How can you tell if a web design company is worth your investment?
In this guide, we’ll explore how much it costs to build a website in today’s market, highlight key considerations in your evaluation, and recommend questions to ask potential providers.
By the end of this post, you’ll be able to make the right decision with confidence.
Outsourcing web design can cost anywhere from $500 to over $5,000. Your final investment depends on various factors, including your website’s complexity and project timeline.
To illustrate, a basic five-page site built via our website design service costs $499, excluding hosting. This includes a free custom domain for one year and is completed within four business days or less.
In contrast, customizing a larger website requires a substantially larger budget. Hiring a web design agency through the WordPress.com Partner Directory, for instance, starts at $5,000 (excluding hosting).
This higher price point includes a custom-designed website, third-party integrations, multiple revisions, migrations, and pre-launch checks, among other benefits. Website completion takes three months or longer.
Here’s a pricing chart to differentiate the deliverables.
The best web design firms don’t just craft websites that align with your brand and vision — they create an experience users love. To pick the ideal partner, here’s what you need to watch out for.
Clearly defined goals pinpoint the ideal web design company for your needs.
Determine what you need your website to accomplish. Is it generating leads, driving ecommerce sales, or improving brand authority? Once you define your goal, you can quickly work out a rough budget and the type of agency to partner with.
Here are three examples to illustrate what we mean:
EXAMPLE | Solo service provider | Mid-sized IT business | Fortune 500 enterprise |
GOAL | Improve personal brand and attract new clients. | Improve user experience (UX) to increase leads and set up analytics tracking and reporting. | Improve digital footprint and increase pipeline growth through a complete omnichannel strategy. |
IDEAL AGENCY | Boutique agency specializing in brand storytelling, photo direction, SEO optimization, and conversion-driven design. | Mid-sized agency specializing in conversion optimization and copywriting. | Full-service agency or a group of specialist agencies (e.g., one for web design and copywriting, another for SEO and lead generation). |
After defining your goals, prepare a list of potential agencies.
Here are three ways to find them:
For example:
Choose web design companies whose reputation or maturity level aligns with your own. This strategic alignment ensures effective collaboration and results.
Here’s what we mean.
Imagine your small business hired a prestigious agency. Given larger agencies’ tendency to prioritize bigger clients, it’s likely the agency will delegate your project to junior web designers with limited experience.
Enterprises partnering with less established agencies are no better. With standardized rules and processes, small agencies without first-hand experience navigating red tape will struggle to meet compliance standards, potentially delaying launches.
Prioritize agencies with a proven track record in your industry.
A web design company working with B2C companies is unlikely to understand B2B market nuances — and vice versa.
Review the agencies’ projects, examining the challenges encountered, solutions implemented, and measurable results delivered. This should give you an idea if they possess the needed expertise.
Tip: If their portfolio lacks results, consider contacting past clients to gain insights using this script: “Hey! I noticed your website was designed by [web design studio]. It’s impressive. I’m considering hiring them to revamp my website as well. Out of curiosity, how was your experience?”
Typically, relationships cause agency partnerships to falter.
Evaluate the web design companies to better understand their communication, teamwork, and problem-solving skills — it’ll prevent partnership breakdowns:
You’ve now identified several potential web design companies on your list. Ask the following questions to pinpoint the perfect partner.
Why ask this question: Anticipate the team members you’ll collaborate with. This way, you can assign the ideal counterparts in your in-house team and plan communication ahead. For example, assigning someone technical ensures immediate responses to technical inquiries from the agency’s web development specialist.
Green flags:
Tip: Check the agency’s careers page to verify ongoing training programs for its web designers and developers. Working with specialists who stay ahead of design tools and emerging technologies ensures your site remains future-proof.
Red flags:
Why ask this question: Agencies with great internal teams deliver exceptional results. Strong team morale translates to increased productivity, enriched company culture, and successful collaboration with clients and partners.
Green flags:
Red flags:
Tip: Check the LinkedIn profiles of these agency staff, paying attention to their promotion timeline.
Why ask this question: Establish clear accountability to ensure progress toward your business goals.
Green flags:
Red flags:
Why ask this question: A functional website goes beyond design. Here, you’re trying to tease out the agency’s complementary skills, such as digital marketing, information architecture (the practice of organizing information in a user-friendly way), and user research — all central to creating a website that drives conversions.
Green flags:
Red flags:
Why ask this question: The post-launch process matters as much as the initial design stage. Post-launch optimization helps you quickly spot opportunities for change and prioritize improvements based on results (e.g., conversions).
Green flags:
Red flags:
These key considerations and questions offer a useful starting point for further discussion. You’ll narrow down your choice and find the best-fit agency partner to turn your initial concept into reality.
If you’re building a high-end website, check the WordPress.com Partner Directory. All agencies are verified, boast years of experience in multiple sectors, and offer ongoing post-launch support as your website scales. Site migration is included, to boot.
To make it easier for you, we’ll handpick the web design agency best suited to your project. All you need to do is share your vision, design preferences, and desired functionality, and we’ll match you with a partner. Alternatively, if you’re building a smaller website, choose our Express Website Design Service. You’ll get a professionally designed site in four business days or less.
So, you want to become a WordPress developer? That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a while!
After all, WordPress powers over 40% of the web — and behind every great WordPress site and product is someone who knows how to build and manage it. Why shouldn’t it be you?
Now, where do you start?
Well, how about right here? This guide walks you through everything you need to begin developing with WordPress professionally. You’ll learn what WordPress developers actually do, how to gather the right tools, skills, and knowledge, and how to start building a career.
A WordPress developer is someone who builds, customizes, contributes to, or maintains websites using the WordPress platform.
If that feels like a rather broad definition, it is. That’s because WordPress is a big ecosystem, and there are many different ways to work within it.
WordPress developers come in different flavors, depending on what they like to build and how they work. These are some of the most common types you’ll find:
It’s up to you to decide what kind of WordPress developer you want to become. At the same time, you can wear more than one hat because skills in one role often carry over to others.
