I am a big believer in WordPress and use it for 95%+ of my client websites. They are constantly upgrading the CMS and at this point I wouldn’t consider using any other software. But, as with most things in life there are some things I’d like to see improved. My number one pet peeve is the random nature of theme updates. Now what do I mean by this? When you log into your WordPress, some themes give you a notice that there’s an update. The problem is that there are different ways of upgrading themes.
Here are a few:
The scary thing is there isn’t always good documentation on how to upgrade themes. Some vendors do a much better job than others. Some of the premium themes make it very easy, and not only offer an automatic update you can just click on, but they also have a mechanism for patching along the way.
Here’s where I think:
WordPress can improve. I think there needs to be a uniform method of updating themes. I think there needs to be away that people can have a one click update, AND also have a mechanism to revert back in case the theme update corrupts the website.
I also feel that WordPress should try and require theme vendors to have a minimum standard of documentation for updating themes. Besides dealing with the three methods, some themes also have strange quirks.
Here’s an example:
A theme I really like a lot has a one click theme update as I mentioned above in method number one. But as I found out the other day the entire header region disappears after making a team update. The logo, menu, and entire top of the site literally disappears.
Why?
Well, they have a header builder and when you upgraded the theme you lose your settings. Now, I reverted back and figured out there is a way to save your header settings. I then updated the theme and then could use those old settings. While this was simple enough, it was not very clear and an inexperienced website owner or developer would not have known what to do, other then perhaps open a service ticket with the theme vendor.
In Closing:
WordPress is the number one CMS in the world. But as with any open-source software, there is a random nature in the way some people develop their plug-ins and themes. I think that it is in WordPress’ best interest to have some standards which themes and plug-ins have to follow. This will make the user experience much better. And after all, WordPress owes its success to providing the world’s most user friendly content management system.
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Now you ask what does this have to do with web development and design?
I will explain. One day we were talking about a project I was bidding on and didn’t get because I was a bit more expensive than my competitor (although I was giving them a lot more for the money). That is when he said to me “You buy a product or you buy a price”
Interesting expression. But think about it, all websites are not created equal just as all products aren’t created equal. But what he was talking about was that people who will just choose the lowest price are not necessarily looking for the best product, in this case a website. They just want the cheapest price, period.
I ran into this a few months ago with a service professional. We had a great meeting and seemed to be on the same page. He came to me because I has done a website for someone with a similar business. He was very quick to knock this person saying he didn’t have all the same licensing and credentials and although he was cheaper, he wasn’t nearly as good as he was….Interesting!
Fast-forward a week, I had sent him a proposal and didn’t hear back. He said he was going to decide in the coming weeks between me and a couple of other companies but that one of the companies was much cheaper. So, he was going to buy the price not the product. It was funny because he had just told me the difference between him and one of his competitors was that his competitor was cheaper, BUT they didn’t have his skills or licensing. I understood this and I responded that just like you there a lot of people who are in the same business as me, they may deliver you a better price, but they’ll never deliver a better website or provide maintenance after the site is live.
But my friend the carpenter was correct, people either shop for price or they shop for a Product. You’ll never get the person whose decision is just based on price alone, as that’s all they’re looking for, cheap. Although, many times they come back to us because they’re unsatisfied with not only the website they just built, but with the support afterwards. As we are one of the only companies in the United States that focuses on the maintenance of websites, many times we get clients for just that reason. Although some companies can build a kick ass site, they don’t really want to support them, they want to design it build it and get out and move onto next project. We are here for the long haul.
Bottom line: what I usually advise people to do is look at the whole picture, the person’s portfolio, but more importantly their support after sites launch. Check with some of the people that have used the developer. Was it a good experience? Then look at the price, if all things are equal, then of course choose the best price. However if you like the other company better you may say “listen your price was a bit too high can we do something about that?” As I am always looking for long-term clients, I typically will give someone a discount if they were going to be one of our hosting and support clients. So there are very few cases where I’ll loses site over matter of a couple hundred dollars.
UPDATE: I just checked and the company I wrote about in this post still hasn’t launched their new site. (We would have had this launched in 30 days) Apparently he got what he paid for…
