WordPress
A popular CMS with two different homes. Know which one a proposal means before you nod.
What does WordPress mean?
A widely used content management system. You can host it yourself with themes and plugins, or pay WordPress.com for a hosted version. The two are not the same product.
Also called: WordPress.org, WP
Software versus a hosted service
WordPress.org is the software you install on hosting you rent. You can choose themes and plugins, and you are responsible for updates. WordPress.com is a service run by Automattic, closer to a website builder, with its own plans. Proposals that say WordPress without saying which one are incomplete.
Both can produce a good small-business site. Both can also produce a slow stack of plugins nobody remembers installing. The brand is not a quality level.
Themes and plugins
A theme is the design skin. A plugin adds a feature: forms, backups, SEO fields, a slider. Each plugin is another update and another way for the site to break. Install the few you understand. A form and a backup you trust beat a dozen overlapping ones.
Page builders inside WordPress, the drag-and-drop layers, can lock the layout into that plugin the way a hosted builder locks you into its account. Ask what happens to the design if the plugin's license lapses. Template explains the skin. This is the engine under it.
Whether we start there
An Artol site on the $0 down offer is fully custom and hosted by us. It is not a promise that the public site is a WordPress theme with your logo. If you have a hard requirement for WordPress, because a staff member already knows it or another tool must plug in, say so before kickoff. We will tell you if that requirement fits this offer or needs a quote from packages.
You can leave WordPress later. The words and media export more cleanly than a closed builder, and the design still gets rebuilt. Backup matters more on a self-hosted install because you are the one who notices a bad update.
An example
A personal trainer's site ran on self-hosted WordPress with four slider plugins and a lapsed backup plugin. Updates scared them. They did not need four sliders. They needed a schedule and a way to request a session. The platform argument ended once those two jobs were obvious.
Questions we get asked
Is WordPress free?
The .org software is free. Hosting, a premium theme, and premium plugins are not. WordPress.com plans are priced on that company's site. Add those bills up before you compare them with $249/mo hosting that includes the build and the edits.
Will my staff be able to edit it?
If we are not using WordPress, the ordinary path is to ask us. Two small content updates a month are included. A staff login is a separate decision, described under CMS.