Depending on your role, here are some of the core tasks you might handle:
To become a WordPress developer, you need the right tools for the job. Here are great options to start with:
As a first step in your developer journey, you need to familiarize yourself with some basic WordPress concepts.
WordPress core is the open source software that powers every site built with WordPress. You can download it at WordPress.org and use it free of charge. It includes all functionality and default features.
To run a WordPress website, you need hosting, meaning space on a web server.
There are different types of web hosting, from shared to managed hosting. The latter is what WordPress.com is — a hosting provider that lets you easily build WordPress-based websites while taking care of everything technical, like software updates, security, and performance.
Hosting your own or your clients’ websites on WordPress.com offers the following benefits:
For more differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com, check this detailed list.
The heart of every WordPress site is the WordPress admin dashboard. It’s where you manage content, themes, plugins, and settings.
It goes without saying that, in order to develop with WordPress, you need to know this part inside and out — including how themes and plugins work.
For example, WordPress themes come in two varieties: classic (PHP and file-based) or block themes (built for the block-based Site Editor). Depending on the type you use for a project, the process of customizing it will differ.
In addition, plugins cover a wide range of functionality. They can add singular layout elements, as well as create entirely new content editing experiences. This, too, is something you need to familiarize yourself with.
Finally, WP-CLI lets you manage WordPress sites with terminal commands.
Pretty much anything you can do in WordPress admin (like install, activate, and update plugins, moderate comments, manage users and user roles, change site settings, etc.), you can do quicker and in bulk with WP-CLI.
Plus, it has some nifty features for developers, like running and testing PHP code or flushing website cache.
(As mentioned, WP-CLI is included on WordPress.com Business and Commerce plans. You can learn more about it here.)
With the basics covered, next you need to familiarize yourself with WordPress’s architecture and the programming languages that make up the platform.
A good starting point to dive deeper is the dedicated Beginner WordPress Developer course on WordPress.org.
It offers a structured path to learn how WordPress works behind the scenes, development best practices, introductions to block, plugin, and theme development, as well as important topics such as the WordPress REST API, multisite, debugging, and much more.
This is a great basis to start from and decide in which direction to take your studies next.
Another frequently recommended option is the course “Become a WordPress Developer” on Udemy.
HTML forms the backbone of all web pages. It defines basic layout elements and content like headings, paragraphs, images, and links.
Knowing it is essential for understanding how WordPress and all other websites render content. That’s especially if you plan to do frontend development or customize themes or blocks.
In addition, it’s a great first language for beginners: it’s easy to read and learn, as well as immediately applicable.
You can start learning HTML for free on Codecademy, Learn-HTML.org, or W3Schools.
While HTML controls site structure, CSS is responsible for how a website looks. Its role is to define colors, fonts, spacing, layouts, and more.
For example, CSS is responsible for making sure the website design adjusts to different screen sizes.
Again, if your goal is to do frontend work, you won’t excel without familiarizing yourself with this markup language. You can find great learning resources for it at Codecademy, W3Schools, as well as web.dev.
As the third-most important frontend language, JavaScript’s main purpose is to make websites more interactive. For example, you can use it to create things like sliders, pop-ups, and dynamic animations.
It also plays a role in:
In addition, JavaScript is important in modern WordPress development. The WordPress block editor is built with React (a JavaScript framework), and custom blocks require working with JavaScript as well.
If you want to dive into this topic, you can do so at Codecademy, Learn JavaScript, or MDN Web Docs.
PHP is the main WordPress backend language and what powers most of the platform. It generates frontend HTML and controls how content loads, templates work, and features behave.
Knowing PHP is crucial for plugin development, although not as important for themes as it used to be.
Want to add PHP to your developer toolbelt? Great resources are Learn PHP and the ever-present W3Schools and Codecademy.
The last skill to consider learning when pursuing a career as a WordPress developer is MySQL. It powers the database system that’s the other half of every WordPress site (the first being the file system).
The database contains all pages and post content, settings, and user data, which is pulled during the rendering process.
MySQL is likely not something you’ll work with every day, but understanding it helps when troubleshooting problems or building complex features.
You can get your bearings in this language at W3Schools, the guide in the MySQL documentation, or at MySQL Tutorial.
While the above is essential to start developing with WordPress, there are a whole host of supporting skills you should consider learning:
Please don’t feel overwhelmed or pressured by this list; it’s just an overview. You will pick up many of these skills naturally as you take on more projects and grow your experience.
Speaking of which, the best way to learn anything is to use it in real life. Therefore, if you want to get into WordPress development, your best bet is to start building websites. Doing it will solidify your understanding of WordPress and give you something concrete to learn with.
You have different options for doing so:
For the best results, pick a manageable project, like a personal blog, a portfolio, or a small business site. This will help you focus on achieving something tangible rather than aimlessly experimenting
If you want to focus on designing rather than managing servers, security, performance, or updates, launch your site on WordPress.com. We also have a guided first-website course for this.
Once you’ve built a few projects and gained some confidence, it’s time to start thinking about how to turn your skills into real-world opportunities. The first step is to decide what you want:
Once you’ve made these important decisions, an important tool to find employment is your WordPress development portfolio site. There, you can showcase your work, skills, and services to help you attract web design clients. Highlight completed projects, describe the role you played, and include testimonials if possible.
After that, start applying for jobs in places like:
You can also join online communities (Slack groups, forums, Facebook groups) where WordPress work is shared and discussed.
WordPress and the web are constantly evolving, and staying current is part of being a great developer. It helps you become faster and stronger, and to learn new techniques and tools so you can offer more services and ask for higher rates and salary.
Here’s how to continue your education:
Becoming a WordPress developer is more accessible than ever — even if you’re starting with zero coding experience. There are lots of free learning resources and tools out there. WordPress itself is free, too.
