How the company abandoned WordPress and replaced it with a self-made CMS
Very often, I thought how much IT companies earn and where it’s more to create websites or support websites. Everything cleared up when I started working for a new European company that was developing websites: both blogs and e-commerce. They also developed applications for iOS and Android. But their main income was on WordPress sites and on some self-made CMS. The job was to create a website and integrate with WordPress. All this had to be done in one day, that is, we only rivet sites every day. We had 5 programmers and the whole department on the web was doing this. At that time I already had a good experience in developing themes on WordPress, but there was another strange self-made CMS that I want to talk about in this article.
Their self-made CMS is called Prest. It was developed in Python, and embedding it in is not so easy. Even the client part was quite difficult. The admin panel was somehow made very bad and it was hard to understand how everything works there. It turned out that stretching the layout on WordPress can take 3 hours and everything will be very high quality for the client and easy for the developer.
In principle, we did not write any code on this CMS. We, too, like our clients, had an admin panel for developers and we implemented the entire layout right in the admin panel. Even from a novice programmer, this looked very strange. For example, in the header we simply inserted all the links to the scripts (modernizr.js, main.js, slider.js), then we uploaded them to the server. The only thing is that for style.css we had a separate block where it was possible to change styles.
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In the aside bar we inserted the entire HTML block at once, the same was with the footer. In the block for the main content, if there should have been more than one article, then it was necessary to insert a shortcut, and in repeat we added a new block. In this block, let's call it articles, all articles were placed in the usual foreach loop, which inserted all the articles on the page. For e-commerce, they had some kind of embedded plugin like WooCommerce for WordPress.
On the one hand, this CMS worked simply, but at the same time it was very strange and inconvenient for customers. Nevertheless, the company has always tried to put all the customers on this particular CMS.
It turned out that about 70 percent of client sites were on this self-made system. This is understandable: for example, a WordPress site can be put on any hosting and it is easy to find a WordPress programmer. For a client, this may be even cheaper than the company I worked for. In short, the client can choose the hosting that he likes and move with the WordPress site. But with a self-made CMS, he cannot leave so simply, because there it is embedded in the company's host. That is, the client who orders the site always remains the client of this company. At the same time, he paid for any services on the site, even if it was just a change of content. Our company had a content manager that dealt with this.
The most profitable part for the company was renting the host for rent. The host cost about $ 10 a month. Every month, the company had more and more new customers. At that time, when I was working there, they had about 1,000 clients on 4 servers, but other than that they had 3 more servers. When making a contract, the client must pay immediately for 6 months and after that he must pay monthly for the host: something like a subscription. On the one hand, the client does not care who to pay: the hostgator or this company, and for the company it was an income of about $ 10,000 per month. Moreover, some clients have been with them since the founding of this company, that is, more than 5 years. Some of them changed the site or switched from a blog to e-commerce, they also constantly ordered something: now add some kind of subscription, then social buttons. Every change was worth the money and the company always had a job. That is, they earned everything from the development and deployment of sites and ending with the work with content. The most interesting thing is that the company has always been looking for content managers, because they have always been lacking, since so many customers ordered to write news for them and keep all kinds of blogs.
From here I made a conclusion and wanted to tell you that it is not so difficult to open a company and customers can be not only from Russia, but also from the whole of the former USSR and even from Europe. The most interesting thing in this business model is that earnings increase every month. I really liked this idea. Recently, the company has even started making monthly packages. The first package cost $ 30 and for this money they update all the plugins, if it's WordPress, and add extensions to the engine, if it's Prest. Within the package it was possible to make 2 such changes per month. The next package costs $ 50 per month and you can make 5 updates, in addition, they blogged for free. The last package costs $ 70 and as part of this you can hire a programmer for 4 hours or a content manager for the whole day. In this article, I shared business ideas on WordPress and Front End, and I think that this is a very good idea for business.
Their self-made CMS is called Prest. It was developed in Python, and embedding it in is not so easy. Even the client part was quite difficult. The admin panel was somehow made very bad and it was hard to understand how everything works there. It turned out that stretching the layout on WordPress can take 3 hours and everything will be very high quality for the client and easy for the developer.
In principle, we did not write any code on this CMS. We, too, like our clients, had an admin panel for developers and we implemented the entire layout right in the admin panel. Even from a novice programmer, this looked very strange. For example, in the header we simply inserted all the links to the scripts (modernizr.js, main.js, slider.js), then we uploaded them to the server. The only thing is that for style.css we had a separate block where it was possible to change styles.
')
In the aside bar we inserted the entire HTML block at once, the same was with the footer. In the block for the main content, if there should have been more than one article, then it was necessary to insert a shortcut, and in repeat we added a new block. In this block, let's call it articles, all articles were placed in the usual foreach loop, which inserted all the articles on the page. For e-commerce, they had some kind of embedded plugin like WooCommerce for WordPress.
On the one hand, this CMS worked simply, but at the same time it was very strange and inconvenient for customers. Nevertheless, the company has always tried to put all the customers on this particular CMS.
It turned out that about 70 percent of client sites were on this self-made system. This is understandable: for example, a WordPress site can be put on any hosting and it is easy to find a WordPress programmer. For a client, this may be even cheaper than the company I worked for. In short, the client can choose the hosting that he likes and move with the WordPress site. But with a self-made CMS, he cannot leave so simply, because there it is embedded in the company's host. That is, the client who orders the site always remains the client of this company. At the same time, he paid for any services on the site, even if it was just a change of content. Our company had a content manager that dealt with this.
The most profitable part for the company was renting the host for rent. The host cost about $ 10 a month. Every month, the company had more and more new customers. At that time, when I was working there, they had about 1,000 clients on 4 servers, but other than that they had 3 more servers. When making a contract, the client must pay immediately for 6 months and after that he must pay monthly for the host: something like a subscription. On the one hand, the client does not care who to pay: the hostgator or this company, and for the company it was an income of about $ 10,000 per month. Moreover, some clients have been with them since the founding of this company, that is, more than 5 years. Some of them changed the site or switched from a blog to e-commerce, they also constantly ordered something: now add some kind of subscription, then social buttons. Every change was worth the money and the company always had a job. That is, they earned everything from the development and deployment of sites and ending with the work with content. The most interesting thing is that the company has always been looking for content managers, because they have always been lacking, since so many customers ordered to write news for them and keep all kinds of blogs.
From here I made a conclusion and wanted to tell you that it is not so difficult to open a company and customers can be not only from Russia, but also from the whole of the former USSR and even from Europe. The most interesting thing in this business model is that earnings increase every month. I really liked this idea. Recently, the company has even started making monthly packages. The first package cost $ 30 and for this money they update all the plugins, if it's WordPress, and add extensions to the engine, if it's Prest. Within the package it was possible to make 2 such changes per month. The next package costs $ 50 per month and you can make 5 updates, in addition, they blogged for free. The last package costs $ 70 and as part of this you can hire a programmer for 4 hours or a content manager for the whole day. In this article, I shared business ideas on WordPress and Front End, and I think that this is a very good idea for business.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/312760/
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