Businesses Designing Their Own WordPress Websites

WordPress is all the rage these days. People have finally figured out that WordPress is not just for blogs, you can actually make a great website with it. WordPress is a CMS, and a good one at that.

Doug Karr recently added a few posts to his blog about website design, WordPress and money. He claims you can easily make a WordPress website yourself that looks good and works great. Don’t spend a bunch of money with a website design firm, just buy or download a free WordPress theme and away you go! You get your web$ite for nothing and the clicks for free . . .

I agree with Doug. Well, I’m biased because I’ve been using WordPress for five years, and I have made nice websites for businesses using WordPress. They look good, do great in search engines and clients can upgrade their website whenever they want (without being charged each time for a simple update.)

But, what is missing from this discussion? The knowledge and effort required to properly set up a web host, domain name, email accounts, WordPress site, training the client how to use it, and continual updates of the WordPress software and plugins. Let’s not forget having to possibly edit the WordPress theme code to make it compatible with the latest WordPress upgrades and internet browser software.

Granted, WordPress makes upgrades a lot easier now with one click updates. But do you feel comfortable backing up your database before the upgrade? If not, you could possibly lose everything. I’ve seen dumb WordPress mistakes from “professional new media agencies” with permalink structure, SEO, category names, URL choices, and bad WordPress themes . . . so even a lot of the “good guys” can’t do it right. And they charge a lot of mullah.

Do you want to do it right? Well, consider saving the hours of time it would take to learn the ins and outs of WordPress and hire someone with WordPress experience. Ask to see their portfolio and find out how many of their sites use WordPress. The more experience they have with WordPress, the more comfortable you will feel with the process and result. Then you can take over your website, have total control and hopefully rule the search engines . . . and get some clicks for free.