Category: Wordpress

How much does a website cost?

Robert | February 24, 2019 | Wordpress

How much does a website cost? That is the $1 million question.

The short answer

Basic Website

A basic website is usually 10 to 20 pages or less, with standard pages such as home, about us, services or products pages, menu pages for a restaurant or room pages for a hotel, contact, etc. A basic website uses an off-the-shelf theme with little to no customisations and typically has limited functionality. Cost: $500 to $1,500

Intermediate Website

An intermediate website is typically defined by more complex designs and more pages — usually 15 to 30 pages with some customising of an off-the-shelf theme. It may include third-party integrations such as Stripe (a payment gateway), custom mapping solutions, or some basic ecommerce functionality. Cost: $1,000 to $3,500

Advanced Website

An advanced website is generally defined by custom designs and often includes advanced functionality such as forums, ecommerce, reservation systems, etc. Costs: $2,000 to ??

The long answer

The truth is, there is no simple answer to the question: How much does a website cost? (Beware of anyone who says there is.) Asking how much a website costs is a bit like asking how much does a house cost?

It varies. A lot. And there are dozens of factors that influence the final price.

Do you need a basic “brochure” website with a few pages of text and photos and a contact form? Or do you want to sell things online in your own custom-branded ecommerce store?

The former can be done in a few days, the latter a few weeks.

Obviously, the longer a website takes to make, the more it will cost, as time is the single most important factor in determining a website’s cost.

2 main factors that determine a website’s cost

The amount of time required to create a website is largely influenced by 2 main factors: design and functionality.

By design we mean the look and feel of the website. Are simple pages with just text and images enough, or does the website require flashy animations and complex user interactions?

By functionality we mean: what does the web site do, or what functions does the site need to provide? Is a simple contact form enough, or do you want to sell things, take payments and track shipping?

Determining the time and cost of a website

For most individuals and SMEs, there are 3 ways to approach the question of website building and cost. Each of them boil down to time and money. How many hours or days will it take to make your website? Then multiply that by an hourly or daily rate, and you have a price.

Price = Days * Day Rate

The following guide is based on the assumption that you are creating a website with WordPress. If you think that WordPress is not capable of getting the job done, I recommend you get a second opinion. Call me.

Basic: Use an existing WordPress theme

This is the least expensive and fastest way to get a website online. There are tons of high-quality themes available from several reputable outlets. Choose an existing theme. Add your content. And your done.

Find themes at:

WordPress (free)
https://wordpress.org/themes/

Theme Forest (not free, but WordPress themes are typically less than $100)
https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress

PROS:
Low cost. Up and running fast.

CONS:
Limited design and functionality options. You get what the theme gives you, and nothing else.

Intermediate: Customise an existing WordPress theme

This is a very popular option. It allows you to save on the time and costs of developing your own custom theme, but still gives you the possibility to tailor your off-the-shelf theme into something more personal.

PROS:
Allows you to tailor your site to fit your specific business needs without incurring all the time and cost of developing a custom theme.

CONS:
Customising an existing theme can only go so far.

Advanced: Custom WordPress theme

Create a custom WordPress theme from scratch. This is the most time-consuming and expensive option, but often times it’s the only real solution for a serious business with well-defined branding and a mature company identity, or a website that needs advanced functionality such as ecommerce or third-party integrations.

Need to know more: Talk to K4 Media today.

Web sites for cheap

Robert | January 24, 2019 | Wordpress

Are you looking for a great web site on the cheap?

There is the old adage that says cheap things aren’t good and good things aren’t cheap. And in the case of WordPress, that’s almost true. Good things aren’t cheap — they’re free!

In fact, the world’s leading content management system costs nothing. And you can be up and running with your own web site in under a day.

Quite simply, there is nothing better than WordPress for making web sites. And not just cheap ones (although that’s a great place to start). With WordPress, you can build simple blog sites, simple restaurant sites, company brochures, and even full-blown ecommerce sites. There is nothing WordPress can’t do. And all for very little money.

Get started with WordPress.

And if you need help along the way, get in touch.

Disable Gutenberg

Robert | January 20, 2019 | Wordpress, Plugins
By Willi Heidelbach, CC BY 2.5

Gutenberg is the new text editor from WordPress that is rolling out with the 5.0 update. It’s a HUGE change from previous versions of the text editor. As WordPress explains:

We call the new editor Gutenberg. The entire editing experience has been rebuilt for media rich pages and posts. Experience the flexibility that blocks will bring, whether you are building your first site, or write code for a living.

Gutenberg makes it easy to build rich media pages with blocks. It will revolutionize page building in WordPress.

But.

It’s going to take some getting used to. And in the meantime, people are going to grumble. And complain. And scream. And throw their hands up and shout “I hate it!”

For those people, Jeff Starr made a plugin called Disable Gutenberg, which will disable Gutenberg and enable the old editor. The plugin will also allow you to disable Gutenberg per user, post, post type, or template. If you are not ready for Gutenberg, Starr’s plugin is exactly what you need.

