Why it still wins, and five must-haves
Fifteen years in, here's why WordPress still wins me over — and the five plugins I install on every build.
Spending 15 years as a WordPress developer has certainly taught me a great deal about this popular and nimble CMS and the genuinely amazing things it can achieve. Over these years, I've built a lot of websites in my role.
As one of the most mature CMS platforms out there, WordPress offers, you know, a heck of a lot of flexibility. I've used other content management systems like Craft CMS, Statamic, and Ghost. And while those are excellent platforms in their own right, there's something about being a WordPress developer that feels pretty unique and special.
I'm not afraid to say it's got a place in my heart!
Even now, with so many different content management systems, frameworks, and languages available, WordPress really stands head and shoulders above the rest. There's a solid reason it powers at least 450 million websites! I always end up coming back to WordPress as my #1 platform of choice.
The numbers speak for themselves:
Indeed, WordPress powers a huge chunk of the internet.
Being a WordPress developer means building with an exceptional platform. It's strong and solid, yet surprisingly flexible and malleable, backed by an incredible community.
It's open source, which is, of course, awesome. It's quite easy to find answers to questions and get informative, sometimes entertaining, updates via Twitter and other social media channels. Honestly, it's got pretty much everything I could ask for in a development package.
Is it perfect? No platform is, naturally. But throughout all the years I've worked with it, I've found literally zero issues that were insurmountable. Not a single one.
2026 update Twitter is X these days, but the point holds — the WordPress community has simply scattered across more places (Mastodon, Bluesky, the Post Status and Make WordPress Slacks, plus the usual Reddit and Stack Overflow). Answers are still never far away.
I consistently recommend WordPress to clients seeking a tool that lets them manage their content on a really granular level. It allows them to dig deep into their content strategies, expressing themselves and their business goals clearly and concisely.
What's more, not only is it an extremely capable system on its own, but it also boasts a huge external plugin library—over 55,000 free plugins the last time I looked. These plugins allow the core WordPress code to be customised and extended as needed, so you're never restricted to just what comes out-of-the-box. Simply put, there's a world of potential to deliver on expectations as a WordPress developer.
Based on my experience, here are a few plugins that I always recommend.
Heads up The prices quoted below are the original 2023 figures. Plugin pricing has crept up across the board since — treat these as ballpark and check the vendor's site for the current 2026 rate before you budget.
WordPress comes bundled with a powerful block-based editing system known as Gutenberg. On its own, Gutenberg provides many powerful editorial functions, but it doesn't handle everything, you see. For anything more complicated than basic article layout and formatting, I'd turn to either hand-coding a template or using a page builder like Elementor. Interestingly, the very page you're reading was built using Elementor, although the content itself is managed via the Gutenberg block editor.
I find Elementor's power is best suited for creating stunning, fluid full-page layouts. Gutenberg, with its more relaxed, scaffold-like interface, provides a much cleaner and nimbler editing environment for writers wanting a distraction-free experience.
Elementor is available as a limited free package, or a Pro license starting from $59/yr.
2026 update Gutenberg has grown into full Site Editing (FSE) since this was written — with block themes you can now design headers, footers and full templates in the editor itself, which narrows the gap with page builders like Elementor for a lot of sites. The choice today is less "builder vs. writer" and more "block theme + FSE vs. a dedicated builder" — both remain valid, and I still reach for a page builder when a client wants heavy visual layout control.
Advanced Custom Fields is an absolutely essential plugin for any WordPress developer. I'm actually using it on this very page to build out different sections, giving each its own unique content management functionality. It's a really foundational, extremely powerful plugin that brings a whole new dimension to WordPress' data management capabilities. An absolute must-have, truly.
ACF also integrates nicely with Elementor, allowing custom fields to be embedded anywhere within intricate layouts.
Advanced Custom Fields comes in a free flavour, or the more feature-rich Pro version starting from $49/yr.
Heads up The ACF landscape changed after the October 2024 WP Engine / Automattic dispute. WordPress.org forked the free plugin and now ships it from the repository as Secure Custom Fields (SCF); Advanced Custom Fields itself — free and Pro — now installs direct from advancedcustomfields.com rather than the .org repo. The API and field types are the same; just be deliberate about which one you're installing and where it updates from.
Another plugin that WordPress developers shouldn't overlook, Gravity Forms brings the power of highly customisable drag-and-drop forms right into the WordPress interface. You can build pretty much any form imaginable with Gravity Forms, incorporating elements like date fields, number range inputs, financial calculators, address lookups, and many more.
Gravity Forms also offers access to even more powerful integrations via paid subscription tiers, such as Stripe checkout fields, HubSpot CRM functionality, and Google Analytics for tracking form submissions (though some features require higher-tier licenses). Frankly, I use it on almost every project; it feels like a core WordPress feature to me now. Whenever a client needs something more complex than a simple contact form, I turn to Gravity Forms.
(For simple contact forms, I highly recommend the Contact Form 7 plugin – it does a great job for basic name/email forms, and it's free!)
Gravity Forms is available as a licensed plugin starting from $59/yr.
