Beginning June 2018, we’re going to be offering a brand new, fully supported website service – WordPress Development! Yep, you heard me right WORDPRESS. Those who know us, know WordPress has never been our go-to content management system, “it’s a bloated blogging platform”, ”theme based”….
But really my 2 biggest problems were:
- Lack of design control (pixel perfect or I can’t sleep)
- Post launch management (“I added a plugin to my website, now my website has vanished! HELP!”)
So, design control – WordPress (WP) is mostly theme based, designing a ‘custom’ WP theme is difficult, making it disproportionally expensive. It’s also extremely dangerous (oh the drama!), but it’s true. Designing a custom WordPress theme is a specific skillset AND specific to whoever built it, which means you are going to be tied to that one developer/team, (there’s many, many ways to work with and build WP themes), no-one else will be able to take over as it’s nigh on impossible to reverse engineer (unless, of course you have a bottomless budget), it’s just not good business to place all you eggs in one basket (looking at you Adobe Catalyst). Ask any WP support team their worse case scenario, it’ll very likely be ‘the custom WordPress job’.
I’m a graphic designer people come to us for our ability to design stunning, custom websites. Not to simply implement a cookie cutter WP theme.
But something happened last month that changed everything. EVERYTHING.
Elementor 2.0. Theme Builder. This awesome WP plugin gives total control over the visual design and layout of popular WordPress themes. A ‘frontend’ design tool with real-time visual updating (and Nondestructive to boot), in WP, WOW! Elementor 1.0 has been around for a couple of years and we’ve been watching it grow, reading reviews, developer’s experiences and client feedback. Then we started hearing about a version 2, header and footer design, dynamic data, blank themes, page templates, theme building and more – it was all sounding rather immense… And boy did they deliver! When testing the public beta – I knew this was going to be a game changer for us.
So what makes Elementor so powerful:
- It’s a real-time frontend design tool for WP (again WOW!)
- It’s Nondestructive – ie you are not ‘tied in’ to the Plugin
- Its UI is beautiful, clean and powerful, making it really fun to use
- Clients can be locked out of the design (LOL, if need)
- A thriving community (over 3 million installs)
- Extremely lightweight
So, problem one solved, Yay! One more to go…
Post Launch Website Management & Maintenance…
Because of WP’s ‘plugin culture’ it’s super easy for a client to download a plugin and add it to their website – this is one of the great things about WP of course, but the downside is not all plugins play with other plugins, or certain themes, or widgets, or…. integrations are so deep it can break a site, literally take it down in an instant.
Also, because WP is so popular (about 25% of websites are powered by it), it’s vulnerable to viruses, malware, hacks – you name it. WP is open source meaning no-one owns it – if it gets hacked , it’s out of our (ED’s) control (and everybody else’s) until a fix is produced (normally pretty quickly to be fair). You need back-up plans for such emergencies.
So, site maintenance can get complicated quickly.
Introducing Brad Pinzur from Semantics Marketing. Brad is a true WordPress hero, he’s been working on and championing WP for over 10 years working as developer and programmer. He’s seen a thing or too, and I know he will be able to quickly assess a situation, take appropriate action and get things back up as quickly as possible, if needed.
It all sounds a bit frightening, right? But if WP is looked after right, kept up-to-date, then most WP installs work perfectly fine year to year, just look at the client list: Vogue, BBC America, WIRED, Sony Music, Beyonce, Walt Disney. I’m sure they wouldn’t use WP if it was really that vulnerable.
So Problem 2 solved! Now what?
Brad and I have worked together many times over the last 10 or so years, including the Chris Bosh project and on many WP projects, me as designer, Brad as the WP developer. We work well together and have been kicking ideas around for years. Well, at last the stars aligned…
Welcome to WordPress @ EasthallDesign!
We have set up a service wholly for WordPress development. If you want a website converted to WP or need a brand new website with deep CMS, SEO and CRM integration for your marketing department, then we can help (we also offer marketing services), or if you just want the latest WP news, power-tips on all things marketing, plugins, widgets, updates… then be sure to visit our blog.
Visit Our New WordPress Services Overview Page
Of course, here at Easthall Design its business as usual, we design custom, award winning websites, period, whether it’s in WordPress or not. It’s just another option that we offer to our customers “WordPress Development”. There I said it!
