Where does this reputation come from? 🤔
- Competitors trying to highlight comparisons between their system X and WordPress.
- Comparison charts, so common on “turnkey” websites.
- The brother of a cousin’s aunt’s cousin who heard a rumor about it.
To be honest, in my view, this opinion misses quite a few nuances, and I’m going to explain why…
Separating the Backend and Frontend in Building a WordPress Site
At this point, it’s crucial to distinguish between two essential aspects:
- The frontend, which is the visual appearance of the website. So here, we’re talking about themes.
- The backend, which connects to the frontend to update content. And here, this is the WordPress part.
If a site is slow, it’s generally due to the theme (or the combination of both in the case of theme builders), and not WordPress itself.
And what makes the difference between an efficient theme and another is the developer and/or the tools used.
That said, it’s true that a paid theme or plugins like Elementor can sometimes offer average (even poor) performance. This is mainly because these systems integrate a large number of features to offer a multitude of possibilities (spoiler: often unnecessary). As a result, there’s less control over the entire process.
At Atelier Design, when it comes to website creation, we are more content-centric. So, we naturally turned to custom theme creation.
The reasons that led us to choose this option in our communication agency:
- High-quality design and responsive design, which are not limited by the constraints of a pre-built theme but are tailored to our clients’ actual needs (and here, we return to the importance of content creation and storytelling). 🛠️
- Full control over site performance, as we can adjust, customize, and therefore optimize everything. 🚀
- Enhanced maintenance and security: the site is built with a careful selection of plugins, chosen for their reliability and regular updates. Maintenance is therefore simple and sustainable in the long term. 🔒
And most importantly, it’s about choosing to build your website around your content strategy rather than having to adapt your content to the constraints of a theme.
That said, this reflection applies to most CMS: Drupal, Prestashop, etc. (And let’s not even get into no-code, that’s another debate.)
Still here?
Great, I’m glad! So, I invite you to check this out: references are better than long speeches!
