Alongside Squarespace (read more about that here) I also work with WordPress. My philosophy is that there’s always a choice at the back-end of the website as well as the front for the users.

Your website is a powerful marketing tool – so much business is now conducted online, and being found through search engines or on social media is vital for most businesses of any size today.

Do you remember the Yellow Pages, back before the web? There used to be competitions to tear the pages apart as they were so big. Now, certainly in Cambridge, it’s almost the same size as a magazine and Molly would be able to rip it apart in seconds. Proof, if any were needed, of how important it is to have a good presence online.

Without digressing too much, what’s the difference between Squarespace and WordPress? Squarespace a hosted website builder, which already includes templates, automatic updates, e-commerce and hosting. WordPress is open source, flexible and scalable. It's a good choice for larger websites that require specific features like multiple languages. Which one is better? Well, that’s largely down to what you prefer to use and what your website and business aims are. Both have good and bad points - you’ll find plenty of (heated!) opinions on the internet. I’m happy to show you behind the scenes on both if you’ve booked me, but you’re not completely certain.

I’m assuming that you’re here to learn about how I build a WordPress website. So here’s a brief summary:

Learning about you

Armed with tea, we’ll chat either in person if you’re close by or via Zoom if circumstances mean that’s necessary. We’ll do this so that I can find out about you, what you want from your site and the project. The aim is that you talk and I’ll scribble down lots of things.

Proposal

From here, I’ll have a good idea of what you’re aiming to do so I can pop together some prices for you, if it doesn’t fit in with the website packagers offered here already. Then I’ll load this into my CRM, Dubsado so you can review the cost and sign my contract.

Planning

Then we’ll plan it out. If it’s a current website to review, I’ll site map it out and send this to you. We may find pages that we didn’t know about, ways to bring content together that reduces the user journey. If it’s a new site, the plan will be around organisation through a new site map, how calls to action will work and then working out where the photos, videos, testimonials will go. We can also look at extra plug-ins to aid the user.

Creative

I start designing. You can suggest themes if you like or I can select one for you based on the site map. At this stage, we’ll incorporate branding in the form of fonts and colours so it’s great if you have a brand in place. If not, I can help you with this - you can find out more here. Building the site goes hand in hand with design, as the site becomes real. You’ll get a link to the site to check progress.

Go live

When everything is sorted out and the last tweaks made, it’s time to load the new site to your domain and start sharing.

Handover

I’ll also handover the site too, if there are any issues that come to light, then I’m around to support you and have suppliers who provide more extensive WordPress support.

Summary

WordPress is a great platform to chose if you’d like a little more flex and you’re happy to invest in the security and updates that are required to maintain a great online presence.