Building a New WordPress Website: Getting the Best from Your Budget

When setting out to develop a new website, choosing the right tools and approaches can significantly impact the success of your project.

When it comes to building a WordPress website, maximising your budget while ensuring quality, security, and performance is paramount. In this article, we'll delve into some key strategies and tools to get the most out of your budget when embarking on a WordPress website project.

1. Leveraging Roots Bedrock for a Solid Foundation

When it comes to laying the groundwork for your WordPress site, starting with a strong foundation is crucial. This is where Roots Bedrock comes into play. Bedrock offers several advantages that contribute to enhanced security, improved performance, easier scalability, and streamlined development.

Improved Security:?

One of the standout features of Bedrock is its enhanced security measures. By separating the application code from the WordPress core and adopting a better folder structure, Bedrock minimises the risk of security vulnerabilities. This separation makes it harder for attackers to access sensitive files, thereby bolstering the overall security posture of your website.

Better Performance:

Bedrock harnesses modern development tools like Composer and NPM to optimise the performance of your WordPress site. By leveraging these tools, developers can streamline dependencies and improve the overall efficiency of their codebase, resulting in a faster and more responsive website.

Easier Scalability:

Scaling your WordPress site becomes more manageable with Bedrock's improved folder structure and dependency management. Whether you're experiencing rapid growth or planning for future expansion, Bedrock provides the flexibility and scalability you need to accommodate evolving requirements.

Easier Development:

Bedrock simplifies the development process by offering a modern workflow tailored specifically for WordPress. With separate configs for each environment (development, staging, production), developers can work more efficiently and minimise the risk of errors or discrepancies between environments. Furthermore, version controlling WordPress with Bedrock is more efficient, as only the necessary files are included, reducing repository size and enhancing manageability.

2. Simplified Theme Development with Parent/Child Themes

For custom WordPress theme development, Selesti recommends adopting a Parent/Child theme structure. This approach offers several benefits, including easier maintenance, reduced conflicts, and improved development efficiency.

Parent Theme:

The Parent theme remains unmodified and can be easily updated via Composer. This minimises conflicts and issues during future maintenance, ensuring smooth updates and compatibility with the latest WordPress releases.

Child Theme:

Developers can create a Child theme that extends the functionality of the Parent theme without cluttering the codebase. By isolating modifications to the Child theme, developers can identify and resolve conflicts more effectively, streamlining the development process and enhancing maintainability.

3. Utilising Just Enough Build Tools

When it comes to build tools, simplicity is key. Developers can often get caught up with adding build tools based on fads and trends, but the key really is to keep things simple. Selesti advocates for incorporating lightweight build tools like Parcel to optimise CSS and JS files for production. Parcel is easy to set up and offers simple integration with WordPress themes, allowing developers to focus on building without getting bogged down by complex build configurations.

4. Installing Plugins via Composer

Managing plugins via Composer offers several advantages, including faster installation and easier maintenance. By leveraging Composer, developers can streamline the plugin installation process, ensuring that dependencies are managed efficiently and updates can be applied seamlessly.

5. Leveraging Advanced Custom Fields Pro with Gutenberg

For managing custom fields and content, Selesti recommends using Advanced Custom Fields Pro in conjunction with the Gutenberg block editor. This combination allows developers to harness the power of Gutenberg while retaining the flexibility and ease of use offered by ACF. By integrating ACF blocks with Gutenberg, developers can expedite the development process and deliver feature-rich content without sacrificing efficiency. Selesti can also speed build time and reduce budget sometimes by up to 30% by sacrificing ‘nice-to-have’ features such as block previews in the WP Admin Gutenberg Block editor. These can, of course, be added at a later date when future development budgets allow.

5. Streamline Design with Block-Based Components

Simplifying designs into block-based components compatible with the Gutenberg editor accelerates development. When components are structured this way, they become more reusable across the entire website, potentially on most, if not all, pages. This diminishes the time needed to construct similar, and sometimes identical, components across various page or post templates. Once again, ACF Pro proves invaluable in this regard when paired with Gutenberg. A block component can be crafted once and then applied to specific or all templates, facilitating the management of available components for each template. This approach can either simplify page layout options if necessary or introduce a comprehensive template option that includes all block choices. The decision ultimately hinges on the project's requirements.

Conclusion:

In summary, building a new WordPress website demands a meticulous selection of tools, methodologies, and industry best practices to maximise your budget and attain exceptional outcomes. Through Selesti's extensive experience in WordPress website development, we have honed the art of leveraging tools such as Roots Bedrock, embracing a Parent/Child theme structure, integrating lightweight build tools, managing plugins via Composer, and exploiting the capabilities of Advanced Custom Fields Pro with Gutenberg.

By adopting these strategies, we empower our clients to create high-quality WordPress websites that align seamlessly with their objectives while adhering to budget constraints. With the strategic allocation of resources and a focus on efficiency, we enable you to unlock the full potential of your investment, ensuring your website stands out amidst today's fiercely competitive digital landscape.

If you're ready to embark on your WordPress project journey, why not reach out to us today? Let's discuss how Selesti can help you realise your vision and bring your WordPress project to life.