WordPress

WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS and one of the most versatile platforms for building modern websites. It is used for corporate websites, e-commerce stores, product catalogs, media platforms, blogs, service websites, and content-driven projects. Its open-source architecture, extensive ecosystem, and support for custom development make WordPress suitable not only for small websites but also for sophisticated corporate solutions.

Big Fish is a web design and development studio specializing in custom WordPress websites with bespoke UX/UI design and frontend development. We do not build projects from off-the-shelf templates. We design the information architecture, create the visual concept, handle frontend and backend development, integrate the interface with the CMS, and optimize the finished website for performance, SEO, and future growth. For companies looking to order a turnkey website, WordPress often provides an excellent balance between functionality, development cost, and ease of long-term maintenance.

WordPress is an open-source content management system. The CMS allows businesses to manage pages, publications, images, products, services, case studies, and other content through an administration panel without having to contact a developer every time something needs to be changed.

Modern WordPress, however, goes far beyond basic content publishing. Its architecture supports custom post types, page templates, custom fields, forms, catalogs, user roles, and integrations with external systems. A WordPress website can therefore be developed with virtually any information architecture and a completely custom interface.

This flexibility is one of the main reasons behind the platform’s enormous popularity. Businesses get the proven infrastructure of an established CMS while developers retain the freedom to build custom functionality without being restricted by a visual website builder.

Professional WordPress website development begins not with installing the CMS, but with designing the digital product itself. We define the business objectives, target audience, information architecture, and user journeys before creating prototypes and a custom UX/UI design.

The next stage involves frontend development and integration of the interface with WordPress. All information that the company’s employees need to manage independently is made available through the administration panel: pages, services, projects, team members, articles, products, categories, images, specifications, and other content.

This approach makes it possible to create a WordPress website that does not look or feel like a typical CMS-based project. WordPress works behind the scenes as the content management system, while the design and user experience are created specifically for the brand and its business objectives.

Turnkey WordPress development covers the entire digital product development cycle: research and analysis, information architecture, UX/UI design, frontend and backend development, CMS integration, third-party integrations, testing, and launch.

The client does not need to hire a designer, frontend developer, and WordPress developer separately and then coordinate their work. A web studio takes responsibility for the entire project and considers technical requirements and platform capabilities from the very beginning of the design process.

If a business needs to order a WordPress website, this approach is generally more effective than dividing the project between multiple contractors. Architecture, design, development, and SEO requirements are treated as parts of a single system rather than independent stages.

WordPress is well suited to corporate websites, professional service websites, catalogs, online stores, media platforms, and other projects where content plays an important role. It is particularly useful for companies planning to create new landing pages regularly, publish articles, invest in SEO, and gradually expand their website architecture.

WordPress can power anything from a small company website to a large corporate platform with dozens of sections, industry-specific pages, portfolios, case studies, product catalogs, and third-party integrations. With a well-designed architecture, the website can continue to evolve for years without requiring a new CMS every time the business introduces another section or service.

We do not, however, use WordPress automatically for every project. Complex web applications, products with extensive business logic, and high-load systems may be better served by specialized backend and frontend technologies. The technology should always be selected according to the requirements of the project rather than the developer’s habits.

The common perception that WordPress websites all look alike comes primarily from the widespread use of ready-made themes. WordPress itself places virtually no restrictions on the visual design of a website.

At Big Fish, we first create an individual visual concept: composition, typography, grid, navigation, interface elements, animation, and responsive behavior. Once the design has been approved, we develop the frontend and then integrate it with WordPress.

As a result, a WordPress website can feature a sophisticated contemporary interface, unconventional layouts, and a distinctive visual system. Visitors do not need to know which CMS is running behind the scenes — what matters to them is performance, usability, design quality, and the overall digital experience.

WordPress is particularly convenient for corporate websites because of its flexible approach to content management. Services, industries, projects, case studies, employees, vacancies, publications, and other entities can be organized into separate content types and interconnected.

This creates a clear architecture not only for visitors but also for the company’s internal team. Content managers do not have to edit HTML or understand template structures: all required fields are available directly within the administration panel.

For companies planning to order a corporate website and continuously develop it after launch, the ability to efficiently manage a large amount of content is one of the strongest arguments in favor of WordPress.

