Common questions about WordPress
What is WordPress?
WordPress is open source software, built and improved by a global community of developers, rather than owned by one company. Platforms like Wix and Squarespace work differently: your website lives inside their system, and if you ever want to leave, your site doesn't come with you. With WordPress, you own your website outright, it's not tied to a platform you're renting space on.
Why do we use WordPress?
WordPress powers more than 40% of websites worldwide. It lets us build a website shaped around your business, rather than fitting you into a fixed template. It's flexible, well supported, and backed by a community of developers constantly improving it, so we can bring that collective experience to your project.
WordPress vs website builders like Wix and Squarespace
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and Webflow charge an ongoing platform fee and limit you to their built-in tools. WordPress has no platform fee, you choose your own hosting, plugins and features, and can move your website if you ever need to. That flexibility is also why it needs a bit more setup and care, which is where we come in.
What about websites built with AI?
AI website builders can create something quickly, but the result is often hard-coded, tied to that one platform, with no ongoing security updates and limited room to add features later. If you ever want to update the content yourself, or hand the site to someone else to manage, a hard-coded AI build makes that difficult or impossible.
AI is changing fast, and we already use AI tools as part of how we build websites. We keep exploring what's genuinely useful, but only bring in tools once we're confident they hold up for our clients long term.
WordPress gives you a website you can log into, update, and grow over time, whether that's you making changes, or us doing it for you.
Selling products using WordPress
WordPress can run an online store through added ecommerce plugins (small add-ons that give your site extra features), but it takes more technical setup and ongoing maintenance than a dedicated platform built specifically for selling online. We don't offer ecommerce builds, our focus is service-based businesses: websites that build trust and generate enquiries.
For online stores, we'd recommend a dedicated ecommerce platform like Shopify. If you're just wanting to test a product first, eBay or Amazon are also good starting points, no development needed.
Domain Name
A domain name is your website's unique address, like www.soulspace.com.au. You'll need one to launch a WordPress website. If you don't already have one, we can help you register it.
Hosting
Hosting is the space your website lives on. We provide hosting to all clients whose websites we build.
Who owns the licenses used to build WordPress websites?
WordPress itself runs under the Free Software Foundation, a nonprofit supporting computer user freedom. Licences for any added functionality belong to the developers who built them, but your website and its content are yours.
Where are our websites hosted?
We host client websites on our own Australian Virtual Private Server (VPS), with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Because of the custom nature of our builds, we only host websites we've built. A local Sunshine Coast team looks after our server, keeping technology and security up to date.
Looked after, not left to chance
Beyond hosting, we look after your website on an ongoing basis, monitoring performance, applying updates, and keeping security current. As part of this, your site benefits from premium plugins and tools we license and maintain on your behalf, the kind of software that would otherwise be a separate cost and technical responsibility for you to manage. It’s one less thing to think about, so your website keeps working the way it should
Taty is an excellent designer and really exceeded our expectations with our logo and website design. She is very passionate about her job and she really went out of her way to understand exactly how we wanted our branding to look, and she delivered on that perfectly.
She’s professional and creative, and a genuinely lovely person as well!
Our website is exactly the way we imagined it.
We are very pleased with Soul Space and certainly will continue working with Taty for a long time”.
Rafael Gomes. TGE Evacuation Diagrams
Websites built with a clear process
Every WordPress website we build follows the same considered process: planning, keyword research, content, design, development, and ongoing care after launch. Nothing gets rushed or skipped.