Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.

Marshall Mcluhan, Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar

I wish someone would have told me this a year ago. AT - Portland, OR

Latest and Greatest? Does anybody remember when:

MySpace.com was the "premiere" online social service?

How about AltaVista.com? In the late 1990’s, it was the premiere Internet search engine. (Google? What’s Google?)

Those services are still around, but not exactly what anyone would call the "in" thing right now.

The problem with the "latest and greatest," is that it rarely has a "track record." Here today; gone tomorrow describes the Internet pretty well.

Anybody remember the "push technology" that was supposed to "rule the Internet" back in the mid-late 90s? It didn’t happen either...

WordPress as the "in" thing:

The reason for WordPress’ popularity is the fact that you can update it anytime you want (wow!).

We at HirMon are glad that WordPress finally caught on to what we’ve been allowing our clients to do with conventional websites for over 20 years now.

There are some inherent liabilities of having a WordPress site you may wish to give some serious thought about before jumping in with both feet. In fact, these liabilities include websites based on other content managment-based programs like Drupal, Concrete 5 and others.

• One of the selling points is that the software is free! Yessir - that’s absolutely true! That means that initial software and upgrades to the system cost nothing and are freely available - to legitimate owners and hackers. (Ever wonder why you rarely [if ever] will see a politician’s website created in WordPress?)
• Getting the website setup is not free! Even if you do-it-yourself, it will end up costing you a substial sum of money to get the job done; especially if you do it yourself. The time you spend dinking with the website is time forever lost that could have been used to market your business. That translates directly into lost sales.
• Maintance is also not free. Sure, you can change the contents of various pages personally but depending on the "free system" used, having a new page created can be costly because you need a skilled technician to put it together.
• What happens if the web person that put together the site "goes away?" That can be a disaster if that person did your website as a favor or for the "experience." A lot of owners find out too late that while the "convenience" of being able to change a site’s contents is nice -- finding a replacement webmaster -- can be very expensive! Try not to get misled into believing that "once a website is up, it’s done." Craig’s List is full of ads along the line of: We are looking for someone to make some WordPress updates/changes.
  
• Getting real functionality to improve a website is often a case for settling for whatever is available; not what a website owner really wants.

The question you’re hoping I won’t ask:

So, let’s say you decide to go the WordPress route anyway? Here’s a question that is worthy of consideration:

Will your website still look like a blog?

Here’s the problem: Serious Internet visitors - avoid blog-sites like the plague! (I should know: I’m one of them.)

Especially, "blatering sites" where the owner is constantly OD’d on caffine.

Few people realize just how infrequently functional websites are really updated.

What could be worse?

This: search engines may categorize WP-based sites as "blogs" -- not websites -- and there is a difference. Combine that with the simple fact that only about 1 out of 20 WP sites I’ve ever seen is even marginally set up with search engine optimization and there’s major trouble ahead.

Our take on it: For the record, HirMon does not produce WordPress websites and why not? is simple:

• A well designed website only needs updating periodically to keep the information fresh; not constantly.
• The more "disjointed" the information appears on a website (e.g. a string of articles on different topics stretching down the page ad nauseum) is one sure-fire way to get the entire website ignored.
• We are not a Search Engine Optimization company. Despite that, our websites typically rise to the top three pages of a results list (10 entries per page) in 1-2 years. (And anyone who tells you they can do it faster -- is selling your something!)
• The cost/benefit ratio just isn’t there -  yet (or if ever).

Getting a website you can update personally can be done without using WordPress or any of a host of other "freebie" software. HirMon has been providing our clients a way to do just that for over 20 years now.

In fact, we are about the only website service agency we know of that can "retrofit" a conventional website to allow owner updates.

What we are starting to hear from prospective clients is that are beginning to suspect they were "sold something." And - getting rid of a their WordPress site is quickly becoming a priority...

That’s really sad, when you think about it. It means that they are going to end up paying for their website - twice...

Oh, and one last thing, although I doubt it will get much use for a couple of years: