Jake Intel

Jake Group

Building Community With WordPress

Happy Summer Solstice! For nearly ten years, we’ve called Georgetown home, and with summer upon us, we feel luckier than ever to be part of a community that is so close-knit. (Check out all the great upcoming season events sponsored by the Georgetown BID.) Situated in the heart of this historic location, every day we draw inspiration from the vibrant business district of which we’re a part.

As a branding and web design studio, community connection is a core theme, whether it be with the neighborhood or among our clients. An important complement to our services lives on the technical side, specifically WordPress development. We love WordPress for a variety of reasons, each of which we feel best serves our clients needs. For starters, WordPress is open-source software and as a result is free to download and use. But the fact that it is distributed for free is actually the least interesting thing about WordPress.

WordPress may be familiar as a blogging platform, which it was at its inception about a dozen years ago, but has long since evolved into a full-blown content management system with a sizable community of developers constantly refining its appeal. At a quick glance, it may seem odd to stake our reputation by building client sites on an open-source platform, but in fact, we view this as a client benefit. For one, developing in WordPress opens doors to myriad possibilities because the client is not limited to the expertise of just our developers. This move allows our clients to benefit from the community-based approach that is core to the WordPress ethos.

A second benefit provided by WordPress is that it serves as a framework that is essentially plug-and-play should there ever be a need to change development teams. This framework consists of core functionality that is curated largely by Automattic, a company founded by one of the original developers of WordPress, (Matt Mullenweg). The core team extends updates to the WordPress framework every few months to enhance the system’s potential functionality and improve security and stability, all of which help to keep our client websites up-to-date.

The core WordPress functionality is altered primarily in two ways, namely by plugins and by themes, both of which are developed by thousands of developers in the worldwide WordPress community. Plugins are the bits of code that alter the functionality of a website, which provide the specific actions a client wants to achieve for their users. Themes, on the other hand, control the way that elements are laid out in the browser. That is, when a WordPress site does cool stuff, plugins are the reason why, and when a site captures your eye and just looks beautiful, it’s the result of a well-coded theme. We excel at building custom plugins and themes that achieve the precise specifications from our clients, where the value far exceeds the cost.

At The Jake Group, we are serious about branding and design and love the structure that WordPress provides us as a platform to encapsulate a client message. Perhaps the most striking benefit to using WordPress is the control that the software provides the client. Rather than handing over any intellectual property to a third-party, WordPress leaves the client with complete control over how its resources are stored and employed.

Partnering with The Jake Group as the steward for your website’s code may be the best entree into the WordPress community and unleashing the platform’s strengths for powering your business’ branding and design. Reach out today to find out more — or if you’re ever in Georgetown, feel free to stop by O Street and say hello!