WordPress Development Agency

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. For us, it has been a reliable technology for years, used to develop scalable, SEO-optimized, and high-performance websites and online shops. Clients like University Hospital Zurich, The Dolder Grand, and the Reformed Church benefit from our extensive experience with WordPress.

Custom Themes

We develop WordPress themes from scratch according to WordPress best practice coding standards. This leads to fast loading times, excellent page speed values, and high scalability and maintainability. This also results in very good SEO results with good content. If desired, we can make your website accessible.

Professional Development

We use Bedrock as a boilerplate, providing an enterprise development environment. For you, this means complex features can be tested in different environments and deployed to the live environment at the push of a button. Security updates can be applied quickly.

Fast and High-Performance Solutions

The lean codebase of our custom themes makes your online shop or website very fast. As SEO specialists, we optimize the page speed and load times of your website for an above-average user experience with low bounce rates. Further optimization is achieved through caching and the use of content delivery networks (CDN).

Focus on WordPress Security

The security of our solutions is very important to us. To protect your WordPress website against attacks, we have defined security standards:

• Regular updates of core software and plugins
• SSL/HTTPS encryption for staging and live environments
• Coding according to best practices for secure web applications to protect against OWASP top 10 security risks
• Review of hosting partners regarding security standards
• Use of well-known plugins that have undergone internal review
• Use of the WordFence security plugin for protection against brute force attacks and general monitoring
• Two-factor authentication (2FA) for backend editors
• Option to use a web application firewall (WAF) for additional security

What Plugins Do You Use?

Depending on the requirements, we use various plugins. The most important ones we frequently use are:

• Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)
• Yoast SEO Plugin
• Wordfence Security Plugin
• WP Super Cache for fast websites
• Contact Form 7 or Gravity Forms for forms
• Custom-developed plugins for tracking updates and maintenance
• Plugins for image optimization
• WPML for multilingual websites
• Search WP for search functionality. For complex sites, we often use Elastic Search.

How Are Pages Optimized for SEO?

WordPress is already very SEO-friendly out of the box. To further enhance the ranking of our own and our clients’ websites, we take the following measures:

• Optimize page speed in the software code
• Optimize image sizes
• Properly configure the Yoast SEO plugin, indexing only important pages
• Good content, adding title tags and meta descriptions
• Take software updates and security seriously by updating to current versions

What is Better, WordPress, Drupal, or Typo3?

As an agency, we use WordPress and Drupal content management systems. We do not use Typo3. When choosing a platform, we discuss the requirements with our clients and decide on the platform accordingly. Here are our guidelines for using Drupal and WordPress:

• WordPress is very strong for websites whose primary goal is online marketing activities. In terms of SEO, integrating marketing automation tools like HubSpot or Sharpspring, WordPress is very strong.
• We use Drupal when a complex data structure is required or when complex and granular permissions are needed. While simple workflow processes and permissions can be mapped with WordPress, WordPress does not match Drupal’s features in this regard.
• If we see that a site can be implemented with both WordPress and Drupal, we often recommend WordPress due to the previously mentioned advantages.

How Can I Make My WordPress Website Secure?

Due to WordPress’s enormous popularity, it is also a popular target for hackers. However, WordPress is very secure if the following best practices are applied:

• Regularly update WordPress plugins. If there are known security vulnerabilities, update the plugin immediately.
• Regularly update the WordPress core software.
• Carefully select plugins and WordPress themes. Only use plugins and themes from well-known and trusted providers.
• Choose a good hosting partner.
• Use strong passwords and different passwords for each account. Password managers like LastPass or 1Password can help.
• Only access the server via SSH or sFTP.
• Create only as many users as necessary in the backend and do not name any user “Admin”.

Is WordPress Suitable for Online Shops?

WooCommerce is a good plugin for implementing WordPress shops, and we create online shops with WordPress/WooCommerce. For smaller and simpler shops, WordPress is very suitable. For larger shops, we prefer to use Shopware 6 because it offers more features, especially in the areas of master data, inventory management, cross-channel commerce, and a simple ERP. As an e-commerce agency, we advise you on choosing the right e-commerce system.

Where Can I Read News About WordPress?

Here is a list of news sources about WordPress:

• Blog by Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress)
• Blog by WP Tavern
• The official WordPress blog
• Blog by Kinsta
• WordPress TV
• And not least, the annual State of the Word updates are a great source to stay up to date with WordPress.

What About WordPress Themes and Why We Don’t Use Them?

Purchased premium WordPress themes are suitable for quickly and cheaply creating a semi-professional website with WordPress. However, these premium themes have several significant disadvantages. Therefore, we no longer use them for professional purposes. The main points are:

• Purchased premium themes can hardly be customized: Apparently, small adjustments like a change in the navigation cannot be made or require an incredible amount of time due to regression bugs.
• Purchased premium WordPress themes are difficult to extend: Extensions like adding a shop or a blog can be very difficult, and it is often easier to create the site anew.
• Premium WordPress themes are problematic in maintenance and updates: Due to the bloated codebase from the layout builders, premium themes are usually very heavy or not updatable. Besides the security risks, these websites usually have to be completely recreated after 2 to 3 years.

For these reasons, we only use custom themes, providing clients with a solution that is maintainable in the long term and brings high ROI over time.