Everyone told you you should use WordPress for your website. They gave you lots of good reasons to use it. So why, now that you have it installed, are you having a hard time with WordPress, and even more importantly, you are questioning why you decided to go this route in the first place?
Don’t worry too much. Believe me, you aren’t the first to feel the frustration of WordPress. But, I want to assure you that I don’t think it was a bad choice for you at all. You will see so many benefits to WordPress once you actually learn it and start using it to it’s full capacity – which is really endless with all the plug-ins and add-ons that are out there.
The WordPress learning curve.
As with anything new to us, there is always going to be a learning curve. Chances are you were just fine getting it installed on your server and even downloading and installing a theme you liked. Now, if you were going to use that theme, as is, you would be pretty much good to go. But, 9 times out of 10, most business owners want to customize the theme and make it fit their business, and that’s where the frustration comes in.
Trying to make it look a certain way via DIY methods.
Most people are not graphic designers or web developers, so they get frustrated at the process of customizing their chosen theme to their liking. Totally understandable. Many theme developers, especially if you have opted for a paid theme, are more than happy to jump in and offer suggestions for making their theme work for you.
Up to a certain extent. Be aware that pre-made themes are coded a certain way and trying to make it do something it wasn’t made to do is going to cause tons of frustration or money in hiring a developer that can make it do what you want it to do.
Be very careful when choosing your theme to make sure it has the features and functionality that you want in your website. There are literally thousands of themes available for WordPress and WordPress is used to create all kinds of websites. Chance are you can find an off-the-shelf theme for your market.
WPBeginner has a great article on the 9 things you should consider when choosing a WordPress theme.
You can do anything…but not everything. – David Allen
You want your website heavily customized.
Perhaps if more customization is your goal it is time to consider outsourcing that part of your WordPress venture to a professional. Let them do the heavy lifting on that portion of the site. Designers and developers who work on this stuff all day long are much quicker, have lots of knowledge about the WordPress platform, and are great for recommending the right type of functionality you need in your particular industry.
Time is money, is it not? Do you really want to spend time on stuff you just aren’t equipped to handle without sitting down and spending hours upon hours learning how to do it? If you want to learn, then I say go for it, but many business owners just don’t have the time and find it easier on the pocketbook to outsource that part of it, so they can be busy making money at what they do know.
I kind of liken this to the process to owning a car. I own a car. I drive a car daily. I even put gas in it, and from time to time, change my own windshield wiper blades and check my fluids.
However, I am not a mechanic and I could never even begin to give my car a brake job or an oil change. I realize there are some people that DO do this on their own vehicles, who aren’t full fledged mechanics, perhaps because they just really can’t afford a mechanic, or because they like doing that type of thing on the side. Personally, I am not skilled enough to do it, therefore I take my car to a mechanic to have those services done.
The same goes with web design and development. Not everyone is a professional web designer – some people may know how to do it and want to save money, and some people may actually like doing it on the side – but, most people are not equipped to handle that portion of the project themselves, whether it be on WordPress, some other CMS or a static HTML website. That’s cool. That’s why there are professionals who are around to handle that portion of the job for you. There’s no shame in that.
If you want a customized site that doesn’t look cookie cutter, with your logos, colors and fonts that more closely resemble your branding, then it may be time to consider a professional web designer to customize WordPress for you. If you don’t know HTML you would have had to hire them anyway to build the website for you, or you could have gone with a drop and drag WIX or Weebly type site, but then your site is definitely going to look like everyone else’s does. With WordPress, at least, you can let the WordPress designer do that part of the project and then you can do the rest – things like adding your content and blogging on a regular basis.
A web designer would just create the personalized template you will use to input that information and hand it back over to you. I am willing to bet, at that point, you will freakin’ love WordPress and using it on a daily basis to keep your customers up to date on what’s happening with your company!
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