WordPress is a great tool for getting everyone involved in a website, and we have found it to be particularly useful for keeping site maintenance simple for our clients. Even better, many people are familiar with the CMS so our clients can experience a minimal learning curve and a maximum control over their site. Of course, WordPress isn’t the right choice for every site, but its benefits are numerous. Here’s the top six elements to consider when developing a site from WordPress.

1. The Golden Code
Never touch the core code. This is the code that supports the entire WordPress environment. Changing the core code is nothing short of altering the laws of physics on which the universe pulls its instructions. With it comes great potential, but it also sets the environment up for disaster when passed onto another administrator. It could be easy to think that changing the core code will make managing the site easier, but the end result is the same: ultimately these changes render updating impossible—assuming you want your plugins to stay functional after updates.

2. Build it Yourself
If you’re building a theme and you want a specific functionality, you should build it right into WordPress rather than relying on a third party. When you utilize third parties, you never know when the code might break or lose support. Plus, you’ll never find anything that will satisfy 100% of your needs without some customization. When you build a functionality from the ground up, you know from the beginning precisely what is in the code and can develop it specifically for your needs.

3. String Theory
Naturally, working in multiple environments is the standard for developing professional websites, but this creates a new element to consider when working with WordPress. The manner in which WordPress stores the data makes transferring files from one environment onto the next a more complicated process. However, because WordPress stores URLs in strings, if you ensure that each URL in each environment has the same number of characters as the final version, you can simply change out those characters as necessary. It’s crucial to keep the string length the same so moving from one environment to the next won’t leave you tied up.

4. Use Images When Possible
Menus can be an interesting element to customize in WordPress, and design wise they are a feature of much attention. When you add a page to WordPress, it adds a text link to the menu; however, certain fonts won’t display correctly once edited. Using dynamic images allows for a more customized look, so we utilized images for menu items where possible, especially because it allows us to provide specifically what the client has in mind. Images do minimize flexibility, but this works well for those who are more focused on a sharp appearance than flexibility.

5. Prepare for Your Visitors
There are two audiences for WordPress: the developer—expected to change things, create code, and update items—and the everyday user, who just wants a means to have a voice on the web. When developing a website, you have to account for your visitors. Is everything easily navigable? Searchable? Does the site provide the solution(s) your visitors came looking for? What about fellow tech-savvy users? Consideration for how the site will be used goes a long way, allowing you to predict any manner in which a visitor may try to do something unintended. There’s no way to anticipate absolutely everything someone might attempt to do, but you can make the site as difficult as possible to break. Because WordPress is so accessible, updating frequently and utilizing a proper amount of coding redundancy are two simple ways to fortify a WordPress site.

6. Functionality > Fun
When you consider the depth of time required to implement custom plugins to a WordPress site, you quickly realize that themes should always be chosen for functionality, not because it looks like the end site you want. Appearances are always easier to change than functionality, so choosing a solid customizable theme from the beginning with make incorporating your functionalities easier. You can design for any functionality, but you can’t add any functionality into just any theme. Moreover, be sure to consider the needs of your visitors when selecting this as well. Especially in a CMS like WordPress, site structure is vital to a useable site. In the end, functionality rules over fun--for now.