Wordpress or custom built website?
-
Hello fellow mozzers,
Hope you are all well.
I am looking to get a website done and I am struggling to decide whether to get a custom build website site done or a website built on the WordPress platform.
Would you be able to share your experiences and advice/suggestions on what you would use, and why? (pros and cons, etc.)
Thanks in advance.
Kind Regards
-
Hey, I like Drupal, but I tend to use it as a base for much heavier bespoke projects rather than as a starting point for something small like a personal blog.
Each to their own I guess.
-
Personally, I would hop on Drupal. Although the learning curve is much steeper, once you get the hang of it you will have much better insight into a much greater expanse of web development (CSS, design, server-level stuff, etc.)
Although in the short run, such a transition can be very frustrating, it is an easily adaptable platform and looks like it's going to remain a top choice amongst devs for some time.
Not to mention, there's lots of great SEO opportunities if you set it up correctly!
-
That's probably the case Jazy.
Also, it may be the designer is just upselling to the other business in order to get more work as I have seen this done before.
-
Thank you so much for both your quick responses, they are great
WordPress is a lot quicker to set up, and has all the functions that we need. Plus millions of plugins that will be extremely helpful, not to mention the quote for a WordPress site we got was about £2000 cheaper!
The only worry I had was that the guy who gave us a quote for the custom build was building a website for a similar company to ours and they were moving away from WordPress. But I guess every website is different and they must need functionality that WordPress can't offer.
-
Hey Jazy
As Daniel points out, this really depends on what you want from a site. If you are looking to put out regular content and share your knowledge and experience via a blog and have a few service type pages then WordPress is ideal.
If you want a solid SEO platform then WordPress + the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin is pretty damn good (with some savvy configuration).
**Pro's of WordPress **
- Free
- Good for SEO
- Loads of free and premium plugins and themes
- Turnkey solution that can be up in no time
- lots of great backup and security plugins (wordfence and vaultpress for starters)
Cons of wordpress
- It is what it is so if that is not what you want then... you need a bespoke site
Pros of Bespoke
- You can have exactly what you want
Con's of bespoke
- Price
- maintenance
- adding new functionality can be costly
Ultimately, we always look to see if there is a reason not to use WordPress for a project and in most cases it is a perfect solution. This is especially true if you are looking to do a lot of blogging or set up a personal brand as it is just such a strong, scalable and flexible tool that has a low barrier to entry in terms of technical knowledge.
Happy to answer any specific questions if you have any!
Maybe check out WP101 as well, they have a bunch of WordPress videos so you can get a better idea of how everything works and what you will be getting.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Hi Jazy,
It all depends on what you want from a website!
Wordpress is easy to set up - has lots of options to customise and add new functionality, it has a wide community that supports it if you trip up and it doesn't hamper SEO (as long as you have brought the domain, there is no point going with the free Wordpress system if you want to optimise your websites SEO). However, there are a few limitations to the system in terms of what functionality you can ad for free and there are some security issues if you dont know what you are doing.
A custom build however can look and act exactly as you want it to but takes time and expertise to that for free. If you have that time and expertise though it means you get the website that you want at little cost. The downsides are that you lack the community and free developers.
Just my opinions.
Cheers,
Dan.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
We added hundreds of pages to our website & restructured the layout to include 3 additional locations within the sub-pages, same brand/domain name. How long could Google take to crawl/index the new pages and rank the keywords used within those pages?
We added hundreds of pages to our website & restructured the layout to include 3 additional locations within the sub-pages, same brand/domain name. The 3 locations old domains were redirected to their sites within our main brand domain. How long could Google take to crawl/index the new pages and rank the keywords used within those pages? And possibly increase our domain authority hopefully? We didn't want our brand spread out over multiple websites/domains on the internet. This also allowed for more content to be written on pages, per each of our locations service's, as well.
