We’ve been blogging and freelancing for the past decade and during that time, we have experimented with lots of website platforms. Some are easier than others, some are straight up glitchy, and some happen to make us very, very happy: meet WordPress. The main reason we love WordPress, is because we can design and develop fully creative and custom websites unique to the brands we are working with, and still make the backend of the site super easy for our clients to use. While there are of course many premade themes and page builder plugins you can use with WP, we strongly recommend investing in a custom WordPress theme, especially if you are a small business owner or blogger.
First let’s back up and talk about what exactly WordPress is. There are actually two platforms called WordPress – WordPress.org and WordPress.com. The internet doesn’t need another blog post about the difference between the .com and .org platforms (in fact we wrote one on our old site The Blog Market in 2015 and even that felt late!) so I’ll keep it brief.
WordPress.com is a simple hosting service with a free plan, which doesn’t allow for customization, plugins, ads, or e-commerce integration. This was created by the co-founder of WordPress.org as a hosting service – think of it as WordPress.org’s little sister. This .com platform typically does not suit people who are launching a small biz. There are paid plans which allow for more flexibility, but these prices can get out of control to the point that you might as well go for the real deal.
WordPress.org = the real deal. It’s a self-hosted publishing platform and CMS (content management system), where you can build an entirely custom theme and add plugins and advanced functions as you please. As an open source software, WordPress.org is a collaborative project that is continually being improved and enhanced by developers, rather than a single company with their own agenda (to get more people on their platform). It’s cool!
WordPress.org is technically free – you only have to consider the cost of your web host (usually affordable depending on your site traffic), your domain name, and any premium plugins you want to use. Having a self-hosted site means you have access to all of your content and backend files. The creativity in your site design is limitless depending on your level of code knowledge or how much you can outsource to a developer.
A custom WordPress website is for you, if…
You want to stand out in your field. Have you ever seen a website and immediately recognized what platform it was built on? While WordPress has thousands of themes that you can install and customize, we prefer building sites from the ground up so there are no limits to creativity and functionality. Your brand deserves a site that doesn’t look like anyone else’s.
You are ready to invest in your biz. If you are interested in launching a simple portfolio site or something that you don’t intend to monetize, it might make sense to start with a more DIY platform like Squarespace. However, if you are launching a blog or service-based site, WordPress is the way to go. WP is an investment because there are a lot of moving parts involved. So you either have to invest your time and energy into learning to build a site or hire a developer to handle the site build for you. WordPress itself is actually very affordable, as we mentioned above.
Also, if you have or are interested in investing in professional branding, you obviously understand the importance of standing out. Make sure your website lives up to other services you’ve invested in!
You’re in it for the long haul. When a brand and website are solid, they don’t need to be revamped every year. Sure it’s fun to change up color and imagery, but the branding and bones of your site should be solid enough that you don’t have to invest in another overhaul for a very long time. With WordPress, you can easily build upon what you already have if you want to make adjustments down the road. For example, I recently developed a large editorial site on WordPress. Later this year we are adding an e-commerce component. We can keep building upon the custom theme because it’s well-built and the branding of the site won’t be changing any time soon.
You want to grow a successful blog. Maybe your blog is the main purpose of your site or maybe it’s supplementary to your services. Either way, WordPress is known for having the best opportunities for SEO, or search engine optimization. This is especially important for bloggers and service-based businesses, as we want our work to be discovered, like yesterday. You also have more freedom when it comes to placing ads on your site, as the sky’s the limit with where you post them and how they look. And while you could literally create any website you dream up with WordPress, it did start out as a blogging platform. Take a look at any popular blog that’s been around for years–you’ll find they’re run on WordPress.
You want a speedy website. Okay, of course everyone wants a speedy website but we don’t always have full control over that. With WordPress, you have access to all of your site files and you can configure browser caching and image optimization plugins. We’ll do a whole post on WordPress site speed in a couple weeks but for now I’ll tell you this – premade WordPress themes, plugins, and page-builders often tank your site speed. It’s totally understandable that you may want to begin your WP journey by customizing a premade theme, but as your readership increases, we recommend moving to a custom theme to speed things up. Your visitors will thank you. 🙂
Are you interested in learning more about custom WordPress websites? Let me know what other topics I can help you with. If you’re ready to take the leap and invest in a custom WP site, make sure to check out our services!
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