Building a website may seem to be a very complex thing to do. The complexities of coding, hosting and name-servers may seem to be big names that could escape over our heads any day. But ask a website developer and he would turn to you and say “It’s quite an easy job”. So what does a WordPress developer do exactly?
The moment you consider building a website, the developer comes into the picture, who then takes the onus on himself/herself to create your company’s identity online. However, have you ever wondered what a website developer does to create those stunning websites for you?
Well, if you look at the process step-by-step, you will find it to be easier than you actually considered it to be to date. Perhaps, CMS platforms like WordPress or Drupal has made life easier for newbies as well as for those experiences coders and script experts.
Here is what your WordPress website developer does once you employ him/her into building a website for you.
If you are pondering over the question of what does a WordPress developer do to set up your website, this is the first phase. This is probably the first and the most tricky step and includes the owners’ (of the website) inputs too.
Domain name is the web addresses that people type on their browser’s search bar. The reason why it is very important for you is that it should replicate the identity of your business with the most relevant address. For example, if you want a website for you ABC company, the website address should preferably be ABC.com.
Hold on a second! Did I tell you that with millions of websites already on the cloud, the availability of the desired name is questionable, unless you are willing to shell out huge bucks to buy it from another existing owner?
In simple terms, hosting is that facility that makes your website available on the internet and accessible to the billions all around. Hence, without hosting, your website is nothing but a domain that would not even show even for one device with internet.
It is also considered to be the virtual location of your website over the internet along with being the storehouse of data, information, images, videos and any other content that your website is made up of. The service provider maintains the servers so that the data that is associated with the website is available to the users without much hindrance.
Your WordPress developer will know very well which hosting company is the best for your website. Hosting packages mostly include features like the disk space (bigger packages have unlimited space), email accounts, bandwidth, etc.
Most of the hosting companies offer domain name registration too. Hence, if the developer buys the domain and hosting from the same company, he is almost good to go. However, if both the domain and hosting are from different providers, the name-servers from the domain account needs to included in the hosting account so that they are linked.
This is where the real part starts. The developer opens the C-Panel from the hosting account that gives access to a plethora of steps. As for example, you get access to using any CMS platform for your website like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc., out of which, WordPress is the easiest and most beginner-friendly.
WordPress installation takes just a minute or two and would require the setup of the admin username and password to be used to access the back end of the website. Once the installation is done, it becomes a cake walk for most of them.
Though every step following this is extremely simple and just like a trial-and-error method, it could consume a lot of time. In fact, it can be considered to be slightly tricky because the developer needs to come up to the expectation of the owner in terms of the website design.
WordPress comes with a wide range of themes that have their pre-designed skins and Homepage templates. Plus, the premium ones (which you need to buy) are better on the block as they come integrated with many plugins like WooCommerce for online store, page builders and various other designing ones.
Once the plugin is installed, the person handling your website will settle things in place, create the required menu style, design the header and add the footer menu, settle the sidebars’ content.
After the designing part is done and approved from the owner’s side, there are several website contents that need to be added. The basic, but most important, website content includes those of the “About Us” and the “Contact” Page. Additionally, if it a service-related website, there would be a lot of content required for each of the services on the “Service” pages along with a summary for the Homepage.
There are some necessary plugins that should be installed in order to keep the page website interesting and interactive. As for an example, if the website is an informative blog, there should be a plugin for the push notification for every new post that would be published.
Alternatively, most of the websites use a subscription plugin via which the visitor can simply feed in their emails and start receiving post updates and newsletters. The WordPress develop knows the know-how of the plugins and their setup process as they might be tricky for any beginner.
Setting up an e-commerce website is definitely the trickiest of them all. There are several things that need to integrate in the website that isn’t possible for any newbie. As for an example, starting from the product sliders on the header area to the customized products on the homepage, there are separate plugins that manage them.
Besides that, the installation and setup of WooCommerce for online store are slightly difficult. Moreover, checkout pages, dynamic pricing and payment gateway integration are a few of the things that would take a lot of time for any developer to come up with. But once all of these are done, the website owner can start with building the database of products.
The job of the developer isn’t over once the website is handed over to the owner as the maintenance is a continuous process. Just because the hosting and domain are handled by the developer, making sure that the up-time, load time and server are working at the best becomes a part of the job.
Also, in most cases, there is an urgency to keep updating the website and its layout to suit the situation, especially in cases of an e-commerce website design and development. Normally, an e-commerce site runs various sales and deals that are dynamic based on the occasion.
After having run through almost all of the things that a WordPress developer does to get a website spring to life, you might consider hiring one, especially if you have a complex business idea in your head. Though many people prefer doing things themselves with the help of the internet, it would only be the elementary website design that would be possible, just like any standard informative blog. For anything that is slightly more complex than that, the developer is the best-equipped personnel to handle the stuff.
Having said that, the owner involvement in the entire process is a must, especially at the time of website designing the front-end of the website. In some cases, developers make several attempts at the designing just to get the layout approved by the owners. Also, the web contents and the requirements are all put forward by the owners and the developer works on it.
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