Best Practices for Building an Enterprise WordPress Website

Agency partner WebDevStudios provides their expertise.

Looking to build an enterprise-grade site on WordPress? You’ll need more than just out-of-the-box features.

WebDevStudios is proud to be a WordPress VIP featured agency partner, providing best-in-class web development assistance for clients like the NBA and Wall Street Journal. We’re experts in designing and building sites. In fact, we literally wrote the books on WordPress.

So let’s discuss what you need to know before building your enterprise WordPress experience.

Table of Contents

Enterprise WordPress site-building tips

Whether you’re looking to launch a new site on WordPress VIP or migrate and redesign a current one, we recommend working with an expert agency, like WebDevStudios, for the best results. 

However, should you decide to build your WordPress VIP site with your in-house team, follow these best practices.

1. Set up a staging environment. 

Before launching your WordPress VIP site, you should set up a staging environment to test changes and updates without affecting the live site. This will allow you to identify and fix any issues before they impact your visitors.

2. Custom-build a clean and optimized theme. 

WordPress VIP has strict coding standards, so review the standards before building your customized theme. Your custom theme should be clean and optimized to ensure it operates smoothly. Since many essential features are built into the VIP Platform, avoid using too many plugins. Adding extras may slow down your site and make it more vulnerable to security threats.

3. Implement robust security measures. 

WordPress VIP is designed for high-scale performance and security and requires strong measures to protect your site from hacking attempts and other security threats. You should implement two-factor authentication, SSL encryption, and regular security scans and backups.

4. Optimize site performance. 

WordPress VIP has built-in optimization features like edge caching and the VIP File System. In addition to the built-in tools, your in-house team should work closely with the WordPress VIP technical support team to ensure your site meets recommended standards.

5. Follow SEO best practices.

To ensure your WordPress VIP site ranks well in search engines, follow best practices for SEO. This includes optimizing your content for keywords, using descriptive meta titles and descriptions, and using a mobile-friendly design. 

6. Use analytics to track performance. 

Track the performance of your WordPress VIP site and published content to continue site optimization. The Parse.ly plugin is the best analytics option for WordPress, helping you analyze and optimize content all in the WordPress editor. Parse.ly identifies areas for improvement and helps you make data-driven decisions about your content.

Should you build a block-based theme?

Block-based themes are a relatively new feature in WordPress. They are designed to allow users to create visually appealing and engaging content by arranging blocks of text, images, videos, and other content elements.  

Benefits of block-based themes include:

  • Flexibility: Block themes are built with the WordPress Block Editor (formerly known as Gutenberg), offering greater flexibility and control over the layout and design of your website.
  • Ease of customization: Block themes allow you to easily customize your website’s design and layout, as they consist entirely of blocks, so you can make changes without modifying code or using additional plugins.
  • Future-proof: As WordPress develops and focuses on the block editor, block themes will likely receive updates and improvements that align with the platform’s direction.

 “Overall, block-based themes offer a range of benefits for WordPress users, including greater flexibility, improved user experience, faster website development, and better accessibility and compatibility.”

Alfredo Navas, Senior Frontend Engineer, WebDevStudios
Alfredo Navas, Senior Frontend Engineer, WebDevStudios

When building a customized block-based theme, it’s best to rely on web designers and developers who are experienced with the complexities of navigating custom blocks.

Benefits of WordPress VIP

WebDevStudios appreciates the end-to-end guidance and hands-on support that WordPress VIP provides for our engineers and enterprise-level clients. That level of professionalism is crucial for a successful site launch. Here are some other reasons why we respect this hosting platform.

  • Scalability: WordPress VIP is designed to scale, meeting the needs of our clients with large websites. It can handle millions of visitors per month and can be easily customized to meet the specific needs of its business.
  • Security: WordPress VIP is built on a secure foundation and is constantly updated with the latest security patches. It also offers several security features that can help protect our clients’ websites from attacks, including two-factor authentication and real-time malware scanning.
  • Performance: WordPress VIP delivers fast loading times for websites. It uses many performance optimization techniques, such as caching and CDNs, which ensures a WebDevStudios client’s website is always quick and responsive.
  • 24/7 Support: WordPress VIP offers 24/7 support, including multisite support, which is a huge bonus. Many of our clients use WordPress multisite, and we must have hosting partners like WordPress VIP who can meet their specific needs. Often, our engineering staff can contact WordPress VIP engineers directly about website issues without involving the client. This means problems are resolved quickly without stress.

Overall, WordPress VIP offers a broad solution for content management, marketing, ecommerce, multisite, and analytics, allowing clients to focus on their core business functions.

WebDevStudios cares about client relationships.

At WebDevStudios, we believe in building relationships with our clients. They need a trusted partner with whom they can continually collaborate and grow. We’re grateful to be that entity for them. 

That’s how we view our partnership with WordPress VIP. 

Since Spring 2021, WebDevStudios has been a proud WordPress VIP Gold Agency Partner. Our website design and development company is known for building amazing websites for impressive clients, such as Daily Hodl, Christianity Today, and StoneX—all of which are WordPress VIP-hosted websites.

Additionally, WebDevStudios specializes in providing end-to-end opportunities from strategy and planning to design and development, as well as full data migration, extensive API integrations, scalability, performance, long-term guidance, and ongoing development. We literally wrote the book on WordPress development.

Choosing the right hosting partner is essential to the success of our client projects and our reputation. Because WordPress VIP comprises knowledgeable experts in enterprise WordPress, we know we can confidently select them for our clients. It’s a win-win decision for everyone involved, and we’re proud to evolve in the WordPress space alongside WordPress VIP. 

About the author

Brad Williams,  the Co-Founder and CEO of WebDevStudios

Brad Williams

Brad Williams is the Co-Founder and CEO of the website design and development agency WebDevStudios. He is also a co-author of the books Professional WordPress and Professional WordPress Plugin Development. Brad is a US Marine Corps veteran and has been developing websites for over 25 years. In the past 15 years, Brad has focused explicitly on open-source technologies like WordPress.

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