Do You Need a Web Developer to Build a WordPress Site?

If you’re building a WordPress site or considering building one, you wonder whether you need a web developer to create it or you can do it yourself.

The answer can be “Yes” or “No” depending on computer skills, experience with web development, time availability, and your website’s needs. If you want to build a straightforward blog with an existing, free WordPress theme, you can do it with basic computer skills.

However, the larger and more complicated your site gets, the more you may need to hire a WordPress developer to do the job for you.

Let’s dive deeper into whether you can build a WordPress website on your own and the cases where you’d benefit from a professional.

Key Takeaways

• WordPress is accessible enough to allow people without technical knowledge to build a website on their own.
• However, large, complicated websites can be challenging or impossible for someone without web development experience.
• Examples of cases when you need a WordPress developer include needing a custom theme or plugin, migrating from a different content management system (CMS) to WordPress, and performing ongoing maintenance for website elements that you don’t know how to manage yourself.

Do You Need a Developer to Build a WordPress Site, or Can You Build One Yourself?

Depending on the scope of the project, you can build a WordPress site by yourself or need the support of a professional.

WordPress is designed specifically to help people without technical knowledge create a simple website on their own.

While it started out primarily as a beginner-friendly blog builder, it has evolved into a content management system (CMS) that can support any type of website, from blogs to ecommerce stores.

However, not every type of website is equally achievable at all skill levels. While blogs, portfolios, and sites for one-time events (weddings, etc.) are very doable for people with basic computer skills, some projects are less so.

For example, an ecommerce website is more likely to be harder to build for a total WordPress beginner than a blog since it has more moving parts and, as a result, requires more development effort and ongoing maintenance.

6 Cases Where You Can Build Your Own WordPress Website

At its most basic, WordPress requires only basic computer skills to navigate through interfaces and select the right settings for your needs. You don’t need complicated coding knowledge, understand the inner workings of WordPress, or be an expert web designer.

WordPress works in such a way that you install it locally or through a hosting provider and start downloading free themes and plugins to build your site instantly. In some cases, it may not even take you more than a couple of hours.

Here are some of the websites you can build on your own without the help of a WordPress developer:

• Personal blogs to share your thoughts and knowledge.
• Portfolio websites to display your experience in your field and act as an online CV.
• Basic business sites to provide business information, contact forms, directions, and more.
• Basic online stores to sell your products. WordPress wasn’t created specifically for ecommerce, but it’s flexible enough to use plugins like WooCommerce, which allow you to create functional online stores without technical knowledge.
• Affiliate websites to promote affiliate links, write product reviews, and more.
• Educational sites to teach others skills through courses and posts.

These aren’t the only sites you can build on your own, but they are some of the most common ones. If you plan to build a website like the ones above, we encourage you to give WordPress a try and see how far you can get in creating your own site.

As mentioned, using WordPress comes down to basic computer skills and learning to use specific tools for your needs (page builder plugins, themes for specific website types, built-in WordPress features, etc.).

So, you should be able to figure out a simple website with the millions of WordPress resources out there.

10 Cases Where You Need A Web Developer to Build Your WordPress Website for You

While there’s a lot you can do to build your own WordPress websites, there’s definitely a limit to what you can achieve without knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, the four main languages used in WordPress.

Knowing how to code is the only way to unlock WordPress’s full potential and access all its features. Furthermore, code may be the only way to power custom features like search functions, specific metadata to improve your site’s SEO, and more.

These are some of the cases where your WordPress site will almost certainly need an experienced developer to be made.

You Need a Custom Theme

WordPress has over 12,000 free themes for users to download and use on their sites. While these themes are very useful for beginners, they fall short for businesses with very specific branding.

That’s why a professional WordPress developer can create unique themes for your site from scratch. These custom-made themes meet your site’s design and user experience requirements. The result is a website tailored to your brand’s identity, needs, and preferences.

You Need a Custom Plugin

Experienced WordPress developers can create custom-made plugins to address specific needs or features that neither the WordPress core nor existing plugins can fulfill.

An example of a custom plugin use case could be an import tool from a different CMS. Depending on the type of data a non-WordPress site has, existing solutions may not have the tools to import all data fields.

A custom plugin could associate these pieces of data and make imports possible when they otherwise wouldn’t have been.

You Need to Migrate Your Site

A site migration is moving a site from one hosting provider to another, one domain to another, or one content management system (CMS) to WordPress.

Migration involves transferring all website data, including posts, pages, images, databases, plugins, and themes, to the new environment. It’s a time-consuming process that requires careful planning and execution to ensure no data loss and minimal downtime.

There are many ways to migrate a site, and the necessary tools change depending on whether the site was originally built on WordPress or a different CMS. Sites built on different CMSs require more work and may even need custom solutions created by an experienced developer.

On the other hand, WordPress-to-WordPress migrations require less work, and developers can largely automate them with migration plugins like WP All Import.

Finally, remember that you can learn how to migrate your site on your own with online resources, especially if you’re moving the same WordPress site from one hosting provider to another. However, moving from a different CMS to WordPress may require significantly more effort.

You Don’t Know How to Optimize Performance for Your Site

Ensuring your WordPress site loads quickly improves the user experience and your site’s SEO ranking. However, achieving fast loading times can be challenging if you don’t know all the technical details that go into website performance and how to optimize each.

