Expert WordPress Website Development
We have a wide variety of technical platforms available on the web today, ranging from quick & easy DIY options, to more advanced and powerful platforms for website development. Generally, a growing company or institution will require the latter versus a quick DYI route.
WordPress is by far, the leading platform on the web today, accounting for the major share of new websites being launched. It is a unique platform that occupies a sweet spot, combining powerful customization capabilities with simplicity of content management by site owners.
At its full potential, it can become the central hub of an organization’s communications and interaction with the public, and also within the organization.
Your WordPress Website Can Be So Much More…
The majority of websites will include core, static content, along with dynamic information that must be updated periodically. The website can be made attractive, and eventually satisfy the initial design requirements of the client. The “webmaster” then is typically asked to update content periodically as the organization progresses.
Unfortunately, if the site buildout is limited to this vision alone, both the developer and the client are seriously restricted in leveraging the potential of a WordPress website. A proper implementation should provide the client with a simple, clearly communicated protocol for creating, publishing, and updating timely content. It should not require technical understanding of the functioning of the website, and should be easily accessible by selected internal personnel. WordPress is recognized as a “CMS”, i.e., a Content Management System. In principle, that means a system that enables client organizations to create, edit, publish and manage most content on their website, without repetitive intervention of a technical website developer (think $$$!). After website construction to specs, a developer should only be required for fundamental structural changes and capability enhancements.
We’ll cover here some of the more powerful applications that can potentially be built into a WordPress website to expand that vision…
Click to expand…
WordPress sites have built-in capabilities to assign specific abilities, roles, and rights to specific personnel in your organization. The “admin” role has total control over the entire website. “Editor” roles have the ability to create or accept others’ drafts for new posts, and finally to edit and publish them.
WordPress forms can be extended far beyond the typical “Contact Us” form for customized data collection on the site. Various types of data can be captured and saved into the database, and then subsequently downloaded as CSV files for analysis (think spreadsheets, surveys, field personnel data entry, etc.). Finally, access and visibility for these data collection forms can be enabled to only certain roles and people you choose.
WordPress is noted for its extremely robust e-commerce capabilities. Most often it uses the popular free plugin Woocommerce. All types of products can be sold on this system, and payments linked directly to your chosen payments processor (e.g., Paypal, Stripe, etc.). WordPress provides unlimited flexibility in how to style your product listings and your checkout cart.
With a few popular and free plugins, WordPress can become a Membership site, where members-only content and capabilities are customized. This can be ideal for clubs, churches, companies with specialized site sections for employees only, etc.
A WordPress installation inherently comes with two predominant content types; “pages” and “posts”. Pages are generally used as the site pages, or the “scaffolding” of your site’s content.
“Posts” are the frequently created and/or updated content that communicate fresh material, blog posts, notifications for upcoming events, news, instructional materials, etc. Posts can be targeted to appear either on their own dedicated page, and/or in specific designated page sections relevant to their subject matter.
This powerful combination satisfies the needs for a large majority of websites, but for those requiring unique, specialized content types with custom fields, we have the ability to craft those as well.
The possibilities for specific functionality is virtually unlimited in WordPress, with its extensive and unmatched professional ecosystem of developers. Most of these “plugin” developers offer a free version and occasionally an enhanced paid version of their tools. Most typical capabilities can easily be implemented with free tools. Examples: event calendars, booking systems, maps, registration forms, subscription workflows, etc.