Custom Site Development
As great as WordPress is, it's not necessarily the best tool for every situation, especially if your website is unconventional or has more complex needs. For that scenario, a custom site might be a better solution.
WordPress can be a powerful tool for creating and maintaining your website. (If you don't know what WordPress is, read my FAQ, "What is Wordpress?") But it's not necessarily always the best solution.
An alternative to WordPress is to have a developer create a custom website, tailored specifically to your needs.
The word "tailor" is an apt way of thinking about the difference between WordPress and custom site development. A WordPress site is like buying clothes at any retail store. You pick something off the rack, you buy it, you take it home and you wear it. But while that shirt you bought may feel great around your torso, the sleeves may be too long or too short. Or the sleeves may be just the right length but the collar feels too tight.
A custom website, on the other hand, is like going into a tailor and having a suit or dress made to fit your body perfectly.
There are many benefits to creating a custom website:
This is probably the best reason to create a custom website instead of relying on something like WordPress. Customization is often WordPress's Achilles's heel. To its credit, WordPress has gotten much better at providing customization options. But sometimes a web project has such unique needs, it simply defies convention. And to take a theme or plugin that was meant for one purpose and try to craft workarounds to make it serve some other purpose is an invitation to disaster.
On the other hand, a custom web project can be tailored to your exact needs.
The WordPress interface is more or less the same no matter what kind of website you're creating. The dashboard consists of a narrow column down the left side of the page, which has a couple dozen options to choose from. Most of these you will rarely use. The ones you will probably use the most are Pages and Posts.
Let's say your website contains articles, news items and a list of related items. In WordPress, you would still have to manage these by going into Pages and Posts. But in a custom content management interface, you could have separate links for Articles, News Items and Related Items. This can save you lots of clicks over time.
There are those who will argue that WordPress is more secure than a custom site because once a security flaw is discovered in one WordPress site, that flaw can be patched up and the fix can be pushed through to all other WordPress sites. This is a valid argument. However, there is a counter-argument that since WordPress is so widely and freely available, and the code that powers your WordPress site is more or less the exact same code that powers a hacker's WordPress site, if a hacker can discover a way to hack into one WordPress site, he can hack into them all.
A custom website will require a hacker to learn its specific security flaws in order to hack into it. Most hackers simply won't bother, since WordPress is much lower-hanging fruit, and there's so much of that fruit available.
Furthermore, third-party WordPress plugins are notorious for their security flaws. Some WordPress plugins may actually install malware on a web server. Of course, any good WordPress developer will constantly stay abreast of which plugins are dangerous and which ones have been vetted as safe by thousands of other WordPress developers and users.
There are certain issues that come up when creating a custom website vs. using WordPress. But these issues are not necessarily obstacles.
What if you hire one developer to create a site for you, and then decide in the future to use a different developer? Maybe the original developer is no longer available. Will the new developer be able to take over and fix or change things without "breaking" the site?
It's true that custom websites are sometimes harder for other developers to take over. One of the advantages of a WordPress site over a custom site is uniformity. A WordPress developer can often go from one WordPress site to another — even one he didn't develop himself — and figure out how to modify things. Custom websites obviously don't have that same level of uniformity.
But that doesn't mean that custom websites are necessarily hard for a new developer to work with. As long as the original developer adhered to certain standards, a new developer should have a much easier time figuring out the inner mechanics of the website.
In fact, even a WordPress site that has been deeply customized can be hard for other developers to work with, especially if the original developer used non-standard workarounds to make certain features work.
Custom websites can often take longer to build than simpler ones. But the difference may be a matter of days or even hours. And custom websites don't necessarily take longer to build than highly customized WordPress sites. In some cases, it may take longer to customize a WordPress site for your unconventional needs than building a custom site specifically tailored to your needs.
The core benefit of WordPress is that it gives you the ability to manage the content yourself. But custom websites can provide you with that ability too. When I build a custom website, I will include a password-protected content management system that will allow you to add, edit and delete content on your website, usually with a cleaner interface than WordPress provides.
Security is always a concern, no matter what platform you use to create your website. Are custom websites less secure than something like WordPress? Not necessarily. While there are always opportunities to unwittingly create security vulnerabilities, a good web developer will know where to look for holes and weak spots. Shoring up those weak spots from the beginning can result in a custom website that's even more secure than WordPress. Not only that, but as I mentioned above, a hacker would have to devote some extra time and labor to figuring out how to crack a custom website as opposed to a WordPress site.
Hackers are getting smarter, but so are web developers, and a lot of the old tricks that hackers used to use simply don't work as well any more.
Going to a tailor is usually more expensive than buying clothes off the rack. But in the world of web development, a custom website is not necessarily more expensive than a WordPress site.
In some cases, making extensive customizations to a WordPress site can take more time and cost more money than creating a custom website tailored for your project's needs.
