Custom WordPress websites your team can edit

WordPress appeals to owners for a simple reason: the people who know the business can log in and change the website themselves. That freedom comes with a maintenance routine, and the routine is easier to plan for when you see it before launch. WordPress is one of three platforms in our website builds work.

Here we cover why businesses choose WordPress, what a custom theme means next to a marketplace theme, the upkeep WordPress's own documentation describes, how the block editor fits in, and who the platform suits.

Why businesses choose WordPress

The reasons tend to be practical. Staff can edit a page without calling anyone, a blog is part of the platform rather than an add-on, and plugins extend what the site can do. WordPress.org describes plugins as PHP scripts that extend the functionality of WordPress and says its directory holds thousands of them. A fictional HVAC company in Tennessee could add a booking tool in spring and a financing calculator in summer without rebuilding the site.

For businesses whose expertise changes often (new services, seasonal advice, staff who want to publish their own articles), that direct access keeps pages from going stale between projects.

A custom theme versus a marketplace theme

WordPress's theme handbook says a theme represents the design of a website and can control everything from colors to fonts to the entire layout, taking the content stored by WordPress and displaying it in the browser. A marketplace theme is built for thousands of buyers at once, so it ships with layouts and options meant for businesses that are not yours. A theme is not a website; it is the frame your content sits in. Our WordPress builds use a custom theme designed for the business, not a marketplace theme with tweaks, so the templates follow the pages your site actually needs rather than the demo the theme was sold with.

There is a maintenance reason as well. The handbook's page on child themes warns that code added directly to a parent theme disappears the next time that theme is updated, which is why child themes exist: they let a parent update without losing modifications. A heavily tweaked purchased theme carries that tension for as long as the site runs.

Plugins, updates and upkeep

WordPress.org is direct about the cost of flexibility. Its plugin documentation tells owners to keep plugins up to date, warns that a plugin not updated since the latest core release may be incompatible, and advises a current backup before updating. Its hardening guide adds that older versions of WordPress are not maintained with security updates, names outdated plugins among common attack routes, and says to delete any plugin you are not using.

Part of the routine runs itself. WordPress's administration handbook says automatic core updates are on by default for most sites: installations created on WordPress 5.6 or later update for both minor and major releases, while older installations keep their earlier setting (minor releases only) unless an administrator turns on major updates. Since WordPress 5.5, administrators can also opt in to automatic updates one plugin and one theme at a time. Everything else needs an owner. Put this to your team before launch: "If a plugin update breaks the contact form on a Friday, who notices, and who fixes it?" Write the answer down. How many plugins a site should carry is its own question, taken up in how many WordPress plugins is too many.

The block editor, and who WordPress fits

Following the release of WordPress 5.0 in December 2018, the block editor (also called the Gutenberg editor) became the default and replaced the classic editor. Blocks are the content elements, such as paragraphs, headings, and images, that you add to build a layout. On a custom build, the editor is where staff will spend far more time than anyone spends admiring the theme, so it deserves as much attention in planning as the design does.

WordPress fits a business with someone who will log in regularly: a fictional estate planning firm in Georgia whose attorneys want to publish their own articles, or a contractor posting project updates. Whoever writes, staff or us, should not have to invent what the business knows, and WordPress lets the person holding the facts publish them directly.

It fits poorly when nobody will own updates, when the site changes twice a year, or when the owner wants the lightest possible maintenance load. A Netlify build or a Squarespace site usually serves those owners better.