1. Hosting. A good host for your website is extremely important.  The type of hosting you select will depend upon your website size, traffic and level of services needed.  You can have Managed Solutions with a private or dedicated server, Virtual Private servers or Shared web hosting.  Inclusions will vary by company but should include sufficient memory, bandwidth, storage,  free emails, SSL Certificates and backup utilities.  The cPanel Control Panel is the “standard”, where you can manage many hosting tasks yourself.  We have worked with and highly recommend Springs Hosting for your hosting needs. Their professional staff and offerings are hard to beat.
2. What are your website ambitions? You will need to determine who your target market is, what tools will you need to market your products and services and how you will service the traffic coming to your website. Is your ideal customer Boomers, Gen X, Y, or Z Millennials? Will you need to funnel social media to your website from Tic Toc, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube? Will you offer online classes, downloadable products or other goods and services?  Maybe all of the above!  When you know the answer to these questions, you can properly utilize plugins to extend the functions of your website.
3. Plugins: Use caution when choosing what plugins you need to use. The reputation and number of plugins can affect your website performance if too many plugins are used or there is a conflict between plugins.  If the plugins you use are not regularly updated, it can leave your site vulnerable to hacks by nefarious individuals.  Research the plugin author/website, read the reviews, see how many installations are currently in use,  investigate how often the plugin is updated and when the last update was completed.  All of this information can be seen when researching plugins through the WordPress administration dashboard.
4. Security: Reducing the risk of a hack or exploitation of WordPress and the database is crucial to your website stability and your reputation. Ensure that any individual who has access to your website administration is familiar with WordPress security protocol. WordPress beginner website has a great article with best practices and resources related to WordPress Websites.

These are just a few factors to take into consideration when building your website.  You can compete with Enterprise Websites using WordPress.  Your website requires constant monitoring and updates – no matter if it’s a small blog website or a much bigger online outlet.  Brandesigns also recommends that you use premium website templates if you are not building your site from scratch.  A robust selection of templates can be found at Themeforest.net.   Don’t scrimp on the details!  You want your website to reflect your professionalism, be easy to manage and to give your customer a world-class experience.

Contact us today to learn more about WordPress Content Management System websites. We’ll be glad to help!