WordPress web design in Newcastle, NSW: update it yourself.

It is software that runs on your hosting and lets you edit your own website through a login screen. Its add-ons, called plugins, are what let it do things it was never built to do.

The appeal of it is straightforward enough. Somebody who is not a developer can log in, change the words on a page, add a photograph and publish it. That single feature is why so many small business sites run on it.

What it is made of

• The core software itself.

  It sits on your own hosting. It updates several times a year, and those updates genuinely matter.

• A theme that decides the look.

  Either bought off the shelf, or built specifically for the business by somebody.

• The plugins bolted on top.

  Add-ons for forms, bookings, shops and galleries. Each one is somebody else's code running on your site.

• All of the content you have written.

  The pages, posts and pictures, held in a database. That is a separate thing to copy, and the copy is what a backup means.

The last three are where both the flexibility and the trouble come from. A site with a handful of plugins is straightforward. A site with thirty is a small software project nobody agreed to run.

Sites with a lot of pages that somebody edits often. Where a business publishes weekly and wants to do it without ringing anybody, this is exactly what that looks like.

There is a real case for it, and it is worth stating clearly before any of the costs.

Where it genuinely fits

• A site somebody edits every week.

  Publishing, price changes and new services. Changes go up the same day, without waiting on somebody else or paying for each one.

• A site with a lot of pages.

  Once a site is past a few dozen pages, having a system that manages them is worth the overhead it carries.

• Something the software already does well.

  Shops, memberships, bookings and events all have well travelled add-ons, and building those from scratch is a far bigger job.

• Finding somebody to work on it.

  It is common enough that another developer can pick it up, which is what stops you being tied to one person.

It costs updates, backups and somebody watching. None of those are optional on software installed on your hosting and reachable from the internet, and they are the part quoted least often.

The build price is the visible number. The running cost is the one people discover later, and it is the same shape on every site of this kind.

What the upkeep actually is

• The updates, applied to everything.

  The core software, the theme and every plugin. Left alone, this is the route most break ins take.

• Backups that are kept off the machine.

  Both the files and the database, restorable without having to join a support queue to do it.

• Somebody actually watching the site.

  An update occasionally breaks a page, and a site nobody checks stays broken until a customer mentions it.

• The plugins that keep accumulating.

  Add-ons collect over the years, and each one loads on every page whether it is used there or not.

The Australian Cyber Security Centre puts updates and backups at the top of its small business basics for the same reason. They are the cheap things that stop the expensive ones.

Something simpler suits better when a site is a handful of pages that rarely change. A site built as plain files has nothing installed to update, nothing to break into, and it loads more quickly.

A Shopify store has the opposite problem to a WordPress one: the platform is fast and almost everything slowing it down was installed on top.

Most Newcastle service businesses have a site of ten or fifteen pages that changes a few times a year. For that shape of site, running a piece of software to serve it is work without a return.

The alternative is a site built as plain files. There is no login to break into, nothing installed that needs updating, and pages arrive faster because nothing is being assembled when somebody asks for one.

That is what is built here now, and it is worth saying plainly on a page about WordPress. WordPress sites still get looked after here, and businesses still move off it where the upkeep is buying them nothing.

The trade is real and it runs both ways. A site built as files means asking for a wording change rather than logging in, so a business publishing every week is better off staying where it is.

Count the pages, then how often they change, then the plugins. Then find out who is actually applying the updates. Those four answers settle it without anybody's opinion.

Every one of these is a number, which is why the decision at the end is short.

1. Count the pages

Under twenty and rarely changing is one answer. Fifty pages and growing is a completely different one.

2. Count how often they change

Counted honestly, across the last year. Owners overestimate this, and it is the number deciding whether the login is worth its upkeep.

3. Count the plugins

They are listed in the admin screen. A long list is not automatically a problem, and it is always worth reading, because half of them are usually unused.

4. Somebody finds out who applies the updates

Where the answer is nobody, that is the finding. It is also the most common answer on the sites that come through here.

5. Check the last backup

And whether anybody has ever restored one from it. A backup nobody has tested is a belief rather than a backup.

6. Then the decision gets made

Keep it and pay for the upkeep, or move to something with no upkeep in it. Both of those are reasonable. Keeping it and paying for nothing is the version that goes wrong.

Tidying an existing WordPress site is quick. Moving off one takes longer, and most of that is rebuilding pages and pointing every old address at its replacement.

The order it happens in

• First the site goes on an inventory.

  Pages, plugins, updates and backups, all counted. This is what settles the decision, rather than an argument about it.

• Then it is either tidied up or rebuilt.

  Tidying means removing what is unused and getting updates and backups running. Rebuilding it is the longer road of the two.

• Then it launches, and somebody watches it.

  Old addresses pointed at new ones, forms tested, then a fortnight of checking nothing quietly stopped.

The part that stretches a move out is always the content rather than the building. Every page has to end up somewhere, including the ones nobody remembers writing.

Ask who applies the updates, where the backups go, what happens when an update breaks a page, and whether the site can be taken elsewhere. The update question has a bill behind it.

These are worth asking of any agency, including this one, so the answers given here are underneath each question.

• Who applies the updates, and how often?

  You want a name and a frequency. On the WordPress sites still looked after here, it is monthly and it is written down.

• Where exactly do the backups go?

  Somewhere other than the same machine, and restorable without having to raise a support ticket first.

• What happens when an update breaks a page?

  Somebody notices before a customer does, which means something has to be checking rather than waiting.

• Can I take the site elsewhere?

  A full copy, files and database, with no fee attached to asking for it.

Plenty of Newcastle businesses run their own WordPress site well. The part worth handing over is usually the updates and the backups rather than the editing itself.