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WordPress is well suited for SEO in both Google and Yandex. The CMS allows developers to create dedicated landing pages, manage URLs, headings and metadata, control indexation, generate XML sitemaps and canonical URLs, implement breadcrumbs and internal linking, optimize images, and work with structured data. With the right configuration, WordPress can support a large SEO architecture containing hundreds or even thousands of optimized landing pages.

Specialized plugins are commonly used to manage SEO settings. One of the best-known is Yoast SEO, which provides tools for configuring titles and meta descriptions, canonical URLs, XML sitemaps, Schema.org markup, breadcrumbs, and indexing settings, while also offering content analysis. Rank Math provides a similar feature set but places greater emphasis on advanced Schema configuration, page analysis, integration with Google Search Console and Analytics, 404 monitoring, redirects, and SEO automation.

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) also supports metadata, XML sitemaps, canonical URLs, robots.txt, and Schema. Its extended versions include redirect management, internal linking tools, WooCommerce SEO, and additional analysis features. Another alternative is SEOPress, which offers flexible control over canonical URLs, meta robots directives, XML sitemaps, redirects, images, and other technical SEO settings. In most projects, one primary SEO plugin is selected. Installing several competing SEO solutions simultaneously is generally unnecessary.

A plugin is only one part of WordPress SEO. Permanent URLs need to be structured correctly, unnecessary duplicate pages must be prevented, and canonical and index/noindex rules should be configured for archives, tags, search results, and other technical pages.

XML sitemaps and robots.txt need to be controlled, deleted or relocated pages should be handled with appropriate 301 redirects, server response codes should be monitored, and large numbers of 404 errors should be avoided.

Images require meaningful filenames, ALT attributes, and size optimization, while page content needs a proper H1–H6 hierarchy and protection against automatically generated CMS duplicates.

Particular attention should be paid to website architecture and internal linking. WordPress supports custom post types and taxonomies, which means services, industries, case studies, articles, products, and other entities can be organized into a logical hierarchy and connected to one another.

For large websites this is especially important. Search engine crawlers need to be able to quickly discover key landing pages, while internal link equity should be distributed toward strategically important sections.

WordPress websites can use Schema.org structured data such as Organization, Article, BreadcrumbList, Product, and other relevant markup types.

Many SEO plugins can generate Schema automatically, although custom websites and non-standard architectures sometimes require structured data to be implemented or extended programmatically. Rank Math, for example, supports numerous Schema types and includes its own Schema Builder, while Yoast generates interconnected Schema markup for the primary entities of a website.

Technical performance is another important part of WordPress SEO. Developers need to monitor Core Web Vitals, HTML, CSS and JavaScript volume, optimize images, implement caching, avoid excessive numbers of heavy plugins, and properly configure the server infrastructure. This becomes particularly important when visual page builders and ready-made themes are used, as they may add significant amounts of unnecessary code.

WordPress itself — or an installed SEO plugin — does not automatically guarantee high search rankings. Results depend on website architecture, development quality, loading speed, content, internal linking, and how closely individual pages match search intent.

SEO should therefore be considered before a web design and development studio begins building the website. The semantic structure can be planned in advance, dedicated pages can be created for individual services and business areas, and the architecture can be designed for future expansion. This is considerably more effective than creating a visually impressive website first and then asking SEO specialists to rebuild its architecture after launch. WordPress provides almost all of the technical capabilities required for SEO, but the final result depends on how effectively those capabilities are used.

WordPress is sometimes considered a slow CMS. In most cases, however, the problem is not the platform itself but the way the website is developed. Heavy ready-made themes, visual page builders, dozens of plugins, unoptimized images, and excessive third-party scripts can significantly reduce performance.

With custom development, the frontend can be carefully controlled so that visitors do not have to download code that is unnecessary for a particular page. Additional techniques include caching, image and resource optimization, efficient database operations, and properly configured server infrastructure.

Performance is particularly important for commercial websites. It affects not only user experience but also conversions, advertising efficiency, and SEO. Website speed should therefore be considered during development rather than treated as a problem to fix only after launch.

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One of WordPress’s greatest advantages is its enormous plugin ecosystem. Extensions are available for forms, e-commerce, content management, caching, security, multilingual websites, analytics, and many other requirements.

Using proven solutions means standard functionality does not have to be developed from scratch, allowing development resources to focus on the unique aspects of the project.

One of the most useful tools in professional WordPress development is Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). The plugin allows developers to create additional fields and organize structured content within the WordPress administration panel.

