The Development Life Cycle of a Brand New WordPress Website

WordPress is one of the most popular frameworks, based on the PHP programming language and the MySQL database management system. It offers several tools and plugins and enables programmers to build and manage blogs and websites. The reason for WordPress to become so popular among professionals and DIY developers is because it requires little to no coding knowledge.

To get an understanding of how widespread the popularity of WordPress has become, let’s check some facts. According to a study, 14% of the top 100 websites in world are running on WordPress. More than 409 million people view more than 20 billion WordPress pages each month, and more and less 17 new WordPress site posts are published every second!

Of course, you may adopt the DIY approach to create your website. However, if you want some professional touch, you may turn to professional team for the development work. Apparently, it might seem costly, but in the long run it can save a lot of time and effort. Moreover, the final website will be more functional and smoother. So, what goes into the development cycle of creating a new WordPress website?

A WordPress development project cycle typically goes through seven phases:

Project initiation

Design

Data migration

Development

Quality assurance and user acceptance testing

Site launch

Support

Let’s look through each of the development phases in more detail.

Project Initiation:

Once the agreement is signed between the client and the agency, the project can begin. Before proceeding with the project, the professionals will meet with the client multiple times in order to get a detailed understanding of project requirements. This includes:

General project goals

Design requirements

Website data details

Once this has been established, a project plan can be put in place. This project plan will determine the client’s design and development requirements.

Design:

Design is crucial component in the success of a site. The design team works with the clients to create suitable design that reflects the business goals. Usually, the process involves creating a mock-up which will be reviewed and revised until it receives client’s approval. A good design team will bring combination of technical know-how and creative flair to the table. They will go an extra mile to make sure that the site is mobile-friendly by making use of the latest design elements and components.

Data Migration:

Sometimes, a client may want to switch from one content management system to another content management system. In such case, client might want the developer to do the need for the data migration process. To help them with the process, he or she will provide access to the data files, allowing them to pull together a data mapping document and write a data migration script. Thus the import process begins. After completing the initial import, the team will check out thoroughly if everything has been done correctly.

Development:

Once the final designs are approved, the creative development process will begin. The developers will build the site functionality and custom features based on the client’s requirements.

Theme/Design:

The developers and designers will work in tandem with the clients to create the new site based on the design signed off by him. Depending on budget, it could be bespoke theme or existing theme that can be edited and configured to fit the goal.

Functionality:

Plugins can be used to extend functionality and add new features to your WordPress website. However, one has to be careful about it for installing too many plugins can negatively affect the performance of your website.

The purpose of each plugin is to fetch relevant data from the database. Installing too many plugins can cause some conflict and slow everything down. Some plugins can cause security risks. Paid plugins are more secure than free variants. Hire WordPress expert that will help with this.

Quality Assurance and User Acceptance:

Once the development tasks have been completed, it’s time to ensure that all functionality is in place. That’s why it is important to perform cross-browser check and devise testing to ensure everything is all right.

Site Launch:

Now, if you are sure that everything is all right, you may look into the launch process which starts with the lead developer stepping up staging and production environments on the client’s host.

Support:

A reliable and trusted agency will also provide clients with a support phase for specific period of time. If you want better result, be sure to outsource WordPress development project to an agency that knows what you want with your website.

My recent article is a good read on the many areas where python application development can be applied.