For further options and ways to disable Gutenberg, read Starr’s article How to Disable Gutenberg: Complete Guide.

WordPress 5.0. What’s new?

Robert | January 7, 2019 | Wordpress

WordPress 5.0 dropped December 6, 2018. The release is being touted as the most dramatic update to WordPress in 15 years. So what’s new? Techarim hits the highlights.

  1. Gutenburg Editor
  2. Twenty Nineteen Theme
  3. Easier development, updated APIs

For users, the greatest addition in 5.0 is the Gutenburg editor, which is WordPress’s own page builder. Gutenburg uses drag-and-drop “blocks” that allow users to create their own page layouts. For a full analysis check out Smashing Magazine’s The Complete Anatomy Of The Gutenberg WordPress Editor. There’s also a Gutenburg video and tutorials from WordPress.

Just a month old, Gutenburg has yet to get the development community fully behind it. But give it time. Gutenburg is powerful, and it will redefine how designers approach WordPress theme building. For a good preview, checkout Colorlib’s list of 30+ Gutenburg-compatible themes.

Twenty Nineteen Theme

WordPress releases a new default theme every year. Twenty Nineteen is Gutenburg-ready.

The importance of keeping WP up-to-date

Robert | September 25, 2018 | Wordpress, Security

Malware Bytes reports of a non-trivial uptick in compromised WordPress sites.

During the past few days, our crawlers have been catching a larger-than-usual number of WordPress sites being hijacked. One of the most visible client-side payloads we see are redirections to tech support scam pages. Digging deeper, we found that this is part of a series of attacks that have compromised thousands of WordPress sites since early September. … The sites that are affected are running the WordPress CMS and often using outdated plugins.

Keeping WordPress up-to-date is essential, as is running a good security plugin. We recommend Wordfence. If you need help locking down your WordPress installation or keeping it up-to-date, contact us. We offer monitoring and updates services for as little as $35 per month.

 

Top 4 WordPress plugins

Robert | February 19, 2017 | Uncategorized, Plugins, Wordpress

Every web site project will use plugins to compliment the core functionality of WordPress. These are our Top 4.

  1. Yoast SEO
    Yoast SEO is the No. 1 Wordpress plugin for search engine optimization. Along with a properly coded WordPress theme, it is a cornerstone in the foundation of your WordPress site (assuming you want customers to find you, that is). The Yoast SEO plugin also makes it easy to effectively share your web site on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. It generates site maps, hooks into Google Web master tools, and provides other essential features that every web site needs
  2. BackUpWordPress
    Does exactly what it says, with the option to schedule backups for only files, only the database, or a combination thereof.
  3. Wordfence
    The leading security plugin on the market, with over 22 million downloads
  4. Smush Image Compression and Optimization
    Widely known as WP Smush It — or sometimes just Smush It or Smush — this plugin from WPMU Dev optimizes images as you upload them to WordPress. And since bloated images are the leading cause of slow web sites, this is one plugin you can’t afford to live without

There are many other plugins that we use widely, but these are part of every project no matter the scale or scope.

Learning WordPress: 4 links to jump-start your education

Robert | February 6, 2017 | Wordpress

Ready to learn WordPress? Two of the many great things about the platform is that one, it is extremely well-documented, and two, there is a thriving ecosystem that supports it. Jump on these 4 links to get moving.

New To WordPress – Where to Start

If you’re just diving into WordPress, knowing where to begin is no easy question to answer. Are you going to be a user or a developer? Both? This page from the official WordPress manual is the perfect place to start.

How to Learn WordPress: 7-Day Challenge

This 7-day plan from WPMU will get you up and running inside a week. Topics include:

  • setting up your first WordPress site
  • choosing the right theme
  • an introduction to plugins
  • strategies for backing up (hint: it’s important)

How to Learn WordPress for Free in a Week (or Less)

A shorter version of the above with lots of great links, such as posts vs pages and categories vs tags. The 7-day plan above is far more thorough, but this one from WP Beginner will get you up and running faster.

Get Going Fast: A Checklist

This quick-start guide from WordPress.com skips the background info and gets straight to it. You’ll be online with your own site by the end of the day.

 

Google page speed 100

Robert | May 10, 2016 | Wordpress, Notable, SEO

No one likes to wait for a slow web page. But blinding fast sites don’t just happen.

For those that don’t know, Google PageSpeed is a free tool that assesses the performance and usability of your website for mobile and desktop platforms. It’s extra important because Google uses it in determining key elements of our SEO ranking, i.e. how high we appear in their search results.

On our first pass recently, the K4 Media site scored 86. Not bad. But not great. WordPress doesn’t make it easy, either, with bloated themes and unnecessary plugins. If your aim is Page Speed 100, however, Jeff Reifman at Tutsplus shows you the way.