Does It Have to Look Like a Blog?

I thought I would start this section of with something WordPress related as 85% of my clients come to me with just that in mind.

A question I receive often. Does it have to look like or be a blog? A lot of potential clients come to me because someone has advised them that using WordPress is the way to go, they have also heard that it does not necessarily mean that it has to look like a blog. But… they are unsure, only because 90% of the sites they see that they know have been done in WordPress do in fact look like a blog. Nothing wrong with that, nothing at all, but there is a lot more to it.

I will start by saying this, the majority of the design/development projects that come my way could be done in WordPress, from storefront to online version of a local newspaper. That does not mean that they all need to be developed in WordPress. In the case of requiring a CMS, it also does not mean that Wordpress is the only available solution. Always go with the best solution even if that means an entirely custom solution or no CMS at all.

The bottom line is this. Your site being done in WordPress does not warrant that it look anything like a traditional blog. Fact is you can extend the power of WordPress well beyond that in both design and functionality. Sites that you come across daily and look nothing like a traditional blog may in fact have WordPress running under the hood, you’d be surprised.

So with the answer to that question out of the way, then perhaps, why choose WordPress? By choosing to go with WordPress you are opened up to a powerful management system for you web precedence that will allow you to take a lot of control over things like publishing content, editing content and maintaining the day to day business of your website.

In addition, WordPress comes prepackaged with a rapidly growing community of users, developers and contributors. What this means for you is support. The answer to your question or the solution to your problem is a click away.

Why do I choose WordPress? It interests me, I am very familiar with it front to back and it has never let me down. I return to it time and time again and it is also something that I work with frequently outside of normal business hours.

So knowing that WordPress can, in the right hands be shaped and modeled to accomplish many of the tasks that you hope for the next step is deciding whether or not it is the best solution for your project.

As I mentioned earlier it is not always the right or the only solution available. I do on occasion work outside of this platform when the project requires which goes to further illustrate my point. The right choice is something that you and your designer or developer should discuss and work out well before the project begins.

Hope that you enjoyed this article. As mentioned in the previous Client Education post, this category will be run through it’s own feed, which you can subscribe to separately. While we work to integrate it with the flow of things around here, you are welcome to subscribe here or here by email. If you find it all very interesting you can also choose to subscribe to our main feed below.