Designer & Developer
WordPress is more than a powerful content management system, it’s an ecosystem. Third party developers and service providers are steadily cranking out themes and plugins. The fact that they work as well as they do is proof of WordPress’s solid software design and architecture. However, when it comes to an installation, WordPress’s simplicity belies its complexity. The fact that things are very easy to install, does not mean installations are trouble free.
I provide technicial management, diagnostics, defense, backup and monitoring for lots of WordPress sites. WordPress updates are issued several times a year – often for security reasons. Upgrading a simple site is very simple, but upgrading a site with lots of plugins and complex themes can expose compatibility issues.
I research and test WordPress security plugins and general means to improve security. When asked to remove malware from a site, I can analyze it to see what it was doing. Most hacks are "SEO hacks", but others are probes, looking to break into the database or web host. Some hacks know how to hide from bots and users and are difficult to detect. I also have a proprietary code scanning tool that can find malware that security plugins can miss.
There are many factors that can slow a WordPress site down and the cause is not always obvious. Is it the web host, the content, a memory-hogging plugin or something else? Whatever it is, I provide techncial analysis and performance optimizations for high-traffic sites that may be using third party ad services and CDNs.
A good WordPress site takes about 2.5 seconds to load. With my theme, they load in about 1.5 seconds, and not by sacrificing the look or all of the images. It is simply good product design and attention to technical details.
I provide one-stop custom theme & plugin development, as well as third party theme modification & repair.
I convert traditional sites to WordPress, as well as migrate sites from other content management systems or host-to-host. I also integrate backend and frontend systems and operations.
WordPress is generally not the problem. The problem tends to be the themes and plugins, the publishers who make them and people who want to believe that whatever the problem is, there is a plugin that can solve it. If your only tool is a plugin, every problem means you are installing another plugin. Every plugin increases the risk of compatibility and resource issues.
Can’t performance/caching plugins solve speed issues? Sometimes, but performance plugins can also interfere with other types of plugins without there necessarily being a compatibility issue.
Can’t CDNs solve the problem? A CDN only delivers content. It doesn’t optimize the content for the end user’s device.
Every site is different. It needs to be tested before and after. In general, the less a site needs these things, the better these things work. Although there may be cases where a CDN or plugin really makes all the difference, the more a site relies on them, the more fragile the benefits become.