WordPress developer in San Diego

A ready-made theme suits a small, simple site with a modest brief. You configure an existing design, but it may load features you never use, and substantial changes to its layout can be difficult. A page builder such as Elementor or Divi gives your editors drag-and-drop freedom, with a different trade-off: pages can be heavier, layouts can be broken during editing, and content can become tied to the builder.

A custom theme with Advanced Custom Fields suits a site with structured content and a fixed layout. Your editors fill in fields instead of adjusting the design each time they publish. That gives you a more controlled editing experience, so it helps to decide which information needs its own field before settling on the theme.

Headless WordPress keeps WordPress as the editor while using a separate front end, such as Next.js, for the pages visitors see. It suits a site that needs very fast pages or app-like features. It also makes hosting more complex, and some WordPress plugins stop working, so check the features you need before choosing it.

For a business open to the public, the ADA covers goods and services offered on the web; WCAG provides useful guidance for the build. We use that guidance when setting up page structure and reviewing how visitors access the site's content.

If you use the site to support commercial email, CAN-SPAM affects the email setup. We include a valid physical postal address and a clear opt-out in the email template, and set up a way to handle opt-out requests.

Bring what you have available, along with notes about how your team uses the site.

• List your editors and the content they change most often, such as news or job posts.
• Gather administrator access to your site, hosting and domain, plus a list of plugins and their purposes.
• List connections you need, such as a booking system or CRM, and have account access ready.
• Note plans for sales, memberships, courses or several languages; each can shape plugin choice.
• Sketch the content types, fields and blocks your editors need before the theme is designed.

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  Giving everyone administrator access

  Use editor and author roles for staff who do not need full control. That limits the damage from a stolen login.

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  Avoiding updates

  Outdated plugins are a frequent route into hacked sites. Test updates on staging first to reduce the risk of applying them.

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  Updating without a backup

  Back up the site's files and database before an update, so you have a restore point if something breaks.

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  Adding a plugin for every small feature

  Check its purpose first. Extra plugins can slow the site, conflict with each other and add to the update workload.