For example, a case study can have separate fields for the client, industry, year, technologies, and gallery, while a service page can include pricing, benefits, and related projects.

ACF supports numerous field types, custom post types, and taxonomies, allowing developers to create a convenient content management system for virtually any website architecture. This is why ACF is often used not simply as an optional plugin, but as one of the core tools in custom WordPress development.

Contact Form 7 remains one of the best-known solutions for contact forms. It is suitable for inquiries, feedback forms, and relatively straightforward user interactions. For more complex projects, forms can be developed from scratch or implemented using other specialized solutions, particularly when custom logic, multi-step forms, CRM integrations, or specific data processing is required.

For e-commerce, WooCommerce is the standard solution within the WordPress ecosystem. It adds product and category management, shopping cart functionality, order processing, and other e-commerce capabilities. WooCommerce can be extended through additional modules and custom development, making it possible to build online stores with bespoke interfaces, payment integrations, delivery services, CRM connections, and integrations with a company’s internal systems.

Another category of plugins focuses on performance. WP Rocket, for example, is used for page caching and loading optimization. It supports page caching and preloading, CSS and JavaScript optimization, Lazy Load for images and iframes, database optimization, and other performance mechanisms. When configured correctly, tools of this kind can help improve WordPress performance and Core Web Vitals.

Installing a plugin for every new requirement is not a good development strategy. The more third-party components a project uses, the more difficult it becomes to control performance, security, and compatibility after updates. Some plugins duplicate each other’s functionality, add unnecessary CSS and JavaScript, or place additional load on the database.

At Big Fish, we therefore aim to maintain a balance between established third-party solutions and custom development. A proven plugin makes sense when it solves a standard problem efficiently. If a project requires specific business logic, a non-standard integration, or functionality that would otherwise require several heavy extensions, developing a custom module is often the better approach.

As a result, WordPress remains relatively lean and controllable: proven plugins save development time on standard functionality, while custom development delivers precisely the capabilities required by the project. This approach also benefits performance, security, and long-term scalability.

WordPress can be used to create a complete online store. The most common solution is WooCommerce, an open-source e-commerce platform deeply integrated with WordPress.

It adds product and category management, product variations, inventory, shopping cart functionality, checkout, customer management, and order processing, transforming a standard WordPress website into a complete e-commerce platform.

WooCommerce supports physical and digital products, products with different attributes and variations, bundles, and other product types. Additional extensions can provide subscriptions, bookings, memberships, gift cards, sophisticated delivery options, and other business models. At the same time, the online store remains part of WordPress, allowing the company to develop its catalog, corporate sections, articles, landing pages, and SEO content within the same system.

The core system includes order and customer management, taxes, coupons, shipping methods, customer accounts, and various payment options. WooCommerce supports payment integrations and additional gateways, shipping providers, and other services. Custom cart and checkout logic can also be implemented, while functionality can be expanded as the business grows.

One of WooCommerce’s major advantages is the potential for extensive custom development. An online store does not need to look like a standard WordPress template: custom UX/UI can be designed for the catalog, product pages, shopping cart, checkout, and customer account.

Through REST API and webhooks, WooCommerce can be integrated with CRM and ERP platforms, warehouse and accounting systems, analytics services, and other elements of a company’s digital infrastructure.

WooCommerce has an extensive ecosystem of extensions. WooCommerce Subscriptions, for example, supports recurring payments and subscription-based business models; Product Bundles enables bundled product sales; and WooCommerce Bookings can be used for service and time-slot reservations. Additional modules can connect Stripe, PayPal, and other payment solutions. This means standard e-commerce functionality does not have to be programmed from scratch, while project-specific business logic can still be developed individually.

Having access to a large ecosystem does not mean an online store should be assembled from dozens of plugins. A serious e-commerce project requires advance planning of catalog architecture, filters, product attributes, payment and shipping options, integrations, and checkout flows. The more complex the store becomes, the more important it is to control the number of extensions, database performance, and frontend speed.

For large e-commerce projects, the technology should be selected after evaluating product volume, expected traffic, integrations, and business processes. For many online stores, however, WordPress + WooCommerce provides a flexible platform that can evolve alongside the business without requiring the entire e-commerce infrastructure to be developed from scratch.

Planning a WordPress online store?
Tell us about your catalog, payment methods, shipping, and integrations. We will propose an architecture and estimate the development.