These are some examples of what WordPress developers do to optimize sites:

• Deleting unused plugins and themes.
• Cleaning up the database and media library.
• Removing render-blocking JavaScript and CSS.
• Minifying CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.
• Compressing images.
• Using caching solutions and content delivery networks (CDNs).
• Lazy-loading pages.
• Managing redirects efficiently.
• Reducing post revisions.
• Updating the PHP version.

Still, keep in mind that there are many ways to optimize your site without code, so you can totally create a simple site and optimize it without knowing PHP, JavaScript, etc. However, the more complicated a site gets, the more time, effort, and knowledge it takes to optimize it.

You Need Quality Assurance Testing

Quality Assurance (QA) testing ensures your website and its components function correctly, are bug-free, and provide a good user experience. QA testing for WordPress development projects involves:

• Functionality testing. Ensures every function of the website works as intended.
• Usability testing. Ensures the website is user-friendly, intuitive, and easy to navigate.
• Compatibility testing. Determines how the website performs across different browsers and devices (desktops, tablets, smartphones) to ensure consistent user experience.
• Performance testing. Involves assessing the website’s loading speed, responsiveness, and ability to handle traffic.
• Security testing. Identifies vulnerabilities in the website to prevent hacking and data breaches. It includes testing for SQL injections, XSS attacks, and other common vulnerabilities.
• SEO testing. Ensures the website is optimized for search engines, including checking meta tags, alt tags, headings, and other essential SEO elements.
• Accessibility testing. Ensures the website is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.
• Regression testing. Regression testing ensures that updates don’t introduce bugs or break existing functionalities.
• Plugin and theme testing. Testing for custom plugins or themes.

QA testing ensures your WordPress website is reliable, user-friendly, and high-performing. While you can perform basic QA testing, a WordPress professional or a WordPress agency can ensure the most thorough QA testing.

You Need Advanced SEO Optimization

A dedicated WordPress developer understands the importance of SEO and integrates best practices into the website’s design and content. Some of the strategies an experienced WordPress developer can use to improve site SEO include:

• Managing visibility settings.
• Updating permalinks.
• Creating and using tags and categories.
• Installing an SEO plugin and configuring it according to your needs.
• Creating and optimizing XML sitemaps.
• Encouraging internal linking.
• Implementing an SSL certificate.
• Optimizing comment settings to prevent spam.

You Need a Multisite Network

WordPress multisite is a built-in feature that allows developers to create a network of multiple sites from a single WordPress installation and dashboard.

It’s particularly useful for businesses or organizations that need to run several sites with similar functionalities, such as franchises, universities, or a network of blogs, but want to manage them centrally.

WordPress developers have experience creating multisite networks and provide the skills to enable the multisite feature, set up and manage the network, perform custom domain mapping if necessary, and develop all individual sites.

You Need Advanced WordPress Security

A WordPress developer can improve the security of your WordPress site by:

• Regularly updating and maintaining plugins, themes, and the WordPress core.
• Installing security plugins.
• Enforcing strong passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA).
• Installing an SSL certificate.
• Performing security audits and scans.
• Protecting the database against SQL injection attacks and other vulnerabilities.
• Implementing backup solutions.
• Installing web application firewalls (WAFs).

Keep in mind that anyone can implement basic security measures, but as with the other elements on this list, the need for an experienced developer arises in larger, more complicated websites that require regular security audits.

You Need Ongoing Support on a Large WordPress Site

Ongoing WordPress support helps maintain and enhance the site’s performance, security, and functionality over time. This service typically includes regular updates to WordPress core, themes, and plugins, ensuring that the website remains compatible with the latest technology and secure from vulnerabilities.

These are some of the ways a dedicated WordPress developer may provide regular support for their clients once their sites are up and running:

• Technical support for any issues that arise, such as bugs, errors, or functionality problems.
• Managing any errors that arise from updating to a newer version of PHP.
• Maintenance and updates for all the software elements of the site (themes, plugins, etc.).
• Performance monitoring and optimization, such as enhancing load times, user interfaces, or database performance.
• Security services to keep the site protected from breaches. Strategies may include regular security audits, updates, and backups to safeguard data.
• Training and education to help you understand and effectively use your site.
• Emergency support and disaster recovery in case of major issues like server downtime or data loss.

However, keep in mind that not all sites require intensive ongoing support after they go live, but the ones that do benefit greatly from having an experienced developer guiding the process.

You Don’t Have Time to Learn How to Build a WordPress Site

Depending on what you do and your schedule, it may be more cost-effective for you to pay a freelancer or WordPress agency to build a website than to learn how to create one yourself.

If you’re already immersed in your business and don’t have the time or bandwidth to get into web development, it’s understandable to resort to a professional for this job.

Hire WordPress Developers Only if Necessary

Ultimately, whether you need a web developer to build your WordPress site depends on the scope and complexity of your website. Simple blogs and online portfolios are relatively easy to create, even for people with little to no experience in web development.

On the other hand, large business sites that incorporate many custom functions that you can only develop with custom code are more likely to require a professional.

If you are planning to build a WordPress site and don’t know whether to do it yourself or hire a professional, we encourage you to give it a try first and only consider hiring a professional if you don’t have the time or the scope of the project is beyond your abilities.

If you found this post useful, read our blog and developer resources for more insights and guides!