WordPress Development Servicesthemes, plugins, stores and care, chosen on evidence

WordPress.org provides the free, open-source software that you install on your own hosting. You control the code, plugins, themes and data, and you are responsible for updates, backups and security. WordPress.com is a hosted service that runs WordPress for you, with plans that limit which plugins and code changes are allowed. Custom development, WooCommerce and integrations nearly always use the self-hosted version.

Avoid WordPress when the workflow is the product, such as booking engines with complex rules, financial ledgers or collaborative real-time tools; when you hold very large, highly relational datasets; or when you want a native mobile app. A rarely changing one-pager may suit static HTML, which has less to patch and costs less to host. We will say so honestly during discovery rather than after a proposal.

It depends on scope, so we quote after discovery rather than guess. The main drivers are the number of unique templates, the content model, custom functionality, commerce rules, migration volume, integrations, performance and accessibility targets, languages, and hosting requirements. A site built from a few reusable patterns costs far less than one with many bespoke layouts. The cost table on this page shows what pushes the price up or down.

Typical ranges, which depend on scope and how quickly content and approvals arrive, are about 4 to 8 weeks for a focused marketing site, 8 to 14 weeks for a content site with custom post types and integrations, 8 to 16 weeks for a WooCommerce store, and 12 to 24 weeks for a headless build. Late content is the most common cause of delay.

There is no magic number. Each plugin adds an update to test, a vendor to trust and code on every request, so each needs a clear purpose. We check when it was last updated, active installs, support responsiveness, vulnerability history, overlap with core or other plugins, and how much code it loads. We keep a register of every plugin.

We can limit avoidable losses, but nobody can promise rankings will not move after a change. A careful migration crawls the old site, builds a one-to-one 301 redirect map, keeps titles, canonicals and structured data, tests forms and tracking, handles DNS and email cutover, and blocks staging from search. Afterwards we check Search Console for errors.

We plan to Google's good Core Web Vitals thresholds at the 75th percentile of real visits: Largest Contentful Paint 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift 0.1 or less. Field data from Search Console or PageSpeed Insights decides pass or fail, while lab tools help find causes. We fix causes, not scores.