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A corporate website may need to connect with CRM, ERP, analytics, email marketing, telephony, payment systems, delivery services, and a company’s internal software. WordPress supports these integrations through APIs and custom software modules.

If the website needs to become part of an existing digital business infrastructure, integrations should ideally be considered during the planning stage. The data architecture and administration logic can then be designed from the outset to support information exchange with other systems. As a result, WordPress becomes more than a CMS for publishing pages — it becomes one component of the company’s broader digital ecosystem.

One of the most common questions when choosing a CMS is how secure WordPress is. Because of its enormous popularity, WordPress websites are indeed frequently targeted by automated attacks.

This does not, however, mean that WordPress itself is inherently insecure. The security of a particular website depends much more on development quality, installed plugins, server configuration, access policies, and ongoing technical maintenance.

WordPress Core is maintained as a major open-source project and receives regular security updates. WordPress has a dedicated security team, and discovered vulnerabilities are addressed in subsequent releases. For this reason, one of the basic WordPress security practices is to use a current version of the CMS and keep website components up to date.

In practice, vulnerabilities are much more frequently associated with third-party plugins and themes than with WordPress Core itself. According to Patchstack, during the first half of 2025, 89% of the vulnerable WordPress components they identified were plugins, 11% were themes, while only one identified vulnerability affected WordPress Core. This illustrates why security depends heavily on how a website is built and which third-party components it uses.

For professional development, we therefore avoid installing dozens of plugins for minor functions. The less unnecessary third-party code a project contains, the easier it is to monitor its condition, compatibility, and updates. Preference should be given to established, actively maintained solutions with a clear update history, while unused plugins and themes should be removed.

Regular updates to WordPress, plugins, and themes are equally important. Once a developer identifies a vulnerability and releases a fix, continuing to use an outdated version can become particularly risky because information about the vulnerability may eventually become public and be exploited by automated attacks.

WordPress supports automatic Core updates, while automatic updates for individual plugins and themes can also be enabled.

For commercial websites, updates should ideally be combined with backups and post-update functionality checks.

Securing access to the WordPress administration panel is another important part of website security. Administrator accounts should use strong, unique passwords, the number of accounts with maximum privileges should be limited, and employees should receive only the permissions required for their work.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) can provide an additional layer of security. In this case, knowing the username and password is not sufficient to access the administration panel — a second authentication factor is required.

This significantly reduces the risk of website compromise if a password is leaked or guessed.

At the configuration level, editing plugin and theme files directly from the WordPress administration panel can also be disabled. This limits what an attacker can do if an administrator account is compromised.

File and directory permissions should also be configured correctly, wp-config.php should be protected, and database user privileges should be appropriately restricted.

A large proportion of attacks against popular CMS platforms are automated. Bots scan enormous numbers of websites for known vulnerabilities, attempt to guess credentials, or send specially crafted requests to vulnerable components.

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) can provide an additional layer of protection. Suspicious traffic can be filtered either at the server level or before the request reaches WordPress at all. Services such as Cloudflare provide these mechanisms, while WordPress can also be protected with specialized security plugins such as Wordfence, which can filter certain malicious requests at the application level.

For corporate projects, a layered security strategy is particularly effective: server security, firewalls, current software, correctly configured permissions, protected user accounts, and ongoing monitoring of WordPress components all complement one another. The security of the entire system should never depend on a single “security plugin.”

Backups are another essential component of operating a commercial website. Even a well-protected project needs the ability to recover quickly after a technical error, failed update, database corruption, or security incident. Backups should include not only the WordPress database but also project files, uploaded images, and configuration data.

Copies should be created automatically according to a defined schedule and stored in a way that prevents a problem on the main server from destroying both the live website and its only backup.

A backup should not be considered a complete defense against hacking. Backups are primarily about recovery, while updates, vulnerability monitoring, access configuration, and firewalls are intended to prevent incidents in the first place.

WordPress security is not a one-time configuration performed when the website launches. New vulnerabilities are regularly discovered in WordPress and third-party components, so commercial websites need to be monitored throughout their entire lifecycle.

Technical support can include monitoring updates and known vulnerabilities, website status, backups, uptime, and suspicious activity.

If an installed plugin is no longer supported by its developer or develops a serious security issue, it can be updated, replaced with an alternative, or removed in favor of custom development.

