Let me preface this by saying I have never built a website before. However, I am determined to do this and I’m not scared of trying.
Our company website, well, I’ll admit it’s just shit. Like so bad I’m too embarrassed to show you guys. It’s made using WordPress with the Divi theme and hosted on our own server. It is slow as fuck and clunky (stutters when scrolling, etc). I don’t think it’s because of our server, this server doesn’t do anything other than host our low-traffic site. Is this because of the theme, or WordPress in general? I guess my question is, should I be using WordPress? Or has this platform become antiquated?
We are a Managed IT Services Provider, so our website doesn’t really have any functionality, it’s just informative. If you guys have any suggestions or resources I could use, that would be great. I think our website is one thing that is hindering our growth. I have the free time to work on this project and if I could whip out a slick website my boss would be happy (:
I would recommend SquareSpace hands down. Also, Wordpress vulnerabilities are always in the news. Would not want to use a Wordpress site for e-Commerce unless you had a person dedicated to deal with Wordpress issues.
I’m gonna check SquareSpace out. Thankfully we don’t do any business on our site, it’s just a place for people to go when they see our signs to read about what services we offer.
Something like squarespace is probably simplest, since it takes care of building your site and hosting it. Of course you also pay for that indefinitely, and I’m not sure if it’s possible to migrate out later.
Coming from a non-web-developer, a roll-your-own site is going to have quite a learning curve. At least some html, css, js, and perhaps some server-side language as well, along with various frameworks… quickly can get overwhelming.
If you want to try, you could copy a site template and modify as you wish. Or explore a content management system. I looked at several CMS and Grav has several appealing aspects (flat files, no db, easy to copy/deploy/backup, simple media handling tools, actively developed, growing popularity and community): https://getgrav.org/
Wordpress is fine, everybody uses it. Install wordfence, turn on automatic updates, disable unnecessary plugins, block external access to /wp-admin in haproxy, and setup cloudflare. It’ll be reasonably secure then. You’re not much of a MSP if you can’t admin wordpress of all things.
That said if you’re a really small shop then sure, go with something like squarespace.
We don’t do web stuff. Plenty of companies in our area that do only that (they seem to be pretty good at ripping people off too, lol). Plus I find sitting in front of a computer all day long to be a real drag.
But thanks for the re-assurance on WordPress, just wanted to make sure I wasn’t starting with junk.
Depending on what you need, a simple landing page on html5 and css3 isn’t hard to do. If you don’t need any functionality beyond looking pretty, it’s easy to do on your own.
Squarespace is nice, along with the other options mentioned, but nothing really gives you the same satisfaction of doing it yourself.
Also, not to mention, Squarespace is very powerful but doing it yourself allows 100% customization, with design aspects you can think of that wouldn’t even have crossed your mind in a builder-like environment.
If time isn’t a 100% pressing issue, start out by googling a 30-minute markup video, and a 30-minute css video. Really all the time it takes to learn the basics of website building. From there lookup responsive design, mobile-first philosophy (even tho I don’t agree with it, it’s good for SEO), and then more design things like color theory, and flat-ui design.
The hardest part of building a site is having a creative mind, and being able to adjust colors correctly. That’s about all there is to it.
(Of course, unless you get into advanced things like JS, moving into Angular, React, things like that where sites become more programmy)
Trust me I know how many use it and trust me, it is far from the best solution, easiest perhaps, but best, lord no… Depends what you’re requirements are I guess, for me it’s a mixture of performance, security and reliability, things which personally I wouldn’t use WordPress for.
Even if you run WordPress with HHVM it’s still far from great.
HHVM is obsolete now, but you can get wordpress to perform at extremely high volumes with other optimizations. It is extraordinarily mature software and thus very reliable. Security is a major concern, though. Agree with you there.
I suppose you do hold a good point, it does greatly rely on your configuration in general, but like you said, security is a bit… Hmmm… Also, as I tend to do a lot of REST stuff, microservices and what not, to my knowledge, WordPress doesn’t natively have any feature(s) that allow you to do 100% REST?
The problem with Wordpress isn’t that it’s poorly written or architected (although I’m not a huge fan of PHP) but that it’s just INCREDIBLY popular, so it’s an attractive target. A third of all websites on the internet run Wordpress.
Yes, Wordpress has a fully functional and documented REST API.
If you keep your use of plugins constrained, install Wordfence (essentially fail2ban for Wordpress), and most importantly keep autoupdates turned on, it’s secure enough to use. Blocking external access to /wp-admin helps a lot too. I wish they allowed users to just change that directory name, sure it’s security through obscurity but the number of people rattling the doorknob would drop a ton.
If you put a Wordpress site on the internet with autoupdates disabled, you’re gonna be hacked pretty quick. Don’t do that.
The word enough doesn’t reassure me, I’m a bit of a freak when it comes to security, I like to go to an extent where it’s borderline over kill…
Not gonna lie, as a professional I wouldn’t use WordPress in the firs place, hence why I said:
Long story short, I’m not saying WP is bad, it’s god damn awesome for a quick and easy website, but personally, as a full stack dev, it’s not up to my standard(s)… For a lot of people, sure they don’t care half as much as I do about the nitty gritty stuff, a lot of people have the attitude “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”… Not myself… I actually try to make web apps as high quality as can be… … Generally WP is not high quality…
The other real problem is that people want custom templates without paying for a proper developer.
So what happens is some poor sod has to fix a site where they haven’t updated WordPress because the custom template they had done was 3rd partied out to some foreign country and never touched again.
Backups? What are those?
Also, because WordPress stuff is so abundant, everyone expects it to be cheap. Which sucks for anyone actually wanting to make templates and sell them.
If people want custom then they should pay for a full-fledged custom developer to do the site. Not shoehorn WordPress into some bastardization.
… Generally WP is not high quality…