Explore the different areas of development to find the right fit for yourself. Grow your skills with personal projects and gather a portfolio as soon as possible. Soon, it’ll be time to get hired for your first job.
If you want some help with the technical aspects of running WordPress websites, go for WordPress.com.
When the non-profit Net Literacy launched 20 years ago, it started with a simple but powerful idea: Empower those without Internet skills or resources to get online, with youth volunteers serving as teachers and ambassadors. Today, they have grown into a global nonprofit reaching over 250,000 people through digital inclusion and financial education while growing into new areas, such as AI literacy.
However, sustaining that impact across generations requires more than passion; it needs digital permanence and peace of mind that their resources will always be available online. This is what inspired Net Literacy to become one of the first customers to adopt WordPress.com’s 100‑Year Plan.
“A number of things really appealed to us about the 100‑Year Plan,” Net Literacy founder and CEO Dan Kent says. “First of all, it provides us with a lot of simplification and certainty around our operations. As a nonprofit, we’re looking to provide services for multiple generations.”
Nonprofits live in cycles of funding and change. As Kent (who founded Net Literacy when he was only 14 years old explains, “As a nonprofit, our fundraising definitely is cyclical […] so, to provide us the certainty and peace of mind for our operations, the 100‑Year Plan protects us from downside risks and ensures that we’re able to continue our mission […] remain on the Internet for anybody around the world to access.”
Net Literacy’s mission is to establish and maintain an open, long-term digital curriculum that will be available for generations. For that, they rely on a website that cannot be lost to expired domains or administrative lapses. According to Kent, “The 100‑Year Plan provides us peace of mind, ensuring that future generations of volunteers […] don’t have to worry about making sure that our resources are accessible for anybody around the world.”
Net Literacy’s programs tackle long-term challenges like closing the digital divide and spreading AI literacy. “Organizations that solve really big, meaty problems will really value this 100‑Year Plan,” Kent says. “Particularly those […] tackling problems that aren’t easily solved in decades, and need to measure their impact in generations.”
This isn’t just about hosting your website online with world-class open source software. It’s a promise that an organization’s digital presence is built to last and ready for anything. WordPress.com’s century-based products (which also includes 100-year domains) take a multi-layered approach that begins with a long-term investment model to endow the data, ensuring there will always be finances available to maintain the service.
This is then combined with distributed cloud server infrastructure, time-machine like layered backups, seamless trust-account continuity, and integration with the Internet Archive, making the 100-Year Plan not just a hosting plan, but a digital legacy fortress.
Net Literacy felt confident about the alignment between WordPress.com and their organizational goals. “WordPress.com has been around as long as we have,” Kent says. “That track record matters.”
Their trust in WordPress.com was reinforced when the 100‑Year Plan and Domain were recognized by Actualidad Economíca as one of the “100 Best Ideas of 2025” — a prestigious Impact Leader Award that underscores its innovation in digital legacy infrastructure.
Kent’s vision is clear: change is inevitable, but mission continuity is essential.
“The one thing that will be constant going forward is change […] things such as the 100‑Year Plan … will make sure that we have a lot more optionality and make sure that our mission continues into the future,” Kent says.
With both mission and medium secured, Net Literacy is ready for what comes next. Thanks to the 100‑Year Plan, their educational resources won’t vanish — they will endure.
Learn more about how to secure and future-proof your digital legacy with the 100-Year Plan and 100-Year Domain.
iOS 26 brought some significant updates to Apple’s mobile operating system, and we’re keeping pace with updates of our own in the Jetpack mobile app. With the release of Jetpack app 26.4, we’re shipping three new features designed to save you time, eliminate friction, and improve your experience. Let’s dive into what’s new.
The new Stats screen retains the original structure, but improves every single aspect of the experience — better design, better interactions and animations, new features, and new technology to power it.
A new line chart with comparison periods, hourly data, trend indicators for metrics, significant data points on charts, custom date ranges, engagement and newsletter metrics for posts, full customization — these are just some of the new features coming to Jetpack Stats on mobile.
The new experience can be enabled using the “more” menu on the current Stats screen and can be disabled at any time. Please, give it a try and let us know what you think using the “Send Feedback” option available in the same menu.
This year, Apple made it possible for apps like ours to utilize their on-device AI models, bringing intelligence features to our apps in a privacy-sensitive manner. We started by adding three powerful features for the app — excerpt generation, suggested tags, and post summarization.
The new features also arrive with a redesigned publishing experience that makes it easier to configure the post for publishing without missing any important details. With models running on-device, we are able to generate the suggestions pro-actively and at no-cost.
The new intelligence features require an iOS 26 device that supports Apple Intelligence and are initially only available in English, with more options coming later this year.
We’ve been hard at work to get our app up to speed with the latest Apple design and technology, including Liquid Glass — a new design language.
It elevated every single aspect of the experience, and especially in Reader, which is stunning. But it’s not just Reader — every part of the app was reviewed and updated to take the best advantage of Liquid Glass.
We hope you enjoy these new features! If you’d like to try them, they are all currently available in the Jetpack mobile app. Upgrade or download it today for iOS or Android.
Starting a new site in WordPress Studio just got faster: Blueprint support is now enabled in version 1.6.0.
With Blueprints, you don’t have to start with an empty WordPress site; simply predefine your preferred setup once and reuse it. If your team relies on a standard scaffold, turn it into a Blueprint and keep every project consistent and efficient.
With Blueprints in Studio, you can create sites from your own custom Blueprint or pick from a curated set of Blueprints to get up and running quickly.
Here’s a brief demo of this new feature in action.
Blueprints are lightweight JSON “recipes” for WordPress sites. Instead of saving a full site copy, they tell Studio which versions, plugins, and settings to apply so you and your team can spin up the same environment anytime.
Other local development tools often rely on full-site snapshots, which can be large, hard to share, and locked to a single environment. Studio Blueprints, by contrast, are portable and declarative: a single JSON file can reproduce the same site setup on any machine, instantly. That makes them more flexible for teams, easier to keep in sync, and more powerful for testing and iteration.
