Design and build your own website? – Perhaps not

It’s hard to believe that nearly 2 million small businesses in the UK don’t have a website. According to the statistics this is costing them over £340 billion pounds a year, a truly staggering figure.

Many of these businesses say that they chose not to have a website as they are just too expensive to build and market. On the other hand, some of those businesses that do decide to have a site do it themselves, WordPress being one of the main packages used.

Such businesses are of course attracted to the low costs that this ‘self help’ route takes.

However there are many reasons to involve someone who knows what they are doing, as some of the ‘self made’ sites we have seen tell us.

So What Is WordPress?

Whether you decide to build your site yourself or use a WordPress development agency, then it is a good idea to know a bit more about WordPress.

Putting it simply, WordPress is, in most people’s eyes, the best content management system (CMS) available today. It allows you to easily create, edit, manage and publish content on without having to learn any programming at all, or at least that is its aim.

However, it is not always as simple as that, and in many instances it becomes necessary to delve behind the scenes a little, making alterations to the ‘Themes’ (these are the name for the Template that is used to power a site) and the underlying CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), Javascript and HTML code. In instances like these you really need someone who understands the deeper workings of WordPress (not to mention HTML and Javascript).

Huge Variety of Themes Means You Can Build The Kind Of Website You Want

There was a time when people thought WordPress was just used for blogging, but now, with the huge rise in availability of Themes, WordPress is capable of doing so much more.

Today you can virtually build any kind of website you want using WordPress.

Maintaining Your Website

Maintaining a website at the technical level involves a lot of work, as you have to keep your website up to date with the latest browsers and make sure it works on all (well most) mobile devices. Then there is the matter of security to prevent hacker attacks.

In theory all of this is made easier by WordPress, updates being possible at a click of a mouse, however, even this area can be complex and is best carried out by those who know what is going on.

Plugins For Everything

Plugins allow you to extend the functionality of your website in many ways. For example there is a plugin that creates a contact page for your website, one that adds an Ecommerce system complete with a checkout system. Then again there are those that improve SEO, add extra layers of security, all with just a few simple clicks.

But here again, things are not as simple as they sound, as using too many Plugins cannot only slow down your site, but also, if you use the wrong ones, cause security breaches of their own. So again, it is best to use the services of an agency, as they know which plugin to use and just how it should be configured.

Continuous Support And Updates Provided

Although WordPress is open-source software, it still delivers top quality user experience and is backed up with thousands of code experts, who soon fix any issues that come up (such things are bound to happen in an environment as dynamic and fast moving as the Web). So when problems with the software are found, these experts will always be there to help.

WordPress Supports Mobile Devices

With the rise in the use of Mobile devices, it really is necessary for any site to be fully responsive and be able to support all mobile platforms and screen sizes. Again WordPress scores here, the huge majority of Themes being Responsive. Again though, it pays to use a designer who understands all this.

Improved Security Standards

WordPress plugins, such as iThemes Security, are available to protect your website from hackers, malware, whilst enforcing strong passwords. This sort of plugin will help keep your site safe and again are simply not available (at the same low cost at least) for Non WordPress sites.

SEO Implementation is Easier

Optimising a website is straightforward enough, it all being based on common sense. But it does take time and anything that allows you to optimise a site faster must be welcome. Here again WordPress comes up trumps, there being lots of plugins that help.

Yoast SEO is one of most popular plugins around today, it letting anyone easily implement proper meta headlines, descriptions and even optimize your pages for keywords. However, again, you do need to know how to use these powerful tools, and for SEO that is best left to a Search Engine Optimisation expert.

WordPress Is Future-Proof

There is no doubt that the Internet will keep on evolving (perhaps even faster than it is today) and that means you have to use a tool that will keep on changing too. You could for example choose to have your site built using a propriety CMS system, or one that is built using something like Dreamweaver, However in both instances it is possible that the suppliers of these will decide not to compete in the web design market place anymore, and that means your site will soon fall behind and at one stage or another be unusable.

Using A WordPress Agency Is Best

As you can see from the above, there are many instances where an unexperienced WordPress user can fall foul of a trap or too, so before you decide to build a website yourself, do have a word with the Rouge Team. We can make sure that not only do you end up with a top class website, but that you also your site is kept safe and secure as possible in the future..

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