WordPress development · Udupi & Mangaluru
We build WordPress sites on a custom theme with few plugins, so your staff can post news, offers and photos without breaking the design. You can meet us at our studio in Udupi, and we keep the site updated long after launch.
In short
A WordPress developer builds and looks after websites that run on WordPress: the theme that sets how pages look, the plugins that add features, the editor that staff post from, and the updates that keep it safe. Whirl Designs does this work from its studio in Udupi for businesses in coastal Karnataka. It uses custom themes and few plugins, and the business owner holds every login.
Start here
Once WordPress is the right tool, the next question is where the site's look comes from. That choice decides how quick the site is on a phone, how easy it is to edit, and how much can break at each update.
Best for: A simple site that needs to go live soon
Best for: Owners who want to rearrange pages themselves
Best for: Sites that post often and must stay quick on phones
When a ready-made theme does the job, we set it up with care and switch off the extras you will not use.
Our work
Times of Karkala
News & media · Karkala
Times of Karkala is a news portal based in Karkala, split into sections by category and by district. New