_(Whilst this is kind of a wordpress.org support forum, I think it’s a good idea to invite discussion and open opinion, where people can be honest about their experiences.)_
Now firstly, I’m not going to stop using WordPress personally or professionally and my opinion is not meant for other long-term users or people who use it for their business.
_TL;DR WordPress is like buying a helicopter and then trying to learn what everything does and how to fly it quickly – and safely. It’s just not plausible. Hire a pilot, especially if it’s make or break for your business, and you are relying on it._
> So, rather than existing devs, this post is for people who are very new to WordPress, have maybe never used it before and are either being asked to use it by their boss, or are using it for their new business (but not a WP related business), when they don’t know anything about WordPress.
To those new people, I would say, absolutely find a good WordPress developer or even a digital marketing agency, because it might cost more in the short term, but it will definitely save you time and money in the long term by having it done professionally, i.e. as complete as possible.
Also, if you are thinking of starting and managing WP, or changing or managing an existing site yourself, I would advise against it.
I would advise against using sites like Fiverr to find people, because they would do the setup, but then there’s plenty of other things that you will need, and you will probably need recommendations on the hundreds of thousands of plugins some of which have conflicts, as well as recommendations for things like hosting (VPS etc.).
There are people on this subreddit who will be happy to help you – including myself – but WP is a journey and there is a lot to learn, and there are things that you can do wrong *very easily* that will cause a lot of problems, and then worse, you may not know how to fix them…
A couple of pieces of advice if I may; if you have an existing site, before you start, make sure you use a backup plugin like updraft plus or if you’re hosting has backups maybe use that.
Also, ensure you have some sort of malware/ file scanner, if one is provided by your hosting company, or some sort of security plugin.
If you do intend on figuring things out yourself, those two things could save you a huge amount of headaches, time and therefore money in the future.
If you’re having problems with speed, it may not be your hosting company. I’ve seen a WordPress website on a $250/m dedicated server, run very _very_ slowly, with only a few dozen customers per day, because of the way it was set up and the amount of plugins, not the hosting itself…
> I can set up a WordPress website, SSL, hosting, emails, backups, including registering the domain name, in about _15 minutes_. As can many others on the subreddit.
But if you’re new to all this, and that setup is probably going to take you 2 to 3 weeks, and half of that is just learning stuff, then it’s not worth your time and money, because I’m still learning things after 10 years, most of us are.
Yes, there are hosting companies and agencies that will allow you to sign up, and get a WordPress website launched quickly. But again, without knowing what you need, and why or how some/ most of it works, the time saved having part of it automated is negligible, because having someone with expertise do the work for you is worth it, as you may experience later big issues through negligence or inexperience.
It’s like buying a helicopter and then trying to learn what everything does and how to fly it in a week. It’s just not plausible. Hire a pilot.
Same for WP…
> You get to navigate, _you_ decide the destination, but get someone who knows what they’re doing, can handle it, make sure it’s as safe as possible, and for fuck’s sake, have a damn parachute…
The only difference is a pilot has to have a licence, any random person can tell you they’ll set up WordPress for you, including you.
So in a way, you can probably assume that unless you’re finding someone who has a lot of reviews, or has been in the industry for a long time, they might only have a little bit more knowledge than you.
Particularly if they are just doing a lot of Elementor design stuff, and don’t actually have a real idea of the setup and backend, there’s a lot more of those now than there used to be, the barrier to entry is much lower and there are more self-proclaimed WordPress designers just using drag and drop, but who don’t actually know what a custom post type is, or how to manage the file system for example…
Don’t let that put you off WordPress, It’s a great system with huge amount of customisation and literally hundreds of millions of people use it/ view it every day. Just go back to the pilot analogy because that’s really the point here.
😇
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