So, how do websites get built?
If you want to develop a Custom Website Design or hire someone to do it for you, you’re surely aware that there are two approaches.
Statically
Dynamically
Back in the day (don’t ask how far back that is, please) Almost all web pages were static. That is, they were created in code editors before being uploaded to the web host.
Any modifications a webmaster wanted to make to a static site, no matter how little, had to be done through the code editor, after ensuring you were working on the most recent version of the local files, making your changes, then upload the revised files to the “online version,” and so on.
The code editor, on the other hand, is built straight into the Custom Website Design with dynamic sites. Most popularly known as a content management system (CMS), you log in, modify whatever you want to update, hit “publish,” and the website is updated!
There’s no need to work from local files instead of online; no stress, no worry.
To put it another way, you can choose to design a website the hard way (static website) or the much easier way (dynamic website) (dynamic website).
The simple solution is to create a website and host it on a platform that allows individuals who aren’t code-savvy (read: the majority of the human race) to make changes quickly and easily.
Here’s the deal: while a little more than half of the websites online today (53 percent) do not use any CMS, 76.4 percent of websites did not use them in 2011. (source). So, in terms of efficiency, the global web has come a long way.
Making a Decision on a Content Management System
For creating a website, content management systems are the logical choice.
Now comes the choice of which CMS to choose to power your website.
There are numerous content management alternatives to select from, so it simply boils down to a few questions you must answer:
What features do you want your CMS to have?
Is it necessary for anyone to be able to use it?
What are you willing to pay?
How adaptable is it?
Is it well backed up?
We recommend choosing the free path unless you’re willing to pay for a powerful content management system or have someone develop one for you. When it comes to free CMS platforms, there are many possibilities, but our preference is WordPress.
Why are we using WordPress at TheCustomWebsites? Because it fulfills all of our requirements. It wasn’t always this way; for a while, we used the PageLime content management system, but we never looked back after switching to WordPress.
WordPress: It’s No Longer Just For Blogs
I recall starting my first (personal) blog in the year 2005 A.D. I opened blogs on both Blogger and WordPress since I wasn’t sure which platform to use.
What made me select those two platforms? Of course, they were blogging platforms!
When WordPress originally came out, it wasn’t as simple to use as Blogger (in my opinion), but over time, they made so many improvements that I didn’t feel like I needed to be an IT geek to use it.
Despite these advancements, many Custom Website Building developers still did not consider WordPress to be a custom website construction material, therefore it remained mostly the domain of bloggers.
After many years, we’ve arrived at TheCustomWebsites, where we only use WordPress to create custom websites and themes for our clients. Since 2013, we’ve been doing so…
Impressive.
WordPress appears to be the content management system of choice by a long shot. That’s one of the (many) reasons we enjoy it: it’s highly supported, not because it’s popular.
Here are CMS usage statistics from Built With as of March 2017:
But, before you download the latest version and migrate your website, weigh the advantages and cons – just because it’s the most popular CMS on the web today doesn’t guarantee it’s right for you.
WordPress Advantages and disadvantages
There is a simple technique to determine whether or not you like something: Get a piece of paper and a writing utensil (there’s nothing quite like a freshly sharpened pencil and a blank sheet of paper, amirite? ), draw a line down the middle and list all the benefits on one side and the disadvantages on the other.
You may apply the same logic to determine whether WordPress is the right CMS for you. Look at this:
PROS
Here’s why we chose WordPress to build all of our Custom Website Building and Themes plus designs, straight from our designer/mouth developer (that’s Dave; for those of you who don’t know, he’s really brilliant at what he does):
free
The community is quite supportive.
It is not necessary to be a developer to use it.
select from pre-existing templates/themes
OR create a completely unique Custom Website Development WordPress from the ground up.
make updates fast and simply
a plethora of platform-specific plug-ins that conduct the “heavy lifting” for you
There are numerous hosting services that are entirely dedicated to WordPress.
But, like with anything in life, nothing is entirely great – there must be some drawbacks.
CONS
Plug-ins (either the incorrect ones or too many) might cause your website to crash.
Unsupported plug-ins can lead to a hack.
Failure to use the most recent WordPress version may result in problems.
If your login information is not secure, your website may be hacked.
Large e-commerce sites may not be suitable for this platform.
WordPress themes have far too much extra code, causing your site to bog down and load slowly.
For us, the benefits much outweigh the drawbacks, especially given we don’t utilize pre-existing templates, only install well-supported plugins, and use the most recent version of WordPress.
Why Should You Go With WordPress?
Building websites with content management systems isn’t a fad, and neither is WordPress. If you want to create long-lasting, safe, and easy-to-update websites, WordPress is the way to go.
It’s free and open-source (you can do whatever you want with it).
CMS is widely popular and so has a lot of community support
WordPress hosting options to boost site performance
enables the development of nearly any form of website
makes it simple to edit/maintain several web pages at the same time
coach-WordPress-website
WordPress is currently the most popular content management system (CMS) on the planet (and possibly in other, parallel universes too). Because there are so many plugins that can handle practically any functionality, you don’t need to be a coding wizard to add “extras” to enhance your site.
It’s really simple to make changes, whether you’re an agency or a client, so there’s no need to answer email inquiries when the client needs something updated. Furthermore, the WordPress Managed hosting environments significantly accelerate your website and include some plugin/WordPress core update automation capability.
WordPress might not be the ideal content management system for your Custom Website Development WordPress, but chances are it is.
WordPress is the only platform we have ever utilized. We know it works well, we enjoy the pricing (hum, nothing), and our developer can make it do whatever we need it to do — whether we’re developing a brand-new website, redesigning an existing one, adding a new configurable theme to our library, or working on a client’s PPC landing page.