Web Design | | BurgSimpson0 -
In Wordpress getting marked as duplicate content for tags
Moz is marking 11 high priority items for duplicate content. Just switched to wordpress and publishing articles for the site but only have a few. The problem is on the tag pages. Since there aren't very many articles so when you go to the tag pages it lists one or two articles and hence there are pages with duplicate content. Most of the articles have the same tags / categories. Perhaps I'm using too many tags and categories? I'm using about 7 tags and around 2 categories for each post / event. I've read the solution is using canonical tags but a little confused on which page I should use for the tag and then I believe I need to point the duplicate pages to the correct page. For example, I have two events that are for dances and both have the same tags. So when you visit, site.com/tags/dance or site.com/events both pages have the same articles listed. Which page do I select as having the original content? Does it matter? Does that make sense? Someone was also saying I could use the Yoast plugin to fix, but not really seeing anything in the Yoast tools. I also see 301 redirects mentioned as a solution but the tag pages will be changing as we add new articles and they have a purpose so not really seeing that as a solution.
Web Design | | limited70 -
Are jobsite themes harder to optimize than say a traditional website?
Until recently I have enjoyed a great deal of success with SEO on my websites and clients websites. SEO is more of a hobby than a profession for me however I am really struggling with my latest website www.securityjobsuk.co.uk - The keywords are easy, 1. security jobs and 2. security vacancies. The site has vanished off radar completely since I used the jobify theme. Has anyone had similar experience with job boards? Do they require more TLC / expert attention?
Web Design | | SJUK0 -
Wordpress Custom Permalinks Plugin Issue
Hello, I installed this plugin and I'm having trouble making it work. I'm new to WordPress so was hoping someone can help me out. I'm looking to set up the following pages for example
Web Design | | ec1976
http://testsite.azurewebsites.net/Services/Services1
http://testsite.azurewebsites.net/Services/Services2 I do the following steps Add New Page Enter the following title "Services1" Enter the following text in the Permalink textbox "Services/Services1" replacing the default text "?page_id=140" Then I publish the page. This automatically updates the "Custom Fields" section below. The name is set to "custom_permalink" and the value is set to "Services/Services1". Then I "view page" but get a 404 error. The url is "http://testsite.azurewebsites.net/Services/Services1" Some additional info 1. WordPress version 9.8.3 Settings - Permalinks is set to "post name" Custom Permalinks version 0.7.18 Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks0 -
Question & Answers Forum pluggin for wordpress
I am looking to install on my website a Question & Answers Forum pluggin for wordpress Like MOZ Q&A What pluggin do you recommend for questions and answers Would be to replace the one on this site that i don't like due to some problems i have on configuration. http://www.propdental.es/dentista/
Web Design | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Website 'stolen', no contact details
Hi all, Wondering if anyone could help out here, good a very strange issue.... Went into Google Webmaster Tools and looked at the incoming links to a client's site (new client, only just gained access to WMT) and noticed 2563 links coming from a domain. Upon viewing said domain it is a 100% copy of the clients site, I mean 100%; the phone numbers, email address etc are still pointing to the client's site. Everything is the same, the pages, the navigation etc. When I click on a link on the copy site it loads the same pages but at their site, the internal linking points to the version of the pages on their site. It seems to be an ongoing thing because the last time the client updated their blog was last week and this is on the copy site. Obviously this cannot be helping with regard to seo. The client knows nothing about it so not come from them. The copy site is indexed in Google!!. The first thing to do is to contact these people and ask what they are doing. This is proving to be easier said than done, the contact details (as mentioned above) on the pages still point back to the client and the whois gives no details. What would be the first step to take here? Obviously there is the whole legal area about stolen content but that can wait until we have the site down and out of Google. Is there somewhere in Google to report things such as this? I will speak to client and if they are happy I will share both the domains in question, they know I am seeking alternative opinions Many thanks Carl
Web Design | | GrumpyCarl0 -
Can someone suggest a good wordpress plugin for compressing images?
I am building a new website and it has 500+ photo images. I've got less than 100 in there at the moment and the page speed is already very slow. I'm trying to reduce the size of the images before uploading but without a photoshop application it is very difficult. Are there any great plugins for wordpress that can help?
Web Design | | skehoe0 -
Ecommerce Style Wordpress But No Shopping Cart.
Wondering if anyone knows if you can purchase an ecommece style wordpress theme, but not use the shopping cart portion or display pricing. We would like to display our website how an ecommerce is set up, but at this time, we do not sell anything online. We are considering in the near future to sell half of our products. And this would not be very large. Or can ecommerce be added to any wordpress theme. ?
Web Design | | hfranz0
