There are a host of website builders out there which claim to offer the best value and convenience. So why do so many web designers still use WordPress?
Websites are HARD. They are hard to build, hard to maintain, and hard to troubleshoot. Believe me, I know, because I have done all of that! If you are not really committed to learning how they work – and how everything interacts – they can be truly intimidating.
Hosted website builders
Enter hosted website builders – think Squarespace, Shopify, Wix. For beginners, they seem to take away so many of those intimidating problems – and they have customer service for when it all goes wrong.
So pretty…
These sites also just look so good! The examples always look so fun and professional, and they claim to be super-easy to use. People look at the examples and think “oh I can do that!”.
…but not so easy
Unfortunately, making an attractive site is nowhere near as easy as it looks. There are SO many variables that people just don’t take into account.
Do you know how to source and edit photographs? Because you’ll need to. Getting a website to run smoothly and load quickly means optimising images, and if you’re lost already, well that’s just the start.
Know about colour theory? You’d better learn, because using the wrong colour combinations can make a site look unprofessional.
And getting in touch with customer service if something goes wrong? I probably don’t need to explain how much fun THAT can be when you are dealing with a huge corporate.
Getting to know how the user interface of a website builder works is not that easy either, and if you don’t have the time to put into it, getting it all just right can go on the back burner for a long time. Then you’re stuck without a site – or an under optimised one – while still paying for a service.
A small side track about hosting
Every website needs many different things to function, with the most visible being the web address (URL).
The other big thing – and arguably the most important – is a web host.
You can think of the URL as a mailing address – it tells you where something is located, so you can find it on a map (or with a search engine).
The host is the plot of land the address refers to, and the website is the house that sits on the land. The host – like the land – is very, very important. And if it goes wrong (think of erosion, flooding, earthquakes in our land example), that house is going to topple over fast. With website builders, your website files and your web host are inextricably linked. You cannot separate them. So if the host falls over, it takes your site with it. And most importantly with website builders you cannot change hosts without completely rebuilding your website. Not to mention the extra issues if you have also registered the domain with the web building site.
Hosting WordPress sites
You can think of WordPress sites as host agnostic.
What this means is that if a deal-breaker issue occurs with your current host, you can take your whole website and put it somewhere else.
Here’s an example.
You’ve built your beautiful site using a hosted website builder. And it is fantastic! But six months down the track, your host decides to fire half of their customer service staff (this happens a lot more than you’d think). Something goes wrong, but it’s hard to talk to a human about it because there are no phone numbers and chat is always closed. It starts to impact your website. And after a while it gets too much, and you decide to move.
But you can’t …
…at least not with the site you currently have. Because websites created with website builders on subscription-based sites cannot be moved. They are built on proprietary closed-source software, and to keep your site live you are locked into subscribing to that one service forever. So if you want a different host, you have to rebuild everything from scratch.
What is WordPress?
Which brings us to WordPress.
First, a quick explainer. WordPress is an open source publishing platform. This means that – unlike subscription-based website builders – it is completely transportable. Web designers and developers can download WordPress, build a website on their computers, and upload that site to any host they like. Your website is not dependent on one company remaining in trade to stay viable. If your web host becomes unreliable, or fires half its customer services staff, or raises its fees, you can move your website. The whole site! Everything! That includes all your customers and all your products (should you have them).
There’s another reason that over 50% of ALL websites – 800 million – use WordPress
It’s not just the transportability. WordPress has an almost unfathomably large user base, and they are active and supportive. So if you encounter an issue with a WordPress site, you don’t have to sit in a customer service queue for hours – you can jump online and find solutions fast from my fellow users.
Make bad hosts a thing of the past
And if all else fails, and you realise it is the host that is causing the issue, you can get in touch with them. Most of the time that’s all it takes. But sometimes hosts can become unreliable too, and you need to change.
No problem – with a caveat
I have changed hosts in the past when the original host became unreliable. In fact, I changed over an entire suite of company websites from one host to another. And sure it takes a little time, but it is nothing compared to rebuilding entire sites from scratch. And the best thing? Usually there is little to no downtime. Now about that caveat…
Sometimes successfully moving host is reliant on having an up-to-date copy of the full site available, so it is vital to have your site backed up somewhere safe. But that’s another blog for another day. Suffice it to say, when I build a site, I ensure it has safe, reliable, third-party back-ups.
Whatever option you choose, hire a professional
Your time is valuable and spending it struggling to create a website is probably not the best use of it. You wouldn’t expect someone else to know how to do your speciality – or learn from scratch for one project – so it’s best not to approach websites that way. So whether you choose to use a service like Squarespace or not, it’s probably going to cost you less in time and resources to just hire a pro.
