I’m going to go out on a limb here, and admit something to you. Last week, while building a website for a client in WordPress (through the use of a template) I found myself stumped.
Like, completely, and utterly stumped.
I couldn’t figure this one thing out! That’s crazy right? I’m a web designer, shouldn’t I know it all with the click of a button? I wish.
An important thing to understand about WordPress, is that it is Open Source.
What does that mean? Open Source means a lot of developers develop stuff for WordPress, from templates, to plug-ins, to widgets. Not all developers think alike, so what may seem intuitive and logical to one developer, may seem (bleep) backwards to another. Hence, my frustration last week. On another note regarding templates, plug-ins, and widgets, they are not all created equal. By any means! There are a lot of amateurs out there developing these “tools” for your WordPress website, so if you use something that wasn’t built properly, don’t expect it to work. Expect it to be broken. Anyway, I digress.
After multiple attempts trying to make the “image slider” work on this website, I finally asked the super Guru of our company, Craig, to have a look at it. He looked at it, tried some things, pushed a bunch of buttons, raised his hands in disbelief a few times, hemmed and hawed, and actually got to the point where he said, “Yeah, I have no idea.” What?! How can two extremely knowledgeable people get stuck? If we can’t do it, how can the novices be expected to?
Clearly we eventually figured it out, but it took much longer than expected, and actually put me over on my estimated time for the project. It was frustrating. It got me to thinking about the question we get asked often as web developers:
“What about WordPress, or SquareSpace, or GoDaddy… those all market that I can build my own website, why don’t I just do it myself?”
Yes, they market it that way, but like with anything in life, you’ll probably get about 75% of the way through it, and find yourself stuck, frustrated, and at a complete loss. What good is something at 75% anyway? To that point, what good is it as 85% even 95%? Isn’t the goal to get it to where you are 100% happy?
That is why you hire a professional web developer.
We have the expertise to build your website much faster than you ever could, and there will be times you get stuck, I guarantee it. Even WE get stuck, but we have the knowledge and years of experience to troubleshoot and figure it out, where you never could. Some things in web design are just weird, and you have to have the background in it to eventually find the solution.
So, could you build your own WordPress website? Sure.
You will get started, and you will get far, you will even be proud of yourself for how far you get. But after hours of trying lots of different things, Google-ing all sorts of how-tos, and fighting the urge to kick and punch your computer, you will get to the point where you need help.
We have the experience, the knowledge, and have lived the weird nuances many time over, to get your website done at 100%. Save yourself the frustration.
Hire a professional to build your website.
Once it’s built, we’ll hand it over to you to manage, in fact, we WANT you to manage your own website. It is important to know how to login, make edits, and be in control. We even offer training, if you want to take some notes from the Gurus.