Creating local sites from Blueprints is now incorporated into the standard new site creation flow within Studio. Studio runs on WordPress Playground, so if you’ve used Playground Blueprints before, you can use the same ones here or use one of our free featured Blueprints.
Once you have Studio installed on your computer, click the “Add site” button in the lower left corner. The following screen will appear.
Select “Start from a Blueprint,” and you will see a gallery of featured Blueprints and an option to choose your own custom Blueprint.
Studio currently includes three featured Blueprints:
If a featured Blueprint fits your needs, select it and click Continue. To use your own Blueprint, click “Choose Blueprint file,” select the JSON file from your computer, and click Continue.
Next, name your site. You can access more options, such as WordPress and PHP version configuration, by opening “Advanced settings.” When you’re ready, click “Add site.”
Behind the scenes, Studio builds the site from whichever Blueprint you selected or added. This flow should feel familiar to adding a blank site in Studio.
Blueprints bring speed and consistency to your workflow, whether you’re working solo or with a team.
They help you:
blueprint.json
to your project’s GitHub repository, whether you are building a plugin, theme, or full site. It scaffolds the same environment every time, so teammates can start in minutes. Version control keeps changes reviewable and consistent.The featured Blueprints in Studio are delivered through an API, so new ones appear in the app as soon as they’re published. After you’ve had a chance to try them, we’d love to hear how you’re using Blueprints and what additional options you’d find helpful. Share your feedback in the comments or on GitHub.
Ready to create your own? Start with the How to create custom Blueprints guide. If you already use WordPress Playground Blueprints, you can reuse them in Studio — there are just a few differences to keep in mind, which the guide covers.
Blueprint support and the featured Blueprints in this release are an initial step. We believe Blueprints will be a fundamental part of most Studio workflows, so additional enhancements will follow. We’re also exploring the possibility of a public Blueprint library on WordPress.com where you can create, store, and share your own.
In the meantime, the next focus areas are:
We also enabled GitHub Discussions in the Studio repository. It’s a place for open conversation about the future of Studio, tips and tricks, questions, and more. It complements issues and pull requests. You’ll see me and the product team active there, and we hope you’ll join us.
Finally, if you haven’t tried Studio yet, or it’s been a while, now’s a great time to jump in. It’s free, open source, and improving rapidly.
Whether you manage a single blog or a roster of client sites, it typically involves logging into dashboards, checking posts and comments, reviewing traffic statistics, and monitoring plugin or theme updates. Every question about your site’s health or performance takes time to answer.
Now you can simply ask an AI assistant like Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor: “Show me my latest posts and how they’re performing.”
Within seconds, the results appear, pulled via WordPress.com’s new support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
AI assistants are already part of many creative and development workflows, helping people brainstorm copy, generate code, and analyze data.
But when it’s time to work with your WordPress site, those tools don’t have direct access to your site details. They don’t automatically know which posts went live, how traffic is trending, or what plugins are active, so you still end up copying, pasting, and exporting spreadsheets, adding extra steps every time you want an answer that your AI can’t reach on its own.
That gap means your AI can brainstorm and advise, but it hits a wall when it comes to actually using your site’s data to help you make meaningful decisions. What’s missing is a secure way for your AI assistant to communicate with your WordPress.com site and understand your content, stats, and settings.
That’s where MCP (Model Context Protocol) comes in — an open standard that lets applications provide context to large language models (LLMs).
With MCP, your AI assistant can actually connect to WordPress.com, giving you direct visibility into your site’s content, analytics, and settings, all without leaving your AI tool.
The result is:
As the first WordPress host to support MCP with OAuth by default, WordPress.com has made every site on a paid WordPress.com plan MCP-ready, if and when you’re ready to enable it.
Simply connect your favorite AI app (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, or any other AI assistant that supports MCP) and start communicating with your WordPress.com site in a brand new way.
Currently, our MCP integration provides your AI assistant with “read-only” access to your site, meaning it can securely surface information and insights in your AI tool without requiring you to log in and manually retrieve them. “Write” access will come next, extending what your assistant can do as well as what it can see.
Getting started only takes a few minutes. Once enabled on your WordPress.com account, MCP works behind the scenes to connect your WordPress.com sites with your favorite AI assistant:
After that, you can directly ask your AI assistant for information about your sites so you don’t have to dig through reports for basic answers.
Here are just a few examples of some of the things you may want to learn about your sites through your AI assistant:
These are just a handful of ways MCP makes your WordPress.com site AI-readable. See the complete list of available MCP tools and some prompt examples in our developer documentation.
Understanding your site shouldn’t mean piecing together insights from half a dozen places. With MCP, you can now learn more about your website where you’re already working — in your AI assistant.
It’s a faster, more focused way to stay on top of your WordPress.com sites, with the reassurance that the connection is secured by OAuth and fully under your control.
WordPress.com’s MCP implementation is just one of many currently available in Automattic products — and you can even use them together. You can find a complete list of our MCP servers here.
Creating a portfolio website is one of the easiest ways to showcase your work as a creative — whether you’re a designer, writer, photographer, or developer. Initially, in my career as a freelance writer, I thought a static PDF or Google Doc collating my best work would suffice.
Having a professional portfolio website, however, makes quite a difference. For starters, it raises your stature because it signals a certain level of credibility and commitment to your craft that isn’t evident in other formats (like PDFs or online portfolio makers).
Beyond first impressions, creating a portfolio website has tons of functional benefits — it’s interactive, easier to keep up-to-date, and more accessible. I can also see which pages on my website get the most views and engagement to optimize my portfolio better.
Best of all, building a professional-looking website is easier than you think. It might appear overwhelming at first, but this guide will make the process straightforward.
Building a portfolio website seems daunting at first — especially if you haven’t created a website before. It seems easier to rely on mock portfolio builders than to make a site from scratch, but I promise the process is easier than you think. Here are all the steps you need to follow:
It’s tempting to dump all the work you’ve ever done in your portfolio, but take it from someone who used to have writing samples from college internships (yikes) on her site: You must only show your best work on your portfolio website.
