WordPress for agencies and brands

Notes from speaking at WordCamp Netherlands on running WordPress for agencies and brands rather than single sites.

The problem with agency WordPress

An agency that builds twenty sites a year faces a problem a brand with one site never does: every build is a chance to diverge. Six months later no two installations are maintained the same way and nobody can say which plugin set is current.

What standardisation actually buys

A shared base of hosting, deployment, monitoring and component libraries means new projects start from working software. The interesting design work happens sooner because the undifferentiated parts are already solved.

What to standardise

• Hosting and deployment pipeline
• Baseline plugin set and update policy
• Component library and design tokens
• Monitoring and alerting
• Handover documentation format

What to keep bespoke

Content models and front-end design. Standardising those produces the generic agency look that clients can smell immediately, and it removes the part of the work that is genuinely worth paying for.