By Nora McDougall-Collins

In the late 1990s, I worked for a company that still makes websites for newspapers, exclusively. There was a gentleman in that business who was pretty sure that a website could be created instantly from desktop publishing software. It just was not that easy. Since then, we have seen MS Word sites, Front Page sites, online template sites, and even WordPress sites that claim to be the “create a website in an afternoon” solution. It is that easy. And yet it isn’t that easy, when you take a look at the backside of the site and find out that it’s put together with duct tape and bailing twine. As long as you don’t touch anything, it holds together just fine.

Easy v Custom Product
The problem is that a website is a custom product. How would you like it if you ordered a custom log home that could be built in an afternoon? Or custom furniture that was built in an afternoon. And, yet, people expect that from a website, somehow. That custom furniture may have some standardized pieces, but it is supposed to be built specifically to your needs or you would just go to a furniture store.

To get that custom furniture, you have to know what you want. You have to do some measuring to figure out what size it needs to be. You need to have a color scheme in mind to go with the rest of the decor. You need to tell the furniture maker things like the fact that you are 5 foot tall and most chairs cut off the circulation in the back of your legs. It’s the same process with a website; there’s a lot of up front work.

Planning Doesn’t Go Away
Yes, you can build a website in an afternoon with WordPress. Or, rather, you can build a website in an afternoon if:

1. You know how your site will be organized.
2. You have photos ready.
3. You have text (lots of it) ready.
4. You don’t mind if your website looks exactly like the websites of everyone else who decides to use the same “theme” that you use.

The Perks are in the Process
The real beauty of WordPress is what happens AFTER the basic site is built. The learning curve  to add new content and media to your website is greatly reduced. This allows you time to learn more about what you can accomplish with your website, while you have a working online presence. That is very valuable, because your diligence in adding new content is exactly the thing that your viewers and the search engines are looking for. It also gives you time to figure out what kind of content will be most successful without having to worry about the technical structure of your website.

Another benefit of using WordPress for your website is that the WordPress community is working diligently on improvements to the system. One of the most important improvements is that the security of the system has a lot of guardian angels. If you update your server technologies, your WordPress install, and your plugins on a regular basis, your site will be less attractive to the folks who are out to get you online!

But, I Want to …
At some point, though, you are going to start wishing your website could be changed in ways that the out-of-the-box WordPress just won’t do. You want the site to be custom – to do what you want to it to do and look like you want it to look. The first step is to research the plugins to find out whether someone has already built your cool new feature. Next, your WordPress site is still built with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL. And, WordPress is Open Source. That means that all that code is available for you to change! All those cool things you want? You can learn how to code them – or you can wait for the WordPress community to build it.

To learn how to create your own custom site beyond the basic install,  take a peek at WordPress Beyond the Dashboard. This class takes you into the working parts of WordPress, where you truly get to take the system and make it your own, one bit at a time!