Why? Your prospective clients are busy people. They don’t have the time to scour through a ton of samples to evaluate your work and determine whether you’re a right fit for their needs. Displaying too many pieces of work also doesn’t leave a lasting impression. You want a potential client to land on your portfolio website, find your best work easily, and remember you.
So, pick only the best of the best work you’ve done so far to display on your portfolio website. If you work in multiple industries or have different categories within your work, you can pick a few samples from each segment.
For example, I write for various sectors — such as the creator economy, software, and productivity. On my portfolio site, each niche is a different page containing a few of the best samples from each category.
Now, when a prospective client lands on my website and they’re in the software industry, they can easily find the best samples in that domain instead of sifting through irrelevant pieces of work.
Organizing my portfolio this way also saves me time when I’m communicating with a lead and need to send relevant samples.
If you want to show work you’ve done for fun, you can classify it separately as your passion project(s).
Takeaway: Select the best pieces of work you’ve done to showcase on your portfolio website. There’s not a singular ideal number of samples — it depends on your work experience, industry, and more. It always helps to think from a client’s perspective.
If they land on your portfolio website, which samples would impress them? How many samples would look too cluttered and make a client bounce? Which samples would best show your range of work? Start putting yourself in your client’s shoes and pick the best pieces of work accordingly.
If you’re already using WordPress.com to set up your site, you’re ahead of the game. If you’ve landed on this article without a WordPress.com account, no worries. Stick with me here — we’ll cover the foundation you need before you can bring your portfolio site to life.
You need two things to begin creating your portfolio website: a web host and a domain name.
Tip: If you’re confused between domain and hosting, this article highlights their differences and explains why you need both services for your website.
If you want to avoid the headache of finding and integrating a web host, a domain name, and a website builder, you can choose a managed WordPress hosting provider like WordPress.com — where everything is in one place. You also don’t lose the flexibility and control to customize your website however you wish.
Anyone can get a website up and running with WordPress.com. Start with one of these resources:
Once you go through the sign up flow, you’re ready to start building your website.
Tip: When you sign up with WordPress.com, you’ll be asked to choose a domain name. This can be something related to your business name, personal brand, or simply your full name.
You can also search available domain names with our domain finder tool or transfer an existing domain name to WordPress.com if you have one with another domain provider.
The final step is actually designing your portfolio. If you’ve chosen WordPress.com as your host, you’ll have access to thousands of free and premium themes. There are also various themes specifically for portfolios so you don’t have to start building your website from scratch.
Once you decide on a theme, customize the website to your brand’s colors and fonts. If you have a logo for your creative business, you can add it to your website, too.
Then, start adding pages to your website. Here are the pages you should have on your portfolio site:
The above are the essential pages you should have on your portfolio website, but don’t be afraid to get creative and add more pages if you need them. For example, if you’re planning to add blog posts that show your expertise, you can add a separate page for them on your site.
Tip: Don’t select your best work once and then let it collect dust. You need to regularly update your website with new samples to showcase your current skill level. I set aside an hour at the end of each month to add recent work to my portfolio. Set up a similar ritual that works for you to ensure your portfolio site always matches your existing skillset.
Here’s how I’ve designed my portfolio site using the steps outlined in the previous section. Hopefully, it helps you get some ideas about elements you can use in your own portfolio.
The home page has a clear hero image and a headline about what I do. I start by introducing myself and giving a brief summary about the clients I work with and the services I provide. I debated about adding my photo, but I realized it instantly humanizes my website.
The call-to-action in the first section is to either visit the portfolio or scroll down to learn more about my work process. If you are a service provider, some details about how you work together can help clients feel more confident about your professionalism and get a rough idea about how you work.
The goal isn’t just to give potential clients a snippet of what working together feels like, but also to filter out clients who might not be a good fit.
In the middle of the home page, I’ve also added testimonials and logos of some of the brands I’ve worked with. This instantly builds trust and makes a potential client curious to learn more.
I’ve also added a contact form and an FAQ section at the end, so it’s easy for clients to contact me without leaving the website and have their common queries answered.
The portfolio page on my website begins with a reiteration of who I am, what I do, and logos of some notable brands I’ve worked with. I find this repetition is often helpful because potential clients often land on my portfolio page before they land on my home page.
The next section contains an image of me with the “Why should I hire you?” question answered. I’ve found adding this bit often helps soothe doubts of potential clients and helps me showcase how I stand out compared to the competition.
After that, I put a spotlight on my best two testimonials from notable (present or former) clients in my industry to build some credibility. In future updates, I also plan on highlighting a few core phrases in these reviews to make the website more skimmable and memorable.
Then come the samples. I categorize my samples into various folders to cater to the different kinds of clients I work with. I highly recommend doing this if you work in multiple industries, no matter how niche the difference is between them. It helps clients easily find exactly what they’re looking for to make the decision to hire you. It’s also handy when you want to send only one category’s sample to a potential client.
The portfolio page ends with the contact form and two more testimonials to seal the deal.
The work sample pages are simple: Each contains six samples and a relevant testimonial. These are the pages I update the most because I want these samples to reflect my latest and best work. Focus on being accessible instead of fancy here. Don’t make a client jump through hoops to find your best work.
What do I mean by relevant testimonials? Let me explain with an example: In the above productivity samples, I have added a majority of the work from my client, Todoist. So the testimonial is from the content manager in the same company.
This adds more weight and credibility in the eyes of a future client browsing this page. They can not only see the latest samples, but also read a review from a client in the same industry. Of course, this isn’t always possible, but do your best to pair each testimonial with relevant work samples. If you can’t grab a testimonial, a case study can also work wonders.
I also plan to add contact forms in these pages that are more personalized to the category. This will not only help clients contact me easily, but also help me precisely track where the majority of my leads are coming from.
