Why don't you use Wordpress or page builders for your websites?

The 3 main reasons not to use Wordpress in our web design project are Security, Performance, and Uncertainty. Wordpress is a fully functional dynamic website, but has many drawbacks due to the nature of it's design and maintenance concerns. Much of the functionality of their websites come from 3rd party pluggins which in many cases has been a here today and gone tomorrow proposition. There are weekly horror stories about these pluggins breaking leaving website owners vulnerable to hackers and stranded. In these situations they are left to hire someone again to fix the issue or build a whole new website.

How Important Is Website Security In Web Design?

Website Security should be top of mind to any expert web developer. If your website is hacked what is the damage? If your google search listing has items like "Hot SEX tonight" How will that effect your customers view of your business? How safe is your customers data? Are you liable? Will your online reputation be damaged? Will customers still visit your website? All of these questions help to shape the importance of secure web design for your business.

The problem is most web designers are artists/ designers and have limited technical knowledge and skills when it comes software engineering, web servers, and web server administration. This is why they choose Wordpress. Someone else has handled the technical part of the web development and they hope it is good enough. They buy WP hosting from a third party hosting company and have no meaningful way to monitor what is happening on that client's website. Some one else built the technical framework of the website so if the non-technical designer knew something nefarious was happening, would they know what to do about it?

There are many security vulnerabilties within Wordpress. On a daily basis I get TENS OF THOUSANDS of WP hacker attempts to my clients websites. These fail because we have designed and developed our websites to be free of these vulnerabilities. I have personally removed thousands of porn/ escort/ casino web pages from new client websites that they received on their WP website before becoming my client. I have also removed google search listings in the THOUSANDS from these compromised websites. Imagine that a customer searches for you and they see under your website listing "Flirty Mature", "SugarDaddy Texas", or "Tempe Escort". Would they trust your website enough to vist it? Would they still want to be your new customer? How much did it cost you to get the customer to the point of searching for you? These are all real items I have removed from client search results.

Most web design agencies build a WP site for their clients and "turn the keys over" leaving the client to try to manage these things. If the web designer didn't have the technical prowess to handle these things, is it reasonable to expect that the customer will? Who is monitoring the traffic on your website and web servers?

Expert Web Design and Development must include a comprehensive website security plan and on going security monitoring is a must if your business is important to you. These website security services are all included in Gilbert Web Design's $175 month website plan.

Is Website Performance Important In Web Design?

In a word YES. Studies have shown that if it takes more than 3 seconds for a page to load more than 50% of people will click away. Page performance is also important to Google and has a direct effect on search ranking. If you want your web page to show up in Google search results it is important to keep Google happy. The picture above shows our websites performance scores that google measured for https://www.gilbert-webdesign.com on the Google Pagespeed insights tool.

What is Google looking For From Web Design And Web Designers?

Google wants a good page experience for website visitors. What does this mean? When someone searches, google wants to insure they receive what they were looking for when they arrive. They also want the content to arrive quickly and insure that it was accessible to the searcher. Google also wants a good search experience on all devices. Google measures for these positive experiences accross 4 categories: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. They also test these 4 categories on both desktop and mobile devices. Our web design process insures that our clients websites achieve 98-100 PageSpeed Perfect Scores. Each month we monitor and make adjustments to insure your website stays in the green.

What Is The Performance When Pagebuilders/ Wordpress Are Used In Web Design?

Wordpress.com

Wix.com

SquareSpace.com

These are the performance scores from the websites of the top pagebuilders. If the people who made the pagebuilder can't pass Google's tests, what are the chances that your website will pass if you use them? What is your goal in having a website? If it takes 6 seconds for a web page to load, how many visitors will click away to the next business listing?

Once given the facts it's easy to see the importantance of Page Speed for your online business. We can help your business achieve those coveted 98-100 PageSpeed Perfect Scores. Get in touch with Gilbert Web Design today to find out more.

What Is The Difference In Website Frameworks?

There are 3 main types of frameworks/ languages that web design companies typically use:

Wordpress / Page Builders
Wordpress makes up the majority of the worlds websites because using it makes it fast and easy to create a website. The technical/ heavy lifting portion of making a website is 95% done for you. A person can literally choose a pre-built theme, choose their colors, and type in some text. Viola! website done! The same goes for Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and a miriad of other page builders. These are designed to be Do It Yourself websites. If you have your photos and artwork you can complete one in just a couple of hours. There are some DANGEROUS Drawbacks and PERFORMANCE issues associated with using these for a business website. I talk about these in the website security section and website performance sections.

The Following Estimates assume content creation -the words on the page- to take equal time irrespective of framework

Skill required: none/beginner
Complexity: Low but varies based on pluggins and themes
Time To Complete: 2-10 hours

HTML/CSS/Javascript Static Website
The first web browser utilized HTML or Hyper Text Mark Up language to display pages to visitors. CSS or Cascading Style Sheets are used to style the HTML elements such as color, size, padding, margins, font choice, and position. Although it can take longer to be really proficient in HTML and CSS, the average person can learn these languages in short amount of time. The timeline can be sped up by utilizing pre-built style elements like those contained in Bootstrap. Javascript is utilized in static websites to increase functionality which is lacking in html. Static websites are unchanging or fixed. They are used to convey information similar to a poster board or sign. If you want to have dynamic interactions like pressing a like button on social media or altering content based on other factors such as varying user choices on pages, this is beyond the scope of static pages. Static pages also can load quickly, if they are designed correctly, due to the lack of complex code for the computer to load and decipher.

Skill Level: Novice to intermediate
Complexity: Low-Medium
Time To Complete: 10-40 hours

React/Ruby/PHP Dynamic Website
The programming languages mentioned are used for creating dynamic web pages. React is a javascript front end language, while Ruby and PHP are backend or server side languages. These languages are also used to create E-commerce websites. These languages are more complex than HTML and explaining all of their intricacies is beyond our conversation on this page. However, you have more than likely been on websites using these languages. Facebook was first written in PHP, AirBnB and Twitter were first written in Ruby, and this page is written in React. In order to develop websites in these languages a developer also needs to have a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Skill Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Complexity: Medium to Advanced
Time To Complete: 40+ hours

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