Ever since we started building websites in 2006 we’ve looked for the most efficient, elegant solutions—not just for end-result, but also for working effectively with clients and finding budget-friendly ways to get the most out of every project.

There are many, many reasons to choose to build your website on WordPress. We’ve developed on a lot of platforms over the years, from hand coded sites to Drupal to CraftCMS. We’ve committed to honing our craft using WordPress, let’s look at why.

1. Easy Site Editing

This is why we got into WordPress in the beginning. All clients want to edit their own sites. This used to be an expensive add-on but is now an absolute basic to every modern web project. It’s so basic that it’s built into the fabric of all websites now—at no additional cost.

The old model was that clients had to pay their developer to make every small change. Now that has vanished—and we’re so thankful! We want to build creative sites and help you with initiatives, not charge you for adding a field to a contact form. There will still be some sections of your website that you will need a developer to handle for you. Generally, these are changes to the theme and won’t need to be changed very often. There will still be areas that you may need to be careful with, like top-level navigation.

We will meet a few clients that don’t have the time or inclination to edit their own content. We still love WordPress for their sites. Even though we can write code backwards and forwards we prefer to make content edits in WordPress. That’s why even our own website is built on WordPress.

You can even hire a freelancer to make your edits. With WordPress’s login security you can invite people to work on your site without handing over the keys to the kingdom.

If you have used WordPress in the past, but haven’t had a chance to work with the newer Gutenberg Editor you will be amazed at how much easier and how much fun it is to use. The unparalleled consistency and easy of use is now built directly into updated WordPress themes. 

2. Non-Proprietary

You’ll notice in the last section we mentioned needing a developer to handle certain things. We didn’t say it had to be us—and this is important to a client. We always hope that you’ll come to us with your site needs—this one and the next. We also understand that any of us may choose to work with someone else for a variety of reasons. Once we build a site for you it’s yours. You own it. With WordPress, you aren’t tied to some proprietary platform with annual fees.

You can throw a rock and hit a WordPress developer. It is a popular, well-understood system and you can find people to work on it at a variety of levels of expertise and hourly rates.

3. Free To Install / Free Functionality via Plugins

There is always a point where we are talking through WordPress and all the wonderful things that it does where we can see the question forming, “great, but what does it cost?”. It’s free. We’re not joking—the entire base install of WordPress is free.

And then, staying on the free train, you can get a plugin to solve any number of problems and many of those are free as well.

To give you an example of how profound this is if you asked us ten years ago to build an online forum we’d be looking at $12,000 and 2 months of work. We could hand that to you, today, for free in about 30 minutes.

We love it when clients don’t have to pay for all the fiddly bits and can put their money into something more interesting.

4. Custom Plugin Development

There are thousands of plugins—these are bundles of code that add a specific functionality—available for free. But what if you can’t find the exact thing that does what you want? Or it almost does what you want but it doesn’t fit the design of the site? That’s where our hardcore development backgrounds come in.

We’ve developed many custom plugins for clients to solve a specific problem. The ability to define and understand an idea and build something that is easy to use is one of the ways that set us apart from other WordPress developers.

5. Good For Little Sites And Big Sites

There are very few solutions that will be as applicable to a local craftsperson and a global mining company. But, you guessed it, WordPress is the solution for both of these clients.

The system is flexible enough to not be overkill for a small site but scales enough to hold hundreds of pages and a lot of custom functionality. So many of these systems are bloated for a small site while others cut out at the high end. When you use a solid platform and then can add infinite functionality you really have something.

This can be an especially great solution for a site that is going through a growth cycle, which leads me to our next point…

6. Easy to Maintain

WordPress separates your content, your theme (the design and functionality), plugins, and security. This makes it easy to continue to keep the site up to date.

We can design new areas, improve the user experience of existing areas, or improve key metrics without touching the entire site. This helps you grow a site with your business.

7. Themes

There are hundreds of WordPress Themes out there. Some are free and some have a nominal fee. Even though we are a design firm as well as a development firm—when a budget or timeline won’t allow for custom design, a stock theme is the answer. We work with clients to customize a theme that often produces a result that is nothing like it’s base install.

A theme is more than the design though—it’s also a set of functionality. With this in mind we’ve begun to develop a set of Themes that we own—because we know they look great and function well. 

8. Custom Design

Most of our projects are custom designs. WordPress has the flexibility, and we have the experience, to design and build the perfect solution for each client.

There is absolutely ZERO impact on what we can design when we are building on WordPress—and don’t let anyone tell you anything differently. Yes, if you go with a purchased theme you will be limited to what that theme does, but if you design it from scratch the sky (and time and budget) is the limit.

9. Great SEO

Great search engine optimization (SEO), period. When we first started building websites we had a 150 point SEO/build checklist we followed—WordPress solved 80% of the issues on that list. While we still have a launch list, it’s considerably shorter (again, this means clients aren’t paying for the fiddly bits).

10. Better Security

If your business has an online presence, you need to be serious about online security. Active updates from a large WordPress community make for secure websites.

Having multiple clients on WordPress means if there is ever a security concern we can address it proactively for everyone. We often make upgrades and catch security flaws for one client and then apply those fixes for all managed hosting clients. You let us worry about your site—you go do what you are good at.

Do you want to work with us on a web project? Let’s talk. 

You may also be interested in our resource: What Exactly is Web Security and Why Do I Need It