Tip: Depending on how much time you have available, expect to spend about a week to build a small portfolio site with four or five pages. You can also consider using our custom website design service or expediting the process with our AI website builder.
To make the best use of your portfolio website, it’s important to get the word out and make it accessible. Ideally, it’d be the first thing a prospective client finds when they want to learn more about you and your work.
Here are five easy ways to make the most of your portfolio website:
Now that you’ve learned how to create, use, and promote your portfolio site, let’s understand how to transform it from good to great.
Over my half a decade of self-employment, I’ve seen a fair share of portfolios from creatives across a variety of fields. Here are six things the best portfolio sites have in common:
We’ve already covered why it’s essential to include only your very best work in your portfolio. The goal is to curate, not accumulate.
However, when you’re handpicking your best samples, it’s also important to add context to your projects. For example, if you’re a designer, you can add the goal and results of each sample alongside the work. If a project was more unique than usual, you can add that with the work sample and highlight how you solved any unexpected challenges.
Adding a brief context with your projects can help clients understand your work beyond the finished product — they’ll also see how you solve problems and the range of work you’ve done.
The goal of your portfolio website isn’t just to attract clients, it’s to attract the right kind of clients. If you specifically work with B2B companies, for instance, you don’t want to be fielding contact forms from DTC businesses.
On your website’s home page and portfolio, make it clear exactly who you work with and the kind of work you do. For example, include a table about the kind of services you offer and the ones you don’t. I’ve also seen many people add their rates to their portfolio site. This helps leads determine quickly if their budget is a fit. I got a lot of inquiries about ghostwriting and how I approach it, so I added it as an FAQ on my website.
If you’re getting many irrelevant requests via your portfolio site, it might be a signal that you need to be more specific about your services and clients. Remember this isn’t an irreversible decision — if you’re offering a new service or working with clients from a new industry, you can simply update your website to reflect that.
It’s really easy to make your portfolio site once and let it gather cobwebs (been there, done that). You never know how many opportunities you’re missing simply because your portfolio doesn’t reflect your current skillset and services.
I set aside one day each month to refresh my portfolio. This doesn’t just mean updating the samples with my latest work, but also adding more testimonials, showing the impact of my work (like social shares), and editing my service offerings if I’m making any procedural changes.
Make it a part of your weekly or monthly routine to update your portfolio website. The longer you put it off, the harder it becomes to pick up the task, and if you refresh your site regularly, it’s much less time-consuming, too.
A client might discover you via your social media account. When they do, they should land on your portfolio with minimal effort, making it easy to contact, communicate, and hire you. Luckily, almost all social media platforms make it easy to add a link in your bio where you can add your portfolio. I’ve added mine across LinkedIn, Instagram, and X.
Integrating your portfolio website seems like a small thing, but it goes a long way. It funnels your client exactly where you want them (on your portfolio website) rather than letting them open another tab, search your name, and then find your website.
Testimonials from previous clients build trust and credibility for your work on a whole other level. Your samples just show the finished product, but testimonials show your communication skills, how pleasant you are to work with, and any standout qualities you have compared to the competition.
Ask your existing or past clients to write a testimonial that you can add to your website. To make it easier for them, provide a list of questions they can answer to write it.
Once you get a few testimonials, add them across your website. You can highlight key quotes to make them more impactful, too.
This tip is optional, but it can be beneficial to add a blog on your portfolio website that relates to your service. For example, if you’re an email marketer, you can write posts about best practices to follow in an onboarding sequence, common mistakes you see people make, etc. These kinds of posts can build even more trust and show off your expertise in the service you provide.
You don’t need to publish a blog on your site every week, but even a couple every quarter can help you stand out from the crowd. Think about what would impress your clients and write blogs about that. If you already post on social media, you can easily repurpose content in both formats.
Building your portfolio website using a web host like WordPress.com means you have complete control over how you present your work, who sees it, and how you want to scale your presence. Closed or proprietary platforms can change their rules, restrict customizability, or even disappear overnight. That’s a big risk — especially for a site that’s your bread and butter.
The best investment you can make for your creative career is owning your online presence. Build your site using WordPress.com today.
The more time I spend on social media reading posts by AI influencers, the more I see web developers (like myself) worrying that they’ll be out of a job in less than a year.
It reminds me of something I read a few years ago, the golden rule of software development:
No matter what the question is, the answer can almost always start with ‘It depends…’
Whenever a developer asks me if I’m worried that AI will replace me, I find myself saying, “Well, it depends…”
I think about the recent progress of AI the same way I think about the first steam-powered road vehicles (or what we commonly refer to today as cars).
Back in the mid-19th Century in the UK, people were concerned that compared to horse-drawn modes of transportation, these steam-powered vehicles would block up roadways, endanger public safety, and cause fatal accidents.
This led to a series of parliamentary acts that heavily restricted the use of road-going steam-powered vehicles. The most restrictive law was the Locomotives Act of 1865, which required vehicles to travel at a maximum of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) in the country and 2 mph (3.2 km/h) in the city, as well as requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of road vehicles hauling multiple wagons. These acts effectively halted automobile development in the United Kingdom for most of the 19th century.
While fears regarding automobiles were justified — and eventually realized — cars were gradually accepted as they became more common and accessible. Simply put, automobiles made it easier for products to get from point A to point B. I think we can all agree that in some places, especially cities, too many cars on the road can be detrimental. We also can’t deny their impact on our society and how many aspects of our daily lives are made better by having a personal road-going vehicle.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have used various forms of AI to support my work since early 2021. Back then, OpenAI had released GPT-3, and I was using it regularly as a Technical Writer for blog posts, tutorials, and documentation. Later that year, GitHub released CoPilot, and I was able to snag an open-source maintainers license, which I’ve used consistently for code generation. Since then, practically anything I’ve worked on has been AI-assisted. Generally, it’s been a positive experience.