If you would like more information on getting a custom website up and running, send me a message.
An alternative to WordPress is to have a developer create a custom website, tailored specifically to your needs.
The word "tailor" is an apt way of thinking about the difference between WordPress and custom site development. A WordPress site is like buying clothes at any retail store. You pick something off the rack, you buy it, you take it home and you wear it. But while that shirt you bought may feel great around your torso, the sleeves may be too long or too short. Or the sleeves may be just the right length but the collar feels too tight.
A custom website, on the other hand, is like going into a tailor and having a suit or dress made to fit your body perfectly.
Benefits of Custom Websites
There are many benefits to creating a custom website:
Greater customization
This is probably the best reason to create a custom website instead of relying on something like WordPress. Customization is often WordPress's Achilles's heel. To its credit, WordPress has gotten much better at providing customization options. But sometimes a web project has such unique needs, it simply defies convention. And to take a theme or plugin that was meant for one purpose and try to craft workarounds to make it serve some other purpose is an invitation to disaster.
On the other hand, a custom web project can be tailored to your exact needs.
Cleaner content management tools
The WordPress interface is more or less the same no matter what kind of website you're creating. The dashboard consists of a narrow column down the left side of the page, which has a couple dozen options to choose from. Most of these you will rarely use. The ones you will probably use the most are Pages and Posts.
Let's say your website contains articles, news items and a list of related items. In WordPress, you would still have to manage these by going into Pages and Posts. But in a custom content management interface, you could have separate links for Articles, News Items and Related Items. This can save you lots of clicks over time.
Security
There are those who will argue that WordPress is more secure than a custom site because once a security flaw is discovered in one WordPress site, that flaw can be patched up and the fix can be pushed through to all other WordPress sites. This is a valid argument. However, there is a counter-argument that since WordPress is so widely and freely available, and the code that powers your WordPress site is more or less the exact same code that powers a hacker's WordPress site, if a hacker can discover a way to hack into one WordPress site, he can hack into them all.
A custom website will require a hacker to learn its specific security flaws in order to hack into it. Most hackers simply won't bother, since WordPress is much lower-hanging fruit, and there's so much of that fruit available.
Furthermore, third-party WordPress plugins are notorious for their security flaws. Some WordPress plugins may actually install malware on a web server. Of course, any good WordPress developer will constantly stay abreast of which plugins are dangerous and which ones have been vetted as safe by thousands of other WordPress developers and users.
Issues Related to Custom Websites
There are certain issues that come up when creating a custom website vs. using WordPress. But these issues are not necessarily obstacles.
Ability to use other developers
What if you hire one developer to create a site for you, and then decide in the future to use a different developer? Maybe the original developer is no longer available. Will the new developer be able to take over and fix or change things without "breaking" the site?
It's true that custom websites are sometimes harder for other developers to take over. One of the advantages of a WordPress site over a custom site is uniformity. A WordPress developer can often go from one WordPress site to another — even one he didn't develop himself — and figure out how to modify things. Custom websites obviously don't have that same level of uniformity.
But that doesn't mean that custom websites are necessarily hard for a new developer to work with. As long as the original developer adhered to certain standards, a new developer should have a much easier time figuring out the inner mechanics of the website.
In fact, even a WordPress site that has been deeply customized can be hard for other developers to work with, especially if the original developer used non-standard workarounds to make certain features work.
Time
Custom websites can often take longer to build than simpler ones. But the difference may be a matter of days or even hours. And custom websites don't necessarily take longer to build than highly customized WordPress sites. In some cases, it may take longer to customize a WordPress site for your unconventional needs than building a custom site specifically tailored to your needs.
Ability to manage the content yourself
The core benefit of WordPress is that it gives you the ability to manage the content yourself. But custom websites can provide you with that ability too. When I build a custom website, I will include a password-protected content management system that will allow you to add, edit and delete content on your website, usually with a cleaner interface than WordPress provides.
Security
Security is always a concern, no matter what platform you use to create your website. Are custom websites less secure than something like WordPress? Not necessarily. While there are always opportunities to unwittingly create security vulnerabilities, a good web developer will know where to look for holes and weak spots. Shoring up those weak spots from the beginning can result in a custom website that's even more secure than WordPress. Not only that, but as I mentioned above, a hacker would have to devote some extra time and labor to figuring out how to crack a custom website as opposed to a WordPress site.
Hackers are getting smarter, but so are web developers, and a lot of the old tricks that hackers used to use simply don't work as well any more.
What about Cost?
Going to a tailor is usually more expensive than buying clothes off the rack. But in the world of web development, a custom website is not necessarily more expensive than a WordPress site.
In some cases, making extensive customizations to a WordPress site can take more time and cost more money than creating a custom website tailored for your project's needs.
If you would like more information on getting a custom website up and running, send me a message.