About
Cardinal Acres Web Development utilizes the powerful open-source WordPress internet publishing platform to create dynamic websites for small businesses and non-profit organizations. WordPress was first released in 2003 and now is used by nearly 70 million websites. Many of those websites belong to Fortune 500 and other prominent companies such as: GM, UPS, SONY, The New York Times, CNN, Forbes, Reuters, IZOD, TechCrunch, Sony Music, The Walt Disney Company, Mercedes Benz and many more. It is used by these companies, not because it is free, but because it is a powerful yet easy-to-use blogging and content management system.
WordPress
The default installation of WordPress is already a powerful way to give your business a presence on the web. It doesn’t end there, though. Additional functionality can be easily added to WordPress through the use of “plugins“. Currently, there are over 55,000 free plugins plus thousands of additional commercial plugins that can add anything from a simple photo gallery to full-blown e-commerce functionality to your website. Not only is the functionality of WordPress extensible, but so is the appearance via “themes“. Since WordPress stores your website content in a database, it only takes a simple click to activate a new theme and give your website a completely new look. Over 3,000 free themes are hosted on the wordpress.org website with many thousands more commercial themes available.
Additional Functionality
Of course many organizations need functionality beyond a simple website. Cardinal Acres Web Development has implemented websites with sophisticated additional functionality using the following plugins:
Matomo
Matomo is an open-source, privacy-respecting site analytics package that is an alternative to Google Analytics. Matomo is configurable such that GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and PECR privacy regulations are all respected (Google Analytics is not).
The Events Calendar
Event management features are often a requirement for the websites of non-profit organizations. The Events Calendar by Modern Tribe provides a highly flexible event management solution.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce powers 30% of all e-commerce sites on the internet. It is a powerful, flexible and extensible platform for selling nearly anything.
Mailchimp
MailChimp is the 500 pound gorilla of email marketing solutions. A generous free tier allows non-profits and small businesses to benefit from powerful email marketing tools.
SendGrid
Websites that generate substantial volumes of transactional email (such as e-commerce sites) need to ensure the deliverability of those emails. This is where a transactional email provider such as SendGrid can step in.
BuddyNS
If you’re running a VPS (“virtual private server”) or dedicated server, you will want to replicate your DNS to a set of backup DNS servers should your primary DNS fail. BuddyNS provides a seamless service for doing just that.
Wordfence
Wordfence provides security tools to protect agains internet attacks attempting to exploit WordPress itself. As WordPress is a complex and extremely popular web-based content management system, it is critical to have security measures like Wordfence in place to protect against these kind of targeted attacks.
High Traffic
Is your website unable to handle your current traffic levels? We have experience implementing websites that handle 2 million pages/month, 5 million hits/month, and over 600GB data/month.
There are many additional WordPress plugins to implement almost any functionality you might need; the above plugins implement some of the more common site features requested by our clients.
Cardinal Acres Web Development will work with you in selecting and configuring plugins and a theme that will create a website that fulfills your requirements. We can install your WordPress-based website to your current web hosting provider (as long as they meet the minimum requirements for WordPress). If you don’t currently have a web hosting provider or would like a new one, we can recommend some that have worked well for us in the past.
Take a look at the showcase of our past work for examples of what can be achieved with WordPress. We can also provide ongoing support and maintenance for your WordPress installation.
Contact us to further discuss implementing your web presence!