I’ve successfully built everything from plugins to web-based games, and even a few personal utility desktop applications, all using AI. My most recent success was building the WordPress.com Content Calendar in approximately 2 hours, utilizing Perplexity for R&D and Cursor for the build.
Every now and then, though, AI loses the plot.
I’ve read stories of people vibe coding SaaS apps, only to have their customer details leaked after the apps were hacked due to multiple security vulnerabilities. Recently, an AI agent deleted a company’s entire production database during a code freeze. I’m sure we’ve all heard stories of AI chatbots and agents confidently saying the code is fixed or working when, in reality, it is still broken.
Earlier this year, I used Cursor to build WP Debug, a small Electron desktop application that allows you to read and display the WordPress debug.log more cleanly. Someone opened a ticket to request adding the GitHub repository URL to the app’s About window. Because I had no Electron experience, it took me the better part of two full days just to implement this small request, something that an experienced Electron developer could probably have completed in an hour. Each time the Cursor agent confidently told me the About window had been implemented correctly, and each time I tested, it failed miserably.
Last week, I was using Perplexity to help me create a lesson on anonymizing production data. As I was reviewing the generated output, everything looked good until I got to the section on anonymization strategies. Perplexity had generated this:
WordPress provides several built-in sanitization functions that should be leveraged in custom anonymization scripts:
// Sanitize email addresses
$sanitized_email = sanitize_email( $raw_email );
// Sanitize text fields
$sanitized_text = sanitize_text_field( $raw_text );
// Sanitize file names
$sanitized_filename = sanitize_file_name( $raw_filename );
// Sanitize HTML content
$sanitized_html = wp_kses_post( $raw_html );
If you know anything about WordPress development API functions, you know that sanitization is not the same as anonymization. If you want to see how wrong a vibe-coded project can go, check out my first attempt at building a browser-based 3D shooter game. Fair warning, only attempt to open the game in your browser if you have a lot of free RAM.
Some years ago, when I was still a freelance developer, I had a client who built food blogs. She maintained a couple of single-purpose plugins that managed specific functionality, such as adding a recipe custom post type and various other tasks she required. I would hear from her when she needed something new added to any of these plugins. She knew what she wanted, but lacked the coding experience to build it; however, she excelled at providing specific requirements and thoroughly testing each addition. I can almost guarantee that today, she’d be able to manage this all herself without needing to hire a developer.
Just like those first steam-powered vehicles, AI-assisted web development is going to make what takes hours possible in minutes. Like any new technological advancement, there will be concerns about the use of AI to develop software, including its environmental impact, the security of the code it generates, and the impact it will have on the skills and abilities of human programmers. Its adoption is, however, inevitable, and to ensure that this AI-infused future remains a productive and positive environment, it relies on the developer community to evolve and adapt alongside it.
Like any new technology, there are two key takeaways. First and foremost, take heed of the hype, but learn to distill it down to the facts.
Social media is ablaze with folks who are trying to sell a future where the human element to AI is non-existent. It’s important to recognize these for what they are, the modern equivalent of those infomercial-driven late-night shopping channels from the early 2000s. Sometimes what’s advertised will end up being useful, but a lot of it will eventually end up on the digital trash heap.
AI, just like any other software, relies on humans to iterate and improve. Just like any other software, it’s prone to bugs that need fixing, new features that need documenting, and requires some training and education to operate effectively.
Second, learn how AI works, what it does well, and what it does poorly. Learn about prompting, context, tools, and all the things that make AI coding possible. That allows you to make valid decisions about when to use AI to streamline your processes, and when it makes sense to roll up your sleeves and do some manual work.
AI software experts recommend following good software development practices like clearly defining project scope, planning each step of the development process, writing tests as early as possible, constantly reviewing and validating AI-generated code, using robust security audits, and ensuring ongoing developer education to offset potential skill erosion.
At the end of the day, AI development tools are at their best when they are used as productivity aids — never as replacements for human expertise or oversight. The future of web development will be shaped by those who embrace these tools with a healthy dose of skepticism, understanding, and a willingness to learn.
This post was written by a human, assisted by Grammarly for grammar and spelling, inline wordsmithing using Google Gemini for clarity, and research via Perplexity.
As a WordPress developer for more than a decade, I’ve built numerous WordPress blocks, ranging from simple callouts and icon blocks to multi-block forms and slideshows. The process can be demanding and requires a solid grasp of how WordPress works under the hood, as well as familiarity with React, JavaScript, PHP, and other relevant technologies.
Scaffolding tools like WordPress’s create-block
help. Modern AI code editors, such as Cursor, and assistants like Claude Code, also speed things up. With the right setup and context, you can abstract away much of the complexity. The catch is that you still need to provide the AI with WordPress-specific context and wire everything together. That’s fine for developers, but it keeps the barrier high for everyone else.
What if you could skip that complexity entirely? That’s where Telex comes in.
Telex is an experimental tool from the Automattic AI team that turns natural-language prompts into working WordPress blocks. You simply describe what you want, and Telex generates the block.
Everyone can use Telex, from:
Under the hood, Telex packages your block as a single block plugin and previews the result in your browser, all powered by WordPress Playground. There’s no local setup. You can refine the block with short follow-up prompts or edit the code directly, then download the plugin and install it on a site when you’re ready. You can also share your work as a link.
Since Telex is an experiment, results will vary and you may run into bugs and issues along the way. That’s part of the process. We’re learning where AI can remove friction in block creation and where it can be genuinely useful. It is also not an AI website builder. Think of it as an AI that helps you make small functional tools as blocks.
Telex is currently free to use and you can create as many blocks as you like. Give it a try now.
Start by thinking about what you want to create. It could be a feature your site is missing or a playful idea to see what Telex can do. This is an experiment, so exploration is welcome. You can also check out one of the featured projects on the Telex homepage for inspiration.
