Best website platform for party company

[fellatthefirst]

My wife has recently set up a party company. She hires our equipment for parties & weddings. So far she has been doing this by word of mouth and on social media. She wants a website so i'm wondering what the best platform is?

She will need to be able to constantly update the websites content, such as images, packages and a blog etc but also take bookings (with use of a booking calendar) and also transact bookings/money through the site. So for example someone books a party package on the site and pays for it there and then.

So far i've looked at Wix, Shopify and Wordpress. Can anyone advise on what they think is best for the above. Basically:

Content management
Booking system
Transnational wesbite (PayPal/Cards etc).

[surveyor]

Whatever else the answer is not Wix

I would suggest Wordpress myself, but I am not familiar with Shopify.

[nought2sixty]

WordPress and WooCommerce should be perfect.

[fellatthefirst]

Thanks for the replies. I think i will speak to some people on people per hour about designing a site using WordPress then. Is it the same as Shopify as in you can simply plug in a payment gateway like PayPal etc?

[jonamv8]

Wordpress

[48k]

As above I'd suggest Wordpress and Woo. What's the budget? Does she already have logo / branding / web hosting etc ? What does she currently use for processing payments? What accounts package does she use?

PM me if you'd like a quote for a turnkey solution.

[Harpoon]

If you are running this yourself and go down the WordPress route, you need to allow time / effort to keep on top of updates and security. WP has a lot of plugins available but you need to sanitise them and keep up to speed with security eg

https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2018/11/privilege-e...

Wordfence said:

After its removal from the WordPress plugin repository yesterday, the popular plugin WP GDPR Compliance released version 1.4.3, an update which patched multiple critical vulnerabilities. At the time of this writing, the plugin has been reinstated in the WordPress repository and has over 100,000 active installs. The reported vulnerabilities allow unauthenticated attackers to achieve privilege escalation, allowing them to further infect vulnerable sites. Any sites making use of this plugin should make it an immediate priority to update to the latest version, or deactivate and remove it if updates are not possible.

[fellatthefirst]

Many thanks for all the responses. She does have a logo (designed at the weekend) and a paypal account in place to be able to process payments. We also have hosting sorted with a company i already use.

I have now instructed a Wordpress developer to design a site using wordpress and woocomerce. Fingers crossed it turns out ok, the lady that's doing it has a good looking portfolio so i'm hopeful.

Thanks again for the advice.

[Bikerjon]

Just make sure that if it's Wordpress that you budget for on going regular maintenance/updates because it doesn't stop once the site is designed - particularly if you are using it to take payments.

[jonamv8]

E-commerce - monthly maintenance
Brochure site - 6 months unless triggered by an event such as a bulletin.

Make a list of plugins used and subscribe to WP security notifications and cntrlF your plugin names every so often