Why we love WordPress
When we started building websites back in 1999, WordPress was four years away from being released. With that said, the benefits of a user-friendly content management system (‘CMS’) were already clear to us; allowing customers to edit their own content meant their website remained fresh, up-to-date and relevant, and gives visitors a reason to keep coming back.
But without the birth of what has become the leading CMS1, like most agencies, Granite 5 built our own, entitled e-Genius.
Granite 5 has now retired our own e-Genius platform in favour of WordPress.
Let’s explore the main reasons why we love WordPress…
WordPress has a user-friendly interface
WordPress’ intuitive user interface allows users of all experiences to keep content fresh and up-to-date. It’s instinctive to use — if you can use word processor software, you can create and edit content in WordPress.
We build websites by extending WordPress’ user-interface to give you to the tools to mange your website — not any website, so your changes always fit your brand, and your site retains its professional aesthetic.
Our teams design and then build individual modules, which an be added, removed and reordered to build up individual pages. This allows our customers to build great-looking pages quickly and easily, while being confident that the end result will be on-brand and in-keeping with the rest of the site. When using our modules, it’s hard to make a page look bad!
A wide-ranging plugin library
Plugins are like apps on your phone. They add features and functionality to WordPress, without extensive development work.
WordPress has a wide-ranging plugin library of almost 60,000 plugins to extend WordPress’ functionality2. This is a quick way to add features without having to re-build them from scratch each time, making best use of our customers’ budgets.
WordPress plugins also mean specialist functionality is built and maintained by experts in a given area. For example, if we need to connect to your payment gateway to take payments, an off-the-shelf plugin will handle that. That plugin will be developed and maintained by a team who know the payment gateway like the back of their hands and, though WordPress’ updates processes, keeps itself communicating with the payment gateway, even when the payment processor makes changes.
WordPress has a strong community
Some clients have specifically requested a WordPress-based solution as there is reassurance in knowing it’s the most popular CMS, powering over 43% of all websites1. Although such statistics are difficult to measure, it is believed that around 63% of all CMS-driven websites, are built on WordPress1.
This community allows for shared problem-solving across the industry3 — if we run into a problem, chances are, somebody else has too.
Of course, using such a well-known system means its flaws are also well-known, however WordPress is constantly maintained, and our support and maintenance programme keeps on top of those.
Regular updates and security patches
The WordPress core is regularly updated to improve functionality, fix bugs, and address security issues4. Additionally, there are security plugins and best practices to help keep your website secure.
Granite 5 has a strict policy which ensures we only hosts sites we’ve built, unless we have audited the site to confirm it meets our standards. We also only host sites which have a support and maintenance contract with us. This ensures that all websites on our cost-affective shared hosting environments are secure, minimising the risk to each other.
In summary
Granite 5, used to build their own content management system (CMS) called e-Genius. However, we switched to WordPress for several reasons. Firstly, WordPress has a user-friendly interface that allows clients to easily update their website content themselves, similar to using a word processor. Secondly, WordPress offers a vast library of plugins, which are essentially apps that add features and functionalities to the website without extensive development work. This saves both time and money for the client.
Furthermore, WordPress benefits from a large and active community. This means that if we run into any problems, there’s a high chance someone else has already encountered and solved it. Additionally, WordPress receives regular updates to improve functionality, fix bugs, and address security issues. We also has a strict policy to ensure all websites they host are secure.
Hear about David, our Head of Technical
David is a Cotonoodle-owning, gym and coffee addict, who has also racked up 20 years’ development and project management experience and a Computing Science degree from the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
His dog, Monty, was a very popular and regular visitor to meetings, and thoroughly enjoys all the attention he gets.
David has a background of working with charity clients, and so has experience with working to W3C WAI accessibility guidelines, as well as large data processing and integration between systems though APIs.
