it each time.
Another reason for the misconception about all WordPress sites looking alike may be that many people, especially bloggers, use the free WordPress themes which are available to everyone, or paid themes which are also publicly-available. Here at LLD, unless specifically requested, we build all our themes from the ground up, according to the needs of the client. This practice guarantees not only that the user interface (UI), user experience (UX), design and functionality will be uniquely suited to your business needs, but also that it won’t look like any other WordPress site on the Internet. We guarantee your site will be as individual as you are.
Misconception #2: WordPress is only for blogs and personal websites
When it first launched in 2003, WordPress was initially intended as a platform for personal publishing, that much is true. However, over the ensuing years, the platform has evolved into a sophisticated framework and CMS that is used by small and large businesses alike. Just a few examples of popular businesses that use WordPress are: BBC America, The New Yorker, Variety, Sony Music, The Wall Street Journal, and literally millions of others.
Misconception #3: WordPress isn’t secure
We hear this one a lot, and nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Automattic, WordPress’s parent company, employs dozens of people whose sole job is to make sure the codebase is safe from all attacks, be they viruses, malware, injections, etc. and they do this all day, every day. There are also millions of passionately active WordPress developers around the world who collectively work 24/7/365, hunting and patching any security vulnerabilities. Think of them as a personal security team working around the clock to make sure your website is secure. If a threat is detected, WordPress releases a patch and your site is updated automatically.
Additionally, LLD adheres to the best practice of installing Wordfence, a suite of security defense tools, on all of our client websites. These tools include a web application firewall, real-time protection against the latest threats, brute-force attack blocking, and even geographic blocking if threats are found to be originating from a particular country or region.
Misconception #4: A WordPress site won’t allow for good Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This assumption is also false, as WordPress is coded to be “SEO-Friendly” right out of the box. There are also a number of excellent SEO plugins that can be employed to further enhance optimization for search engine visibility. At the end of the day, the most important factor considered by Google when indexing sites is that the content is fresh (frequently updated) and original. The good news is that WordPress is the easiest CMS for our clients to use to make sure they can quickly add new content to their site on a regular basis. If you don’t have the time or inclination to provide your own site updates, LLD can also offer ongoing updates and content-creation services for a small additional fee. But with a site coded by hand without the benefit of an trusted codebase and CMS, you won’t even have the option of updating the site yourself, and will have to pay a developer to do it, even for minor updates.
Misconception #5: Development of a WordPress site will cost more than a custom-coded site.
This is simply not true. Because WordPress comes with a solid PHP codebase, the work we do designing and building your site is focused on creating custom designs and functionality that work seamlessly on top of, and with, WordPress’s code and available plugins. What this means for the client is that you will end up saving time and money that would otherwise be spent hand-coding a site, not to mention all the bug-fixing that would necessarily be a part of this process. Our goal at LLD is to provide you with a quality custom site that is up and running as quickly as possible. While we put all of our clients’ sites through rigorous testing to make sure everything is working perfectly before launch, this process takes a fraction of the time and cost than it would on a site that is coded from scratch.
As you can see, there are very few reasons not to employ the most user-friendly CMS in the world. Not only is the underlying technology excellent, the design and functionality fully customizable, and the platform used by some of the most trusted websites in the world – it’s also the easiest way to update your site so that your content remains fresh, attracting both new and returning visitors. If you happen to encounter an independent coder who insists that building your site from scratch is faster or more efficient way to go, be wary: they may be trying to get you on the hook for a long, expensive building process, and keep you on the hook for all future updates. Before you sign anything, come talk to us first. Whatever your needs, we’ll help you find the solution that works best for you and your business.
Filed under: Content Strategy, Design, Wordpress
