Every once in a while an analogy comes along that explains why you should or should not do something that is better than a picture (Yes! Better than a picture!). With this in mind I would like to demonstrate to you the difference of having a great looking website without giving the proper attention to the content on the page or the on page SEO factors and a mediocre looking website that has paid attention to the content on the page and the SEO on page factors.

It’s much like shopping for a car. You see a brand new shiny corvette sitting in the corner with a great price tag. In fact, the price of this car is so low compared to everything else in the showroom that there is no question what car you will buy today and you find yourself driving off the lot in a great looking car.

You ride around town in the neighborhood and everyone who sees you waves and comments on what a nice looking car you have. You get ready to open it up on the highway and put the petal to the metal only to find out that you are being passed by F150 pickup trucks, Honda Accords and almost everything else on the road! You pull over and pop the hood and though the engine looks big, underneath you are being powered by a 4 cylinder motor that won’t take you anywhere.

Just like cars, the slick look and promises to turn heads can lead you to purchase something that’s not exactly what you need. It’s very important to buy a workhorse of a website and that’s finding out how it will perform; not just how it will look. That doesn’t mean you can’t get a good looking website, it just means the look should be secondary to performance.

I’ve run into a few graphic and web designers who don’t use WordPress, and don’t know why they should. Here are 4 good reasons that WordPress should be your web design environment of choice.

1. It’s a great CMS (Content Management System) – While WP was originally created as a blogging environment, it has grown into a full bodied CMS. You can easily manage blog posts, pages and all of the media on your site. This setup makes it easier to edit a site from any computer, thus giving you the ability to make changes much more quickly. WP also gives you the ability to give access to multiple content contributors. This is particularly useful when people in different locations are working on a site.
2. Vibrant developer community - Since WP is open source, anyone can develop themes and plugins that add style and functionality to a site. For instance, one of my favorite plugins is PageMash. It gives me the ability to arrange the order of my pages without having to number each page. Plugins add functionality to WP, and you’re bound to find one that fits your needs. Themes are the skin that covers the site. Even if you’re not a developer, there are literally hundreds of themes that a layman can install to style their site. Of course, a professional can create a fully custom theme that captures the essence of your business.
3. Optimized right out of the box – When marketing your business, the whole idea is for people to be aware of your business. Similarly with your website, people need to be able to find your website. WP is designed to be easily trackable by search engine bots.
4. It’s free! - While you may pay to have someone create the look of your site, you’ll never pay for the basic code. The underlying guts of WP are free, and give you great freedom in how you implement your website.

I very rarely work on a site that isn’t designed with WordPress anymore. It’s just easier for both the client and myself. If you’re not using WordPress to build websites, I would highly recommend trying it.

That’s why having someone conduct an audit when you have no idea what is happening is extremely important. It’s also much better for a real “live” person to do it so they can “see” what’s happening on the page; navigation, content, etc. I say this because there are companies that charge a fee to do an audit and all they do is run your website through a program to find keywords, density, links, etc. While all this is good stuff to know, I have yet to find a program that can help you with navigation, content, structure and strategy. That’s not to say that it won’t happen someday; but it has not happened yet.

Just last week I sat with a client that had no idea that the bots sent to the website couldn’t get past the front page. Everything past the home page was not being seen by the search engines. All of the page rank and page strength (a.k.a. juice) was coming from links that were going to the individual pages, which was good. However, they were not indexing the entire website because they couldn’t get in through the home page even though by looking at the home page one would “think” they were getting in because the visitor could.

This is just one of the things that could really impact a website and if you don’t have people looking at it that can connect the dots then you could spend a lot of unnecessary money to find the answer and correct the problem. Getting a website audit is well worth the cost to get your site working for you and your business.

Over the years, we have locked in on a “go-to” set of old faithfuls. Almost without fail, these plugins are installed before the first pixel is altered or the first word penned.  So without further delay, here’s our list of 10 WordPress plugins we cannot live without (feel free to ad your links to other indispensables in the comments below):

1. All-In-One SEO Pack Does what is says…says what it does. Finer-tuned adjustments of keywords and page titles.
2. Ad Rotator Widget A highly flexible little bit of code, perfect for callouts and, well, ads, of course.
3. FormBuilder Essential for sites that need multiple, different, customized forms, and a simple interface for managing and assigning them to pages. Go ahead…get carried away!
4. PodPress The quintessential plugin for managing a podcast on WordPress. It’s the little extras that have always wowed us with this one, and the incredible work put into it by Dan Kuykendall!
5. Google XML Sitemaps Some say it helps, others say don’t bother. But every time we install it on an established blog, we see positive jumps. That’s reason enough for us!
6. Maintenance Mode Making changes under the hood? Switch over to a maintenance page with the click of a button. Stylable, customizable, clean, simple functionality. Surprised this one hasn’t been baked into the core code already. Just remember to turn it off when you are done.
7. Subscribe2 Yes, it’s admittedly pretty Web 1.0, but we still have people who prefer to sign up for email notices. Who are we to stand in the way of those standing in the way of progress, right?
8. WP Email Also old-school, but clients always ask for this functionality, and the potential for abuse has never materialized for us. Anyone disagree?
9. WP Print The super-fast and easy way to get a stylesheet up and running for print-versions of your posts.
10. Akismet (of course!) If you don’t know what this one does, it’s because you’ve been so buried in spam email for YEARS that you haven’t been able to come up for air. Pity.
11. BONUS: ThinkDesign Blog’s Test Post Pack A no mess, no fuss way to make sure yo are styling all your elements correctly, without forgetting anything. Sure beats the manual method of creating a bunch of posts, ages and comments with various kinds of content!

These fine coders are all worthy of your accolades and donations. Because of them, web sites actually DO things.

(TIP for designers: I created a directory on my computer that contains all of these plugins, so copying them up to a new WP instalation is super-quick. They are all outdated versions, of course, but with WP v2.7, I can click and upgrade them all very quickly before activating them.)

Also look for new WordPress tutorials to cover the layout changes and new features soon.