What Your “WordPress Consultant” Isn’t Telling You (About WordPress)

So I’ve got a pet peeve! I get irritated when people who need help turn to consultants — supposed experts — for help and are misled or fed incorrect or outdated information simply because the consultant doesn’t know the answer and they don’t want to admit it.

This drives me especially CRAZY in the WordPress world. Lies, myths, untruths, and false information about WordPress is being fed to business owners left and right — and it’s perpetuating false beliefs.

Let me explain. I LOVE WordPress — all of our sites are built for WordPress and I love the fact that it allows our clients to have total control over their websites. But this ability comes at a price. Now anyone can open a hosting account, install a theme, and plop in a custom header can call themselves a WordPress web designer or WordPress consultant. There are even some calling themselves WordPress developers that can’t even read PHP!

Why? Because WordPress is a “Hot Topic” for entrepreneurs who want to start online businesses. And for some, these so-called “Hot Topics” mean easy and fast cash.

Naturally we’re seeing a boom in the number of WordPress consultants and WordPress web designers … but they all aren’t qualified, and they all don’t even understand how WordPress works at its core.

So now the internet is littered with so-called experts selling WordPress services — be it design, coding, theme customization, or maintenance — who know enough to be dangerous and sound really good. Unfortunately, most of our new clients come to us with horror stories about past “consultants” and the thousands of dollars they have lost in the process — pretty much all good designers and programmers can say the same thing, and we’re frustrated.

Here’s what your WordPress expert may be telling you about WordPress:

• “You can’t do that with WordPress.”
• “WordPress is only for blogs.”
• “That’s one of the limitations of a WordPress website.”
• “The only way to add sales pages and opt-in pages is with a separate installation of WordPress and a different theme like Optimize Press”
• “With WordPress you’re stuck with their templates.”
• “WordPress is only for basic sites.”
• “I know you have a WordPress site, but its better to do your sales pages in plain HTML with Dreamweaver”

Each and every one of these statement is completely false. If your WordPress consultant has said one of these to you, Yikes! I’d think twice about moving forward with them.

Fortunately, you’re smart enough to read our blog (THANKS!) — so you can be guaranteed you do have a resource with up to date, honest, trustworthy information.

Here’s The Real Truth About WordPress:

If you can imagine it, it can be done with WordPress. Existing themes can be altered and changed in any way you want, and with a custom theme, you start from a blank slate so you have no limitations. WordPress doesn’t limit the possibilities of design and code. If anything, it adds to the possibilities.

And you’re not limited to existing themes/templates. New custom WordPress themes are created for businesses around the world every day. At Bourn Creative, the majority of all website project we do are completely one-off custom WordPress themes built on the Genesis Framework.

If someone tells you that you can’t do what you want to do with WordPress, what they’re really saying is, “I can’t do that with WordPress,” but they’re afraid to admit that, or they are afraid to lose your business. Or in some cases, they really mean, “You’re not paying me enough for that,” but they don’t know how to communicate with you effectively or are too uncomfortable to ask for more money.

The same goes for the sales page nonsense.

Sales page templates, both branded and completely blank, can be added to any WordPress site. We add them to existing themes all the time, and we include them in every custom theme we design. When you have a WordPress site, you should create all of your sales pages and opt-in pages on your site so you can use the built in content editor and easily edit the page yourself anytime you want to.

If you own a WordPress site, there is no reason to create new sales pages in static HTML — except for the fact that your consultant may only know how to use Dreamweaver (which generates the code for them). There is also no reason to have several different WordPress installations for every sales page you have. Unique sales page templates can be added to ANY existing WordPress site — and that means you only have to manage and keep updated ONE installation of WordPress.

As for the claim that WordPress is only for basic sites, give me a break! Here are just a few of the high-profile, not-so-basic sites that are WordPress.org based:

Clearly, we’re not the only people who love WordPress!

As the fastest growing content management system available and the most popular blogging software, there is a huge community of amazingly talented designers and developers who are pushing WordPress further and further each day. So please, do you homework before hiring a consultant, designer, or programmer — and don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done.

It can … it just depends on how much you want to spend.