Custom websites vs. WordPress

July 4, 2012

WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are powerful content management system (CMS) tools that have drastically shaped the web industry. When using these applications, a website can go live instantly. The content (text, images) can be modified without the user needed any coding experience.

This is the approach many people take, but few reek the benefits of getting a proper online identity.

I was asked to build the website for a local driving school. Unfortunately, they decided to take the WordPress approach and built the website themselves. When I visited the driving school website, not only did I automatically recognize the theme, but I realized that a website like this will never appear anywhere on Google.

Simplistics first client previously used WordPress to build their website, but found that it was an unnecessary headache. Unlike the driving school, this company decided to design their own unique theme and hire a marketing company to optimize their website. They had 8 developers work on their website, and still had issues updating the content with WordPress. I decided that I would spare this company and started the website from scratch. I scrapped WordPress and built them their own custom CMS.

Why will I spend the extra time and actually build a CMS when WordPress or Drupal exists? Am I trying to reinvent the wheel?

Unlike WordPress, a custom CMS is built around the website and its content. We find the simplest way you could modify your content based on your layout and it’s content and build that solution.