WHAT IS WORDPRESS
There are several ways to create a website. The first method consists of coding your site “hard” that is to say from .html, .CSS, .java, .php (etc.) files which will be assembled to display what you see on the screen. This method has the advantage of letting you optimize your site without limit but it requires notions in programming if you do not want to find yourself limited in terms of functionality and visual rendering.
The other way is to use a content management system (CMS) which will provide you with a much more intuitive and affordable working interface than programming files. We will therefore present in this article one of the main CMS: WordPress, which is the most used platform today for all those who want to manage their website themselves.
What Is WordPress
WordPress is THE most popular CMS today! Although not all programmers are necessarily supporters of this platform, it has the merit of being extremely intuitive and placing web content management within everyone’s reach. WordPress has stood out from its competitors (Wix, Joomla, Magento, Drupal) by the strength of its community and the countless themes it offers.
Indeed, WordPress is based on a system of “themes” which represent in a way the skeleton of the site on which you can then make the customizations you want. When creating your website in WordPress, you start by choosing a theme that suits you, you install it on your WordPress and then you choose the different options that your theme offers to customize your site.
Be careful, however, that the theme is really adapted to WordPress and that it is regularly updated. Indeed, some themes (mostly free) are not updated, often leaving significant security holes. If you go for a paid theme, also make sure its creators update it regularly to avoid security and incompatibility issues. To find WordPress themes, you can go to the official page or to specialized sites like Theme Forest.
When To Use WordPress?
You can use WordPress for all types of needs. Indeed, WordPress is suitable for e-commerce sites, blogs or showcase sites. The only real drawback of WordPress is that it will require more resources than a hard-coded site, especially if you install a lot of plugins (programs allowing you to add features like a contact form, a chat system, management a newsletter, buttons to your social networks, a comments system, etc.).
In addition, most websites are hosted on a shared server, which will further weigh down the site and increase its loading time. Be aware, however, that you can set your site to use as few resources as possible when loading or even install plugins like WordPress Total Cache and WP Super cache. So you can opt for this platform without any problem if you want to be able to easily manage your website.
How To Choose Your WordPress Theme?
If you’ve already started your research, you’ve probably seen that WordPress offers a lot of themes and there really is something for everyone. The first piece of advice we can give you when choosing your WordPress theme is to make sure it is Responsive Web Design, that is, it adapts to all screen resolutions. Indeed, mobile traffic has exploded in recent years and sites that are not suitable for mobile devices are depriving themselves of an increasing share of traffic.
The second criterion to take into account is of course the appearance and organization of the theme. Indeed, all themes do not offer the same menu organization, the same design or the same features. It is therefore important that you think about the organization of your site and its look before choosing your theme, especially if you are new to WordPress and have limited integration knowledge. An important thing to know is that the themes you are viewing often play on the quality of the images to give a modern and clean effect.
It is therefore important that you also choose your visuals carefully so that the final rendering will satisfy you. Images tend to weigh sites down and increase page load time, but we still encourage you to use visuals to bring your site to life. To limit the weight of your images, you can save them in .jpeg format by adjusting the compression (70% quality) using software such as The Gimp (free) or Photoshop or by choosing “save for Web ”when you save your file.
The third criterion to take into account is the degree of personalization offered by your theme. Indeed, even if a theme can be entirely modified, the less experienced will be satisfied with the various default options offered with the theme and can quickly find themselves blocked when the options do not satisfy them.
Be aware, however, that it is difficult to know all of a theme’s options just by previewing it. It is also possible that you find a site edited under WordPress, that you manage to find out which theme was used but the theme was changed. So you won’t get the same rendering if you don’t make the same changes.
WordPress Update
WordPress regularly updates its platform to offer new features and fill in the security holes used by hackers. It is therefore very important to update your platform, but taking some precautions. The first precaution is to start by making a backup of your site before updating anything; Indeed, you are never safe from an update causing your site to crash completely due to a compatibility issue with your theme or otherwise.
You can use a plugin to make backups of your site, use an FTP software (such as FileZila) to directly copy your files to your computer or connect to the interface of your host if it offers backup options (this which is often the case).
Before updating WordPress, we recommend that you update the plugins first and, if possible, one after the other to immediately be able to identify which plugin is causing possible compatibility issues. Indeed, if you update all your extensions at the same time, the task will be more complex …
Once your plugins are up to date, you can either update WordPress using your dashboard or by downloading the latest version from the official WordPress site. If you opt for this second option, be careful not to copy the wpcontent folder at the risk of seeing some of your content or visual deleted.
Conclusion
So you could learn more about WordPress and how to use it. Please note that we are specialized in this platform and that you can entrust us with the creation of your website by contacting us via the contact us page. Know that if you entrust us with the development of your website, we systematically include 1 hours of WordPress training to help you take charge of this platform and manage your site completely independently.
Do not hesitate to contact us or via our contact form if you wish to speak to an advisor who will answer all your questions.