Yoast is one of the most widely known WordPress plugins and has rightfully earned its place in the spotlight among clients and developers alike. Anyone working in Search Engine Optimisation will recognise the name instantly. This comprehensive tool empowers users to optimize their website for search engines, helping to increase visibility and drive more organic traffic.
As soon as it's installed, Yoast gets to work optimizing your SEO. Key features include:
It's an all-around fantastic plugin, and one that I install on every client site I build.
Yoast is available as a premium package for $99/yr, with a free version also offered.
Redirecting visitors is unavoidable if you regularly change page URLs or perform content overhauls. Managing SEO and ensuring search result rankings are maintained and strengthened is a vital task for any WordPress developer. Retaining your search engine ranking is crucial, and a plugin like Redirection makes that process much more straightforward.
You can manually specify URLs to redirect from/to via a clear interface, or let the plugin automatically create redirects whenever you update a post or page URL. This helps search engines understand the change and serve the new URL instead of the old one. The Redirection plugin is arguably one of the most important plugins if you're SEO-minded. Basically, it gives you peace of mind that redirection rules are maintained and content updates are handled correctly. I absolutely, positively always make sure this is installed on any site I build. It's a real lifesaver if someone makes a URL change that might otherwise cause a page to fall off the search rankings!
Redirection is available as a free plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.
What makes this powerful content management system tick? WordPress' plugin system is powerful – it's hard to overstate quite how powerful it really is. But this wouldn't be possible without WordPress' feature-packed and extendable core code.
Thanks to the way WordPress' internal core functionality is built, plugins can hook into vital functions using actions and filters.
This might sound simple, but together these two concepts give plugin and theme developers significant leverage over a WordPress installation and how it operates. It gives WordPress developers the ability to turn the platform into pretty much whatever they want. These clever features ensure plugins have access to the same powerful functions that keep WordPress itself running.
Instead of modifying core code (a practice that would leave websites prone to breaking during updates), plugins can attach functions that execute alongside equivalent core functions. For example, an action hook could allow a plugin to modify post content after it's saved. Or a plugin like Gravity Forms could use an action hook to update user account details after a specific form submission. Extremely powerful plugins offering event booking or tiered subscription memberships are built using these hooks.
Plugins can take advantage of, to name just a few:
There's a very good chance that if you see something happening in WordPress, you can add a hook to it and extend that functionality however you like. There's a lot to cover here, more than I could detail in this summary. If you'd like to know more, check out the official WordPress documentation or get in touch if you'd like to know more about plugin development. Bespoke plugins can be created for commercial or personal use, offering significant scope for interesting new ideas.
Bringing a client's vision to life sometimes requires digging into template code. Sometimes, a page builder like Elementor isn't quite enough on its own. Custom WordPress design services often use various techniques. These might include:
Depending on how designs are provided – perhaps via Figma, Invision, or even exported from a tool like Webflow – a process of converting those designs into a working template will occur.
Heads up InVision shut down at the end of 2024, so it's no longer a live option for handing over designs. In 2026 the design-handoff conversation is overwhelmingly Figma (with Dev Mode for spacing, tokens and asset export), alongside the likes of Penpot if a client wants something open-source. The workflow is unchanged — you're still converting a visual design into a working template — just with a different tool at the start of the pipe.
At its core, WordPress uses a flexible template hierarchy that tells the internal code how to map URLs to specific
page templates. For example, for a URL like https://mysite.com/blog/category/news-updates, WordPress
will:
category-news-updates.php. If not found...category-123.php. If not found...category.php (the generic category template). If not found...archive.php. If that's not available...index.php template file.Using this approach, WordPress developers can build varied and extremely powerful site structures. This method works not just for categories, but also for blog posts, articles, author pages, and custom post types. Fundamentally, developers can build all sorts of complex website structures using WordPress' powerful internal template architecture. You aren't restricted to the standard approach that page builders sometimes encourage. Feel free to explore, innovate, and experiment with whatever your imagination can conjure up!
This might be desirable if:
You can also leverage a powerful WordPress feature known as "Custom Post Types" (CPTs). Using the CPT system means you can define new types of data beyond the default post and page types. For instance, you might create a "Property" post type for a real estate website or a "Document" post type to track specific documents internally.
Adding this extra layer of flexibility on top of the existing template hierarchy and plugin system means there's almost unlimited scope for building extremely useful and engaging websites for personal use, businesses, customers—whoever you want to build for, really, the tools are there.
There are many reasons a WordPress developer might choose to build a template from scratch using code:
There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches (page builders vs. hand-coding), though both can be used to build extremely powerful and engaging websites. Ultimately, it all comes down to the needs and wishes of your customers or stakeholders. Whatever you're looking for, we can figure out the best approach together.
Whatever your website requirements are, WordPress can likely offer solutions. Feel free to speak to Solarise about custom WordPress developer services if you'd like to learn more.
All articlesI help content-rich organisations understand their data and pull it back into one place. Tell me what specific problems you're having and I'll be happy to talk solutions with you.
Tell me what specific problems you’re having and I’ll be happy to talk solutions with you.