Disclaimer:

This is basic outline/explanation of WordPress. If you are interested in building a website, please consult various developers and agencies to gain a more detailed understanding.

You’ve been warned.

WORDPRESS: OR 18.9% OF THE INTERNET

Developers use various methods for website creation. Whether using a 3rd party CMS, Bootstrap methods, or an in-house grid. All have the same goals in mind, how can sites look nice, display information, and be responsive? A second underlying and less spoken-about principle is: How can the developer, editor, and client get along? We will be focusing on the latter.

For this reason, many agencies choose WordPress. A familiar, friendly CMS which incorporates themes, plugins, visual editors, and a responsive layout. All the foundations needed for a successful website. So how does this add toward the above-mentioned relationship?

LET’S CHECK IT OUT

TO DEVELOPERS:

WordPress provides a stable environment to meet the client’s needs. By using child themes or custom themes, the developer can make something original and unique for their client. Provides room for custom-coded elements, css changes, and javascript injection, It has a friendly ftp structure provided by your hosting, and multiple ways to point to the DNS once you decide to launch (IP vs. CNAME). Revision system to bring back old copies of pages, in case we mess up (which we will). Above it all, it is complete with a responsive layout which limits the amount of media calls that we would need to do (also making life much easier). All in all, WordPress is a great environment for a basic to intermediate website. If there is certain functionalities that are more advanced, then you may need to take a step back, and reevaluate.

TO EDITORS:

Or those with a limited knowledge of coding languages, WordPress is a great system to be able to layout everything fluidly and easy-to-understand. Since visual editors are complete in the back-end the editors don’t have to worry about navigating lines and lines of html to edit/change copy in between <p>, <h1>, <h2>, <div>, <span> codes. This makes the risk of messing things up significantly less! Which is a great thing for the developer, usually since we already trying to fix something we messed up. Also, elements are easy to change such as a milestone counter. The editor can easily just choose “edit” and place in a new milestone number/title. The same process works for most other elements as well. So for editors, WordPress provides an easier (notice I didn’t say easy) environment to edit text and most elements (structure and additional pages are completely different).

TO CLIENTS:

WordPress is a CMS that is incredibly intuitive and easy to navigate. It can help prop up a false sense of confidence and illicit statements from the client like, “Oh it’s that easy, we could have done that!”. When you should always respond with, “Yes, why yes, you could have” and smile. It helps to build the client understanding of web process and will actually lead to a greater relationship. Since many clients will get to see all the insides or what I like to call “the bloody guts” of their website, they will better understanding of deadlines and overall edits.

SO IN SUMMARY:
(TL;DR)

Continued at a later date,
Hubspot: Staring Into The Abyss…and It Stares Back.