For this post, I’m stepping into the shoes of a food blogger. I have a chocolate chip cookie recipe to share, and I’d like to display an ingredient list that readers can scale up to 4 times. Readers should be able to check off ingredients as they go. There should also be a copy button on the frontend that copies the ingredient list to the clipboard. In the editor, I want to add ingredients in a simple table with three columns: quantity, unit, and ingredient. I should also be able to remove and reorder ingredients up or down in the table using buttons.
I started by entering this prompt in Telex:
Please build an Ingredient List block. This will display a list of ingredients (think food blog) that readers can check off. Add a copy button on the front end that copies the ingredient list to the clipboard. Include a built-in recipe scaler so readers can 2x, 3x, and 4x the recipe, updating ingredient quantities accordingly. In the editor, I need to enter ingredients in a table with three columns: quantity, unit, and ingredient. I should also be able to remove and reorder ingredients up or down in the table using buttons.
I then clicked Build, and Telex got to work.
The more context you include in your initial prompt, the better. Still, don’t hesitate to try a quick prompt. You can spin up as many blocks as you want, even at the same time. Just open a new browser tab.
In about two minutes, I had a working WordPress block with all the functionality I requested. Here’s a look at the Editor view with the ingredients for my recipe entered into the table. Notice the action buttons like I requested.
The frontend delivered all the functionality immediately, though the styling needed some refinement. This is where additional prompts help to fine-tune things.
I generally prefer a block to inherit my theme’s styles. I also wanted checked ingredients to show a strikethrough, and I wanted ingredient quantities formatted as whole numbers or fractions where possible. Finally, to add a bit of excitement, when the reader checks off all items, perhaps there’s a confetti animation.
I handled each change with multiple short follow-up prompts:
Let’s simplify the styling so this ingredient list inherits the current theme styles.
On the front end, when a reader checks an ingredient, also apply a strikethrough.
Convert ingredient quantities to whole numbers or fractions on the frontend where possible. No decimals, please.
For fun, when a reader checks off all the items on the ingredients list, shower the screen with a confetti animation.
I recommend giving Telex one task at a time in your follow-up prompts. After four iterations, one for each of the tasks above, my Ingredient List block looked like this:
You can also modify the code directly, which is handy if you prefer to make quick, targeted changes. It’s also a great way to learn how the block is assembled.
In my case, I wanted the scale buttons to look a bit different and to update the table in the Editor, so I switched to Code view and adjusted the style.scss
and editor.scss
files manually.
Here’s the final result. It took about 10 minutes to build in total:
Note: Telex is not deterministic. If you try the prompts outlined in this post, expect slightly different results. No two builds will be exactly the same.
Of course I could have kept iterating. Perhaps add JSON-LD structured data to the ingredient list for search engine optimization, or the ability to convert the units to metric. The possibilities are endless.
Once satisfied with your block, you have two options: use the Download button to get the plugin zip file, or click the Share button. The latter copies a unique link to your clipboard. Anyone with this link can view your block in Telex without needing to log in.
Here’s the link to the block I built for this blog post:
If you click the preview link above, you’ll also be able to download the Ingredient List block as a zip file, just as if you had created the block yourself. You can then install it on any WordPress site that supports plugin uploads, or test it locally using WordPress Studio.
Telex is experimental, so you may hit the occasional hiccup. Sometimes the AI makes a wrong assumption or generates code that does not run. This is common with all AI tools. If you see a warning like the one below, keep iterating. Ask Telex to fix the specific error or copy the details to a new prompt. Then describe the outcome you expect. You can ask as many follow-up questions as you like. If things get tangled, start a fresh session and restate your block requirements.
There are also many ways to build a block in WordPress, and part of this experiment is to identify areas that need improvement in Telex. For example, blocks that require inner blocks are not currently supported. A slideshow with a parent “Slideshow” block and child “Slide” blocks is a common use case, and Telex will struggle to implement it.
If you run into a scenario where Telex repeatedly fails to complete your request, please let us know in the comments or share your feedback in the in-app feedback form. Sharing your prompt, the error message, and a brief description of what you were trying to build will help the team improve Telex.
Telex is an early look at how AI can lower the barrier to block creation. We’ll keep improving it based on what you build and the feedback you share, so spin up a block, post your preview link, and tell us what worked and what didn’t.
Some ideas we’re considering for the future include version history, visual descriptors to make your project list more visual, uploading and customizing existing blocks, and other improvements, whether big or small.
Together, we can make WordPress block development faster, friendlier, and more accessible to everyone.
Typepad, the veteran blogging platform that has served creators for years, recently announced it will be shutting down permanently on September 30, 2025. According to their official announcement, all user accounts will be terminated on that date. This means you’ll need to export your content before the deadline — or risk losing it forever.
If you’re a Typepad user, time is running out to find a new home for your blog. The good news? We’re here to help make your transition as smooth as possible.
We’re built to last. WordPress powers over 40% of the web and has been the backbone of online publishing for two decades. Unlike platforms that come and go, WordPress is committed to supporting creators and keeping the open web thriving for years to come. Plus, content on WordPress.com sites is never deleted. Even if your plan or domain name expires.
Your content stays yours. With WordPress.com, you maintain complete ownership of your content and can export it anytime with our one-click export tool. You have the freedom to move your content anywhere you choose. No platform lock-in, no sudden shutdown announcements, and no “move-it-or-lose-it” ultimatums.
Make it truly yours. WordPress.com offers unmatched customization options with thousands of professional themes, powerful plugins, and deep design features. Our flexible block editor makes it easy to create beautiful layouts, whether you want to recreate your current Typepad design or try something completely new.
Don’t wait until the last minute. Use our dedicated Typepad importer to transfer your content safely and efficiently (free for sites with up to 1GB of media files and storage). For larger storage needs including media and video files, you can purchase a paid hosting plan with 6GB, 13GB, or 50GB of space, with optional add-on upgrades available for even greater capacity. Our detailed support documentation will guide you through every step of the process and help you get your new WordPress.com site up and running on the plan that best fits your needs.
We can’t wait to welcome you to the WordPress community!