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Arshdeep Singh
Courses Plus Student 8,349 PointsBuilding Website vs WordPress.
Hello,
As a freelance web designer and developer (Beginner), I have dilemma about providing my customer with a website that is custom built from scratch with solid Google optimization or to provide a WordPress website that offers better Google optimization plus comes with a backed and many other advantages. If word press is so robust then what are the reasons that I would want to make a website from scratch for my customers. What are your thoughts about the whole WordPress vs Custom Website.
5 Answers

Logan R
22,989 PointsFor me personally, I feel that custom built websites load way faster than wordpress sites and you have complete control over how your website works, but the problem is, unless your client also is good at HTML and CSS, they won't be able to edit it, which leaves you to have to make every small change they want. It can also be time consuming.
On the other hand WP is a lot more user friendly and there is a wide support for the plugins that you can get.
That's just my opinion though.

James Andrews
7,245 PointsLogan R is correct. Custom website load much faster. If you build your custom website entirely out of html/css with no php/ruby/python etc... there is no extra processing on the server side, and everything is handled after it's downloaded by the client. Using Wordpress, or php, or any other language means that the website needs to get processed on the server which in turn takes longer to load. As a freelance you may also want to think. Do you want to sell something that empowers the user (ie customer) to make changes? Or do you want to be able to charge for every change even minimal ones. If the answer is the latter than a custom build html/css website may be a better option.

Andrew Shook
31,709 PointsLogan R and James Andrews covered all the basics so I'll only add this, you can still get a lot of residual income from a WordPress site. While WordPress does empower clients to make changes, it also empowers clients to break things. I can't tell you how many client have broken WordPress site I've built for them because they thought they knew what they were doing.

Scott Paterson
26,869 PointsIf you are only making let's say a one page site then Wordpress may be abit overkill, the guys above touched on some great points. For me the size of the site, functionality of the site and if clients want control and do some edits themselves factor in wether I use Wordpress or not.
One example of a site I have is online takeaway Menu I will only be editing 1 page maybe once a year so for this I have left Wordpress out.

Erik Heyl
4,249 PointsHave both on offer. And with the Wordpress option you could also sell Skype coaching.