When properly developed and maintained, WordPress is entirely suitable for corporate and commercial websites. It is important to understand that absolute security does not exist for any CMS, framework, or custom-built system. Every web application requires updates, infrastructure monitoring, and appropriate security practices. It is therefore more useful to compare the quality of specific implementations than to compare the abstract “security of WordPress” with other technologies.

A website running a current WordPress version with a limited number of trusted plugins, regular updates, backups, protected accounts, a properly configured server, and WAF protection can be considerably more secure than a website built on another technology that has not been updated or maintained for years.

For businesses, the principle is straightforward: WordPress should not be treated as a system that is installed once and then forgotten. With professional development and ongoing technical support, security becomes part of the website lifecycle alongside new functionality, performance optimization, and content development.

Discuss Website Support

A website does not stop evolving when it goes live. After launch, businesses introduce new services and products, marketing requirements change, new integrations are needed, and SEO creates additional development tasks. A strong corporate website should therefore be designed for continuous evolution.

We can develop and improve existing WordPress projects: create new sections and templates, modify interfaces, add functionality, connect third-party services, improve loading speed, and resolve technical issues. If an existing website has become visually or technically outdated, it can be redesigned while retaining the CMS and existing content. For more complex cases, the project can undergo a technical rebuild while preserving essential content, URLs, and SEO parameters.

WordPress and 1C-Bitrix are often considered alternative platforms for corporate website development. Each has its own advantages. WordPress offers open-source code, no license fee, and an enormous international ecosystem. 1C-Bitrix is widely used by Russian companies and can be convenient for projects closely connected with 1C products and existing corporate infrastructure.

The better question is therefore not “Which is better, WordPress or Bitrix?” but “Which CMS is better suited to this particular project?” Before developing a website, requirements for functionality, integrations, expected load, administration, and future development should be clearly defined.

Tilda and WordPress address fundamentally different requirements. A website builder makes it possible to launch small websites and landing pages quickly when speed of deployment matters more than long-term development flexibility. WordPress provides substantially more control over architecture, code, SEO, and future development.

For a corporate website expected to operate for several years, expand over time, and generate organic traffic across a large number of search queries, a full CMS is often a more future-proof foundation. For businesses, the difference becomes particularly noticeable over time. As new business areas, complex structures, integrations, or custom functionality appear, the limitations of a website builder can begin to restrict further development.

The cost of a WordPress website depends primarily on the scale and complexity of the project rather than on the CMS itself.

Pricing is influenced by the number of unique pages and templates, design complexity, frontend development, programming, product catalogs, integrations, multilingual functionality, customer accounts, and other functional requirements.

The phrase “WordPress website” therefore says very little about the actual cost. A ready-made theme can be installed to create a simple website in a few days, while a large corporate platform with custom UX/UI design, complex architecture, and multiple integrations requires a completely different level of development.

If you want to order a WordPress website, we first define the project objectives and scope of work. Only then can we provide a realistic estimate of the development budget and timeline.

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WordPress combines a mature technology platform, convenient content management, open-source architecture, and one of the largest ecosystems in web development. A company is not locked into a proprietary system or a single development provider, and the website can evolve gradually alongside the business.

Today it may be a corporate website. A year later, it may include dozens of additional landing pages, a product catalog, multiple languages, CRM integrations, and additional digital services. With a properly designed architecture, this growth does not require rebuilding the entire project from scratch.

This is why WordPress remains a popular business platform despite the emergence of new frameworks, website builders, and CMS platforms. For companies that need a turnkey website with custom design, convenient content management, and room for long-term growth, WordPress remains one of the platforms worth considering first.

Big Fish develops WordPress websites for companies that need more than an off-the-shelf template. We design the information architecture, create custom UX/UI, develop the frontend and backend, integrate WordPress, connect third-party services, and launch the finished product.

If you need to create a website from scratch, redesign an existing project, or migrate a website to WordPress, tell us about your requirements. We will analyze the project and propose a technical solution based on your business objectives rather than forcing the project onto a particular CMS.

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Over 15 years, Big Fish has developed websites and digital products for companies across a wide range of industries, including finance, healthcare, manufacturing, real estate, professional services, and more.

Lenotr Park

Landscape Design

Cost: RUB 640,000

Technologies: HTML, WordPress CMS

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E-COM Consult

Law Firm

Cost: RUB 420,000

Technologies: HTML, WordPress CMS

View Case Study