Why WordPress
For a business that publishes news, events, fixtures or updates, WordPress is hard to beat. Your team probably already knows the editor, there is help everywhere, and you are never tied to one developer. Most of the football clubs we work with, including Forfar Athletic and Arbroath FC, run on WordPress because they post several times a week.
How we build it
- A lean theme designed for your site, rather than a do-everything theme with a hundred options you will never use.
- Few plugins, chosen carefully. Every plugin is code someone has to keep updated. We use well-maintained ones and remove what is not doing a job.
- Editing that is hard to break. Content blocks set up for the things you post, so a news story or a fixture looks right without fiddling.
- Proper email. Forms and notifications are sent through a dedicated delivery service rather than the web server, so they arrive instead of landing in spam.
- Training for whoever will run the site day to day, plus a short written guide.
Rescuing a WordPress site
We are often asked to look at WordPress sites that have been left alone for a few years. The usual story: plugins out of date, a theme nobody can edit, a slow host, and sometimes a security problem that has gone unnoticed. Our first step is a check of the whole site, then a plan in plain English. Sometimes that is a tidy-up and a move onto our managed hosting. Sometimes a redesign is the better use of the money, and we will say so.
Updates are not optional. WordPress core, themes and plugins all release security fixes. On our care plans those updates are applied for you and checked afterwards.
WooCommerce
If you want to sell online, WordPress with WooCommerce is often the natural next step. See online shops.