Website Design @ WordPress website design process

Who is the target audience: Business Owner, Person-In-Charge of Website Design Projects & Website Designer

Before we managed to build our own LarveeCMS, we were using WordPress as our primary platform for all of our clients website design projects. Like most of other web design companies in Singapore and Malaysia, we use common “WordPress website design” process to design and build ours and our clients websites.

These are the common process we use:

1. Theme Selection ( by client )
2. Website Requirement Gathering ( by website designer and client )
3. Theme Amendment & Customization ( by website designer )
4. Website Development – WordPress Plugin Installation & Integration ( by website designer )
5. Website Content Insertion ( by website designer )
6. WordPress Website Deployment & Go Live ( by website designer )
7. Website Maintenance ( by website designer )

Select a WordPress Theme

First process of WordPress website design is theme selection. Most of the web design companies are using this method instead of design a unique website visual, User Interface ( UI ) and User Experience ( UX ).

The process starts with you, as a client, selecting a preferred WordPress theme or template from themeforest.net, a theme website selling wide variety of themes. Usually, website designer will shortlist a few themes that is compatible with the latest WordPress version for you to choose from.

Once you’ve selected a theme, website designer will customize and amend the theme according to your requirement.

This is the most common method. However, as you may have thought of it whereby, why not most of the web design companies in Singapore and Malaysia develop a unique design of WordPress theme instead of customizing the existing theme.

Like most of web design companies, Web Temple too, we do not really want to go into design and develop unique WordPress theme. The reason is that it not cost effective at all (too expensive) to maintain for business owners as mentioned in our previous post, click here for Using WordPress for Business Website is The Most Cost Effective Solution? post.

Website Requirement Gathering

Second process of website design project is website requirement gathering. In order for website designer to build a new website that fulfill your requirement, he or she needs the requirement of website visual and User Experience ( UX ), the look and feel of the new website and the functionalities of your new website ( WordPress Plugin ).

Theme Amendment & Customization

Upon new website requirement has been gathered, website designer will start WordPress theme customization according to your requirement. Customization process involves customization of the design of the theme in terms of its color, images, fonts and orientation.

WordPress Website Development

At this stage of WordPress website design process, website designer performs installation of the WordPress core on a development server, integration of customized theme, installation and integration of WordPress plugins. Upon the installation and integration of WordPress and its theme and plugins is completed, customization of plugins according to your requirement started.

Most of the plugins used by most of the web design companies in Singapore and Malaysia are developed by 3rd party developer as a standard plugin with standard functionalities which means, most of the 3rd party developers especially those providing WordPress plugin for free, only do bug-fix (fixing technical issue that surfaced after the release of the plugin) and not plugin customization ( not amendment of the plugin to provide more or customized features ). Therefore, customization of the required WordPress plugins are fully relying on the website designer who is going to build your WordPress website.

Unfortunately, customization of the WordPress plugins is a tricky task that involves studying and hacking ( code modification ) of the plugins. The best result of plugins customization is that it can be completed and its not conflict with other plugins. Such result is harder to reach when there are more plugins involved.

In most of the WordPress plugin customization cases in WordPress website development, the following situations are most likely to happen:

1. WordPress plugins conflict with other plugins or theme
2. Failed to customize the plugins due to lack of coding knowledge or due to some portion of the plugin cannot be customized
3. Customized plugins cause other portion of the WordPress website failed to operate properly
4. Customized plugins cause security threads
5. Customization plugins cause slow performance in future which require more maintenance efforts in maintaining your website performance

For more information about how does these situation may affect your website and future maintenance of your website, click here for Using WordPress for Business Website is The Most Cost Effective Solution?.

WordPress Website Deployment & Go Live

Once you have verified the new WordPress website, website designer deploys ( installation of the WordPress website to web hosting server ) the completed WordPress website on the web hosting server and put it to live.

Website Maintenance

Once the deployment of the new WordPress website has been completed, the website maintenance starts. The maintenance of WordPress website involves in updating the WordPress core, theme and plugins.

Updating the WordPress website can be costly and require quite a lot of work to be done. Unfortunately, most of the it is out of reach as most of the WordPress theme and plugins are developed by 3rd party developers. For more information about how WordPress website maintenance works and why it’s not the most cost effective solution for business, click here for Using WordPress for Business Website is The Most Cost Effective Solution?