At Webstruxure, we work with different content management platforms depending on the size and scale of the project. For small websites that don’t need a custom-built CMS, we use WordPress.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is the most popular open source content management system – over 25% of the web runs on WordPress, from brand-new bloggers to corporate giants (for example CNN, TIME Magazine and Dow Jones). It’s easy-to-use and intuitive, but that doesn’t mean it’s basic.
WordPress supports integration with hundreds of different ‘plugins’, from email marketing and customer management platforms, to payment systems and more. It’s highly customisable and flexible – anything you need can be achieved with WordPress.
We use WordPress because it enables us to reduce the time it takes to create a new website, meaning we can reduce the cost to our clients.
Best of all, because it’s open source (crowd-sourced software, enabling anyone to use and modify the source code), WordPress is always at the forefront of technology and is highly supported, fast and secure.
Hosting, Site Maintenance and Support
For Webstruxure to do a good job maintaining your website there are a few things we like to implement to ensure your website is as fast, stable and secure as it can be, which all contributes greatly to a successful website:
Hosting server
Our website hosting server is custom built for the running of fast, stable WordPress websites. The special configuration enables us to make Google Page Speed improvements easily, which is vital for a fast website Google will love.
WordPress updates
We make sure your website has the latest version of WordPress installed. This is especially important when updating due to security vulnerabilities than could compromise the day to day running of your business. The updating of WordPress core and plugins requires understanding of what will be changed so your website doesn’t break from it. This can involve testing the updates on a test version of your website before applying to the live version. In short the upmost care is taken to make updates flawless.
Themes and Plugins
Themes
A well built theme is important to ensure your website is responsive and works well among the latest versions of each major browser. If your website is hard to use this will impact sales and/or leads. We will select the best theme for your website, based on a great user experience, optimising for search engines and your individual requirements for features and functionality.
WordPress Plugins
When you build a WordPress site there are all sorts of plugins you can use to deliver functionality and help manage your site and keep it secure. Some are better than others.
Here’s a few of the best of breed plugins that we use on our WordPress hosting and why:
BackupBuddy
Used by all of our WordPress clients, Backup Buddy allows us to quickly and easily keep frequent backups of your website in case the worst happens. The biggest advantage of this is this that at a flick of a switch we can roll back to a previous version of your website in case it gets hacked.
iThemes Security
Eliminating loopholes is important to ensure hackers have little option when trying to break into your website. While nothing is 100% secure, iThemes Security employs advanced tactics to make it as hard as possible for your site to suffer from a successful attack.
Advanced Custom Fields
ACF is a staple when adding extra fields or visual layouts to a website. For example a ‘Meet the Team’ section that requires each member to have their own page.
Image optimiser
One of the biggest issues with website speed is the file size of images. An image optimiser plugin takes care of images seamlessly so you can be assured your images are loading as fast as they possibly can.
WP Rocket
Caching, file compression and image loading are just some of the features that WP Rocket does to speed up your website. We’ve found this plugin solves many of Google’s PageSpeed Insight requirements.
Yoast SEO
While not essential to complete SEO tasks, Yoast takes care of basic tasks without the need to write one line of code. When SEO is undertaken on your website it’s likely the HTML will need attention. Yoast minimises the need to do that, resulting in lower SEO costs while doing the tasks much faster as well.
Ninja Forms
Forms are complex, especially when you use them to sell products. Ninja forms is a best-of-breed plugin that provides a large amount of the functionality required by demanding forms. For example, a purchase form that needs to be connected to a 3rd party service to process bank transactions.
Additional functionality
We use the most well-known, well used and stable plugins to extend the value of your website. Additional functionality happens by selecting a suitable plugin that does that job you need it to do.