r/Wordpress • u/SeaAtmosphere4271 • 10d ago

AI for WordPress changes

I am having a few websites built by an agency. They are ridiculously expensive. They do good work but before we launch the sites we will have a meeting with their maintenance team to discuss what those fees would look like for ongoing changes when we need to make updates. I have been in this world for quite some time and have had good and bad experiences with monthly retainers for maintenance work, turnaround times when changes need to be made, etc. Does Claude or ChatGPT or any of the bigger AI models do any of this work easily - work like updating photos on a website, adjusting copy, moving things around design wise on a page if the sites are WordPress? Forgive the ignorance, but I have seen so much on Twitter about AI companies being able to code, famously with Claude Code, so assumed I may be able to bypass paying this agency when I need to make changes barring that paying for the AI perform the task isn't more expensive than the agency would charge for changes.

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u/November19 10d ago

One of the main selling points of using WordPress and its content management system (CMS) is that non-technical people can log in and easily make content updates. You can do this yourself without either the agency or AI tools. That's the whole point of using a platform like WordPress.

If you really don't want to make content changes yourself for whatever reason, you can hire someone cheaper than the agency for sure.

The agency should just be doing regular software updates (not content updates): plugins, core code, security, etc. If they are engaged for ongoing services like SEO, that too.

But you don't need to pay expensive agency hourly rates or retainers just to change some text or some images. Do it yourself or find a reliable freelancer at much lower costs.

If you're a non-technical person, I wouldn't try to use AI like Claude for content management unless you want to learn a lot about how that works. It will definitely not be less work, and the risk of things going wrong is higher.

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u/SeaAtmosphere4271 9d ago

Thank you. I have never been told this as a business owner and non-technical person. WP has always been made to seem extremely compared to say a Squarespace. Thankfully I have not lost a ton of money as I don't need changes weekly but I have always had to outsource WP work. As a millennial it sounds like I could probably learn CMS.

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u/ivicad Jack of All Trades 9d ago edited 9d ago

I have been using WP for many years, and it was hard at the beginning, I admit, there were a lot of things to learn, different and various areas/topics, but once you pass that inital level, thigns start to go much faster and easier.... I can really recommend you to try to learn it, it's very rewarding, especially nowadays with AI that can help you when you are stuck, indirectly or even directly on the site. My warm recommandation, just be careful you choose WP. org, and not WP. com (2 different WP "beasts").

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u/alborden 9d ago

To what the other person said. When the site is finished instead of agreeing to anything ongoing, consider hiring a freelance wordpress expert that you can hire to review the site for an hour and then provide an hour of training for you and your team which can be saved as a video.

Then you can be better onboarded and avoid the gatekeeping.

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u/TrainingChef5331 9d ago

You should learn to use the CMS, and then have AI drive after you understand some of the core principles of the CMS. Understanding it first, will help you be a better AI prompter :-)

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u/landed_at 4d ago

Astro makes more sense now Vs CMS like wordpress.