How to build a WordPress website for a client: Introduction

I see a lot of small agencies and freelancers struggling with the concept of building client sites using the WordPress Block Editor and Site Editor. So I’m beginning a series of blog posts to explain—in simple terms—what I’ve learned over the past five-and-a-half years working with these tools in WordPress.

I offer technical, training, programming and conceptual support for partner agencies and freelancers through my agency Say Hello: either on-site or via email, Slack or video call. Get in touch if you’d like to discuss what options I provide. I am fluent in English, German and Swiss German, and my daily rate is means-adjusted for international work.

WordPress Core provides the foundations for building a website with a content management system. It’s been continually developed and improved for over twenty-one years now, and the commitment to modern development as well as supporting legacy third-party web servers and technologies has reaped huge rewards: more than 62% of all websites built on content-management systems run on WordPress.

What’s more important than the system’s popularity is: can WordPress in its current version fulfil the needs of site owners and be used and extended by freelancers and agencies? Is the system easy to use and extend? What can one achieve with the baseline of the technology? How (or why) should we extend WordPress, what options are available to do so, and what are the advantages and pitfalls?

The Block Editor (in 2018) and the Site Editor (in 2022, also referred to as Full Site Editing) were both sea changes in how we approach building sites. If you’re new to the technology, it’s not always clear what the best approach is, and it’s rarely easy to get started.

This is the introductory post in a series and each post which will come online at a regular interval. I tend to write long unless I’m slowed-down, so each aspect of the process will be shared in an individual post, so that it remains focused.

There’s no fee to access the content: the series will be publicly and freely available, and shared under the Creative Commons CC0 license: you can do what you want with it. A link back to this overview page would be most appreciated, though.

If you’d like to receive emails from me whenever a new post is published, please consider subscribing to my newsletter using the form at the bottom of the page. The whole of this series of blog posts is here.