WordPress Web Development Maintenance & Support Services

Here’s what leaders and managers should know about the WordPress web development process.

Why Choose WordPress

There are thousands of creative ways to build a WordPress website. It’s a versatile, data-driven asset that serves as the business’s digital storefront. With so many different platforms, software, funnels, and data-collection possibilities, why focus on WordPress? It comes down to microeconomics. Specialization allows me to be a productive and economically valuable partner. WordPress supports a wide range of technology and integrations, making it a versatile tool for data analysis.

WordPress is the Global Leader

Statistics on this page come from w3techs.com (2024) and kinsta.com (2024).

Squarespace

2.1%

All Websites

WordPress

43.3%

All Websites

Wix

2.6%

All Websites

*Small platforms like Joomla are used with less than 2% of online websites.

8 BIG Reasons To Use WordPress

WordPress powers more than 43% of the web

According to W3Techs, WordPress is the most powerful, versatile, and functional content management systems in the market.

It’s open-source software

Pros of open-source software include low cost, reliability, security, flexibility, and longevity. Cons include the cost for regular maintenance and support. It’s also difficult for non-tech-savvy users to learn.

The CMS is SEO friendly

WordPress is written with standard compliance code and produces semantic markup. Search engines find these sites easier to crawl and index, more so than other platforms or sites.

It’s easy to customize

WordPress is easy to customize thanks to its user-friendly interface and extensive library of themes and plugins, allowing effortless personalization without advanced technical skills or user training.

The platform is secure and safe

Security certificates and standard measures are still necessary; however, WordPress is designed and written to thwart attackers and hackers.

Various media type compatibility

Brochure sites, huge shopping carts, membership sites, podcasts, video blogs, eLearning sites — every industry can benefit from a WordPress website that’s accessible on all devices and browsers.

Constant development

There is continual widget and plugin development throughout the WordPress community. This makes web development a faster, smarter, and easier process.

It integrates well with other online systems

Like accounting software, sales systems, and customer relationship management services. Connect to thousands of apps using Zapier.

The Difference Between Web Development And Design

Many people use the terms web design and web development interchangeably, but they are vastly different. One determines the look and feel, and the other brings it alive with code and best practices in CMS web development.

Web Design

This service includes determines how a website should look and feel. Generally provided in a visual design. Popular web design applications include Adobe XD, Figma and Webflow.

Learn more

Web Development

This service takes the approved web design and develops it in WordPress using code to make it live for public consumption.

About the Web Developer

css code development on a computer monitor

How to Choose?
Web Designer vs. Web Developer

Learn the Differences

Web Speed Factors

According to Google, speed is a significant ranking factor for websites. Google made it their mission to fix the problem of poorly-designed websites by “de-emphasizing” slow websites. While there are many issues that could make a website slow down, there are 3 primary contributors to a website’s loading speed:

The page builder and how the site is built with it
The number and type of plugins used
The quality of the website and domain hosts

Some WordPress themes are clunky and poorly developed. I use the Hello theme for its lean, customizable design and speed; however, I’m flexible in other WordPress themes as well. In WordPress web development, one should be cautious about using templates and plugins, as they can get bulky and create bloat in the database. Templates should be used as a guide to help build a leaner, faster, better-performing version in WordPress. Page builders play a big role in the website’s speed. Gutenberg and Oxygen are lightweight visual builders that work best for speed performance. Finally, hosting is an important factor in speed as well. A cheap, shared host will be slow, especially if the website has a lot of videos, images, or high traffic.

WARNING: Here Are A Few WordPress Themes & Plugins That Will Cripple Your Speed And Ranking!

Avada

Website Hosting

How does hosting work for or against the website speed?

In browsing, users are accessing files from a remote server and making a request for information from your website, which has that information on the remote server.

The time it takes for your web page to load depends on the user’s computer speed, and the speed of your web hosting servers. Web hosts execute thousands of different pieces of code to display a single page, so their space and ability to do that matters.

My partner and I prefer to use the following software for domain and website hosting:

Hostway for domains
Siteground for low traffic sites
WPEngine for high traffic sites

Maintenance Helps Optimize Web Speed

The WordPress database is tasked with storing pages, posts, users, settings, and more; it also stores information for media files like images, videos, and other uploades. That puts pressure on the server because it needs to search multiple database tables and accommodate memory-intensive programs. That’s why WordPress web development best practices matter.

Managing and maintaining the WordPress database is time-consuming. Tasks add up and cause expensive problems if ignored. A website is like a vehicle. It has an engine, gears, framework, body, tires, and all kinds of features that require maintenance and support.

WordPress
Maintenance Tasks

Backups & data health checks

Good practice is to check monthly for any file corruptions that could make retrieving information difficult or messy.

WordPress core updates

WordPress is updated frequently to fix bugs. A webmaster makes this happen without interruption to the site.

Updating & managing plugins

Plugins are codes in motion. Managing them is critical to its compatibility and functionality.

Cache clearing

Every site needs to get rid of bloat from caching data. For optimum health, this task is performed monthly.

Optimize database

The website gets cluttered over time. Monthly and quarterly schedules keep websites healthy.

SEO content updates

Content is king. There are regular and constant needs for improvement and adaptation to the market.

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Project Planning & Implementation

Discovery

Each web development project comes with its own deliverables, but everything starts with discovery or requirements, including:

The website purpose

Web hosting review

Design file approval

Planning

Planning is for defining deliverables and milestones of the web development project and WordPress site. This phase is also used to establish project management rules and expectations, estimated costs, security, and web hosting considerations.

Analysis

Once the web development plan is approved, the analysis stage includes a mockup, wireframe, or other visual aid to demonstrate how the WordPress site should look and feel.

Design

The design phase is the branding, format, and layout process that was approved in the Analysis phase. This usually includes wire-framing and flow-charting to prepare for development. This phase defines the website architecture in a live staging environment.

Development

Development is the phase most people think about when they consider a WordPress web development project. This is the labor of producing the system using documentation from the Analysis and Design phases to make it into a working, functional WordPress website.

Testing

Testing requires some planning and is done on a small-scale throughout web development; however, this phase has a few more testing steps after the WordPress website is complete. Each project will have its own training process, but all require testing by a few users first.

Maintenance

As discussed in the maintenance section above, regular care of your WordPress website is vital to the health, function, and profitability of your website. This is a separate, standalone service.

Mobile-First Web Design

Trends and data predict that nearly three-quarters of people worldwide will access the internet via their smartphone by 2025. Back in 2010, then-CEO of Google told the world they’d be shifting attention to mobile users. They’ve been true to their word, and rankings now rely heavily on the mobile friendliness of your website.

Building a responsive website with a mobile-first approach means starting with the smallest screen—mobile phones—and designing the pages for those users first. Then, the design is adapted for bigger screens, adjusting elements and materials to meet the needs of those screen users.

This process includes all the same steps of making a desktop site responsive, including:

adjusting font sizes

navigation changes

elimination of white space

optimization of images and text

buttons and integration

all elements to need to go from a big screen to small one

Now, mobile-first web development means starting the project lifecycle in a mobile environment, and then adjusting larger screens accordingly.

Organizations need to meet users where they are to stay competitive. WordPress is at the forefront of mobile web development because of its dynamic versatility in features, compliance, and functionality.