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Why a WordPress Website Is So Much Better Than a Hard-Coded One

Why a WordPress Website Is So Much Better Than a Hard-Coded One - Featured image

For those outside of the web industry, you may have no idea what WordPress is. You may not even know what a CMS is. But here at Greenlight Web, it is our bread and butter. WordPress, our speciality CMS platform of choice, provides the backbone of our professional website services to clients up and down the country.

There are many different places where you could begin when designing a website. But most fundamental of all is the basis on which you start. You could start by taking a design and attempting to code the site by hand. Alternatively, you could utilise the power of leverage and consider using a Content Management System (CMS).

WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world at the time of writing. It powers over 40% of all websites on the internet. Essentially, a CMS like WordPress helps to provide functionality, features, and style in a fraction of the time it takes to create by hand.

Improved Security

The power of community helps to make WordPress the most popular way to create a website in the modern day. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of developers around the world that help contribute to the open-source CMS.

When a new security threat is identified, the WordPress team can release an update in a matter of minutes. Ever since May 2003 when WordPress was first released, a growing team has been evolving the platform to always be one step ahead. The open-source nature, and how websites can add functionality so easily to their websites makes WordPress a step ahead of a custom, handmade website where something as minor as the incorrect file permissions could have devastating effects in the hands of a malicious hacker.

Cyber security

Flexibility to Make Your Own Website Changes

Making a change to a website, shouldn’t be kept for the exclusive web designer that charges an extortionate amount per hour for a simple change. With a bespoke website, you will find this is often the case.

When your website is powered by WordPress and supported by Greenlight Web, we can provide guidance, documentation, and training on how to make changes yourself. WordPress, the open-source environment, is widely regarded as the best in the online space. There are plenty of educational materials and training available online to upskill and learn to make website changes yourself.

Define Permissions with User Accounts

With a platform like WordPress, user permissions can be granted and tailored to your needs. Often with Greenlight Web customers, we give full reign responsibility to our clients. They can choose to be an administrator of their website if they want, or only to allow themselves to create blog post content. There is so much flexibility with WordPress, that making a change to your website is as simple as making a change in a Word document.

On a hard-coded website, this would simply be impossible. One small mistake could take out your entire website, whereas a small mistake on our websites, could easily be rolled back with the support from our expert team.

Create Professional, Bespoke Designs with Themes

The developers of WordPress do not stop at its open-source backbone. While the Automatic team work on the backbone, there is a community of web designers who build themes. Such themes are different ways of having your website displayed. Such themes don’t apply a copy/paste job (you’d have seen this online by now if this was the case!). but provide you with some basic building blocks to get the professional design you seek.

At Greenlight Web, we have in-house web designers who help to create professional web designs for our clients. Have a look at some examples of our work.

A Boost to Functionality With a Plugin Store

Much like how there is a community of web designers creating themes, there too is a community of plugin developers who are always adding new, exciting functionality.

Your imagination is your limit when it comes to what functionality a WordPress website could do for your business. Anything from e-commerce, SEO, creating your own forums or stopping spam – the plugins directory of WordPress has your back.

Such features aren’t feasible in a hard-coded website. You’ll need to spend extortionate amounts of money on your developer to create such tools, and then the effectiveness must be questioned also. Not to mention the amount of time it would take to put such functionality live. With WordPress, these features are just a search away. Plugins are regularly kept up to date to optimise for speed, reliability, and security. All are displayed in an app store-like environment where you can see the number of people who use the plugins and what their reviews are.

WordPress plugins

A Website That Works on Mobile and Across All Devices

responsive website essentially means that it works on any device. No matter the screen size, a website should work and look as you’d expect. Google has put a great emphasis on this over the last few years as the world of online search has gone from desktop-dominant to mobile.

It is simple to optimise a WordPress website for different devices because its framework operates with this in mind. The themes developed and the custom elements that are offered by plugins often work seamlessly with mobile, tablet or desktop devices.

This isn’t the case with a hard-coded website. Often, the developer will have to create two different versions of a website, one for desktop and one for mobile, if they remember to do so. Otherwise, your website visitors will take one look at your website while on their commute, and swipe straight back off it again. Google will be the same and punish you by not ranking highly in the search results.

A Timely, Cost-Efficient and Professional Website

Often mentioned is the time it takes to create a hard-coded website design. The functionality, design and features mentioned above will take so many more man-hours to create, rather than using the tools that are already available.

Therefore, a WordPress solution will be economical and provide you with the professional, timely website that your business needs.

Speak to Greenlight Web to Learn More

If your company is ready to modernise its website, feel free to get in touch. A member of our team is always happy to help and discuss what Greenlight Web can do for yo