For whom this website is made for first? How do you plan to create a website?

For whom is this website made?

Initially, the answer is – for the client, for the business. However, if we rephrase the question as, “Who will be using the website?” the answer takes on a new perspective, shedding light on both employees and website visitors.

Considering the client’s perspective, if we direct these questions, we’ll see that the website will be administered either by the client directly or, in the case of a larger organization, by some of its employees who may not have a clue about what they will face once the website development is over. Essentially, when websites, specifically Content Management Systems (CMSs), are built, usually no one thinks about the person(s) who will administer it. Everyone assumes that they will find their way around. This aspect deserves more attention, usually a lot more.

From our standpoint, a user-friendly admin panel is one of the foundations of SEO. Perhaps you’ve heard the expression: ‘Content is king’.

If we assume that someone like Jane or John will be inserting website content or the client itself, then it’s clear we can’t neglect the fact that the admin panel can be challenging. It may have input fields that allow data entry capable of compromising content presentation, causing bugs, and disrupting semantics. In other words, we can’t afford an admin panel that allows administrators to make mistakes during content updates or new content insertion.

That means website development doesn’t start or end with making the part of the website that only visitors should see. Website quality must be propagated even through the admin panel part. This can be achieved by using tools like the Gutenberg editor, Page Builders, or basing admin panel fieldsets on plugins such as Advanced Custom Fields. WordPress, as the most popular admin panel, doesn’t have the same admin panel for every use case. Most often, the choice depends on selecting one of the possible paths for WordPress website creation.

Lately, there is a lot of resistance towards using WordPress as a CMS, but that’s not WordPress’s fault. It’s your mistake. The mistake lies in your decisions, made because you were only focusing your attention on what your visitors should see, and not on you or your employees.

Although there is a possibility to tumble around or restyle its admin section, WordPress isn’t a bad solution because it allows you to do that. It might be considered bad because of some security holes. However, give one open source and additionally free solution that doesn’t come with security issues (which, by the way, all can be sealed). WordPress as a CMS usually takes the most heat, mostly because it’s very popular or it’s not someone’s cup of tea – perhaps because it’s PHP-based or they are more into some other CMS.

Content admins aren’t developers, nor are they QAs, nor are they technically the most literate individuals

You’re absolutely right. My apologies for the oversight. Here’s the revised version:

Everything is easier if they are, but admins usually aren’t developers/programmers. What can we expect from future admins?

We can expect that they have know-how with Microsoft Office set of programs, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more from them we simply can’t assume.

After the website launch, we should ensure that the admin section is well designed.

Post-launch, we should have a nicely packed, intuitive, and well-organized administration area. This will ensure easy website administration, adding/updating pages/posts, and at the end of the day, admins will focus only on copywriting and not waste their time searching for differences between h1 and h5 tags in a semantic way. We will not empower/enable them to make SEO or visual mistakes, removing them from harm’s way when something breaks or crashes. That’s the responsibility of the theme author, agency, or developer that made that complete system possible or even the client who allowed that to happen, and not the content admins.

WordPress based website – build techniques overview

There are two popular ways you can store data using wordpress. One is sadly more popular, because it’s simpler, and the other path is better, but harder.

1. Easier route – usage of page builders

If you choose easier route, road without designers, developers, programmers, SEO specialists, road that engages people who will create a set of needed functionalities by clicking around – installing large number of plugins, themeforest theme, you’ll get website that it will please you at the first, but which surely start to show it’s true face, sooner or later.

Occasional breaks in the design, order inconsistency, bugs and unplanned layout breaks on certain resolutions, structure/semantic errors, large amount of nested html and because all that html is in the wrong place (instead in the file system where it should be, html is stored inside the database) which takes more time to be loaded and presented to the end visitor.  Last part can be resolved with caching, but it’s very common to see that no caching solution is introduced – and the website remains slow – which is, by the way, one of the SEO ranking signals.

Aside from that, the most important thing you’ll miss – you’ll miss your complete data, once you decide to upgrade, or move to something else. Content migration is almost impossible to do. Mainly because stored contents are hidden in different html chunks, filled with different dynamic snippets – not copy, which wouldn’t be the case if the html was in the proper place – file system, and only copy was stored in the database.

We can write about the subject even more, but maybe it’s better to compare pros and cons from each method, and you decide:

Page builder usage pros:

1. Faster delivery dates
2. No designer & No developers

Page builders usage cons: 

1. Loading speeds – page builders have a great impact on website performance, front & back end part
2. Unstable website layout – after plugin update, there are no warranties that  the website layout will remain the same, like before the update
3. Security challenges – development of powerful drag & drop which supports dozens of components is all but simple i often based on javascript/libraries  which are introducing, from time to time, security holes
4. Fine tuning – page builders-neglect importance of user experience. There is actually a maximum what can be done once you depend on page builders, which often leads to functional and visual compromises down the road
5. Functionality limits – they are not made for customizations
6. Almost impossible content migrations –
   Page builders are using their own code formatting, html blocks usage or some other snippet from the database on the one hand, and their presentation on the other. Removal of that specific page builder solution would lead to removal of all page blocks or even worse random gibberish shown instead of specific block or all blocks, instead of the copy/html. Migration from one page builder solution to another or to the solution that doesn’t use page builders is often a horror adventure, without a happy ending.

2. Custom theme development

Yes, a harder path. Like building the house using bricks, instead of using wicker and straw, but from our standpoint better path for every business that thinks ahead. Additionally, custom theme development, with proper technical documentation, allows your independence from a developer/agency, which initially created the website – you’re not condemned only on one contractor, who can potentially condition you in order to maintain your website, but instead with the proper documentation you can source other developers/agencies to evolve/develop your website even more.

Your online store/website/portfolio will be carefully created exactly by your plans and business needs and by doing so it will contain only necessary styles and javascript libraries, so it would load significantly faster, then when it’s based on a $50 themeforest themes or similar.

Admin panel of such a website should be relieved of any unnecessary functionality, also customized to your business needs, and by doing so administration will be easier and less challenging.

When you build the website in this way, developers have a chance to further enhance your administration area and allow you to insert copy only where it is needed, removing unnecessary fields and structures. Database will hold only text based contents, without the code, and by doing so database read times will decrease resulting in decreased page loading times, which can be migrated into something else, when the time comes.

For this approach we will also make a pros and cons list:

Custom theme development pros:

1. Website loading speed – they are often faster than the page builder based websites. You can test this by using tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix. These tests are not dependent on your internet speed, but they are showing things you can do to further improve your website speed, a factor that is used(one of many others also used) for search engine ranking purposes – SEO.
2. Consistency – as time goes by, your presentation will look identical like the one on the first day of launch, after all plugin & wp core file updates.
3. Security – WordPress as an open source platform, is prone to security challenges, which are with more/less effort solvable. Websites that are based on a theme that’s not open source, have better chances of survival.
4. Fine tuning – no compromises – you’re getting the exact thing you were asking for.
5. Subsequent changes and updates – with proper technical documentation , it’s easy to introduce new functionalities or update existing ones.
6. Content migration – database stores the data that can easily be migrated into any other new format

Custom theme development cons:

1. Price – designer and developer costs more than to click your way through until the website is done
2. Time – it simply takes more time to make proper solution

Conclusion

It all depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you are investing into business that you know or hope will be long present in the digital sky, then there is no dilemma – wordpress based on a custom theme is the path you need to follow, but on the other hand if you have one time deal plans, or something with known expiration date – then yes, maybe page builder way is a proper path – but that all depends on from case to case, because then maybe you even don’t need CMS.

Either way – pay attention to what you get for your money.