Lies You May Have Been Told About WordPress.
If you have been looking for help with your existing website or you have been looking for someone to build a website for you or you had a local person or company build your site for you and something isn’t working the way you want it to work you may have heard some of these lies.
And I didn’t make any of this up. All of these lies are things clients or friends of mine have been told. I can’t make this up.
1. It will cost $1000 to make your website responsive.
Not if it’s WordPress.
It’s 2020 as I write this. Any and all WordPress themes written these days will be responsive and modify how they display for phones and tablets. If you theme is not responsive you should seriously consider getting a new theme.
You don’t need to pay $1000 for a theme. There are almost four thousand themes available for free from WordPress.org. One of them will work for you.
2. You have to use a custom theme and you have to pay us to write it for you.
No. You may need a customizable theme. But you don’t need a custom theme.
The lie you are being told, maybe not explicitly but via vagueness and omission, by the person lying to you is that he is going to write a custom WordPress theme for you. From scratch. Starting with no code at all.
That’s simply not true. He is going to take the same code he uses on everyone’s WordPress site and customize it for your site. It’s the same thing and it’s not the same thing. He might have at one time written custom code and he might use that as the base for each website. But it’s not “custom.” It’s “customized.” Different? Same? Yes and no and maybe.
Further more since he has sold you a “custom” theme that means the only person who knows enough to update or change the theme will be him. Your website is now being held hostage.
And that’s why he will tell you it will cost $1000 to make your site responsive.
You may also hear this one…
3. If we build your website you have to host it on our servers.
If it’s WordPress it will run on any server. As long as the hosting company has MySQL databases you can host your WordPress site there. All hosting companies offer MySQL database capability. I have run across some hosting companies that limit the number of MySQL databases you can have. That should make you consider another hosting company.
People and companies who insist you host your WordPress site on their servers are only doing this to make more money and to hold your website hostage.
By the way, the company that is going to write this custom responsive theme for you, which requires you host your site on their servers, doesn’t have any servers. What they do is buy a package called resale hosting from Bluehost or some other company. Bluehost sells them a server which they then split up and charge you money for. You’re still buying from Bluehost. Only now you are paying a middle man.
The next lie you will hear is . . .
4. If you want to update, change, delete, or add anything on your site we have to do that for you. WordPress is too complicated for you to use.
WordPress is not too complicated for you to use. Well, excluding the block editor. But everyone hates the block editor and some consider it the biggest mistake in the history of WordPress. And that’s why ClassicPress is a thing. Other than the block editor WordPress is easy to use. That’s one reason for it’s popularity. If you can create a document in Microsoft Word or a slide in Microsoft Powerpoint you already know how to use WordPress.
WordPress is not too complicated for you to use. If you think it is I can teach you to use WordPress.
That when you’ll hear the next lie . . .
5. We can’t let you have administrator access or FTP access to your site because that is a security risk.
This one is kinda true. Having an FTP account and admin access are “security risks”. Guess what. Having a website is a security risk.
Did you know that every web site that has ever been hacked is on the internet. Your web site will also be on the internet. It might get hacked.
I have bad news for you. Being alive is a death risk.
Did you know that 100% of people who have died were previously alive? You should stop being alive right now or you’re gonna die. Living is a death risk.
Sounds stupid don’t it? So does the idiot who told you this.
Having a website really is a security risk. How much of a risk is up to you. Do you have a hard to guess user name? Do you have a strong password? Do you have a firewall plugin which is configured correctly? Do you backup your files and database?
There are ways to make your site secure.
You not having access to your own website will not make your website secure.
6. Only we can administrate your site. You can’t fire us.
If it’s WordPress anyone can administrate the site. Including you. Or me if you so desire.
How they usually screw you is by writing a “custom” theme for you, or using plugins and a theme which only they can get support for, or by making things so complex and convoluted only they know what’s going on.
I’ve had clients bring me sites like this. I replace the theme. I remove the unnecessary plugins. I replace the things I can’t get support for. And everything is good.
7. One more lie. The “only one chance so give us money” lie.
I knew someone who had multiple blogs. She was considering merging all the blogs together at one domain name as one website. She was quoted an outrageous amount of money for doing this. The justification she was give for the high price was that there was only “one chance to get it right” and that’s why it would cost so much money. Because of the risk. The “once chance only.” She ended up not doing it.
“One chance to get it right” my ass. That is a complete lie.
Without getting stupid technical on you – all the posts in your WordPress site are contained in the database. What she needed to do was take multiple databases and combine them. Since the database is a computer file you can make unlimited copies of it.
You copy the databases. You merge them. You test it. If you messed up you try again.
Once it’s working on a test site, you simply upload the working database to the real site.
I’m not saying there is no complexity involved in what she wanted to do. I’m saying there are unlimited chances to get it right.
There is no “one chance to get it right”. This is the sort of lie people will tell you to make you afraid and give them money out of fear.
Why The Lies?
The person lying to you simply wants your money. So do I.
Let me be clear about this.
I. Want. Your. Money.
The difference between me and some of the other people trying to sell you a website is that:
- I don’t want to hold your website hostage.
- I don’t want to scare you.
- I don’t want to over complicate things.
I want you to give me your money because I’m creating value for you.
Because I’m enhancing your understanding of the joy & pain of running a website.
Because working with me is making your life better and easier.
And ’cause sometimes I’m pretty damn entertaining. I don’t even charge extra for that.
When WordPress Art and Science creates a website for you I can be fired at any time.
You will own everything.
- If we need to buy a theme for your site it will be purchased in your name. You will own it.
- If any plugins have to be purchased for your site they will be purchased in your name. You will own them.
- You will have the user name and password for Jetpack and Google analytics.
- You will have FTP and administrator access. I will have a separate login.
- You will own the hosting package, the domain name, and have cPanel access.
- You can fire me any time I don’t do my job to your satisfaction. You will have all the passwords and access which you can turn over to someone else and they can take over.
I do not take hostages.
If you are interested in having a webmaster you freely associate with then contact me to find out if I’m the person to work with in the process of building your website or rebuilding an existing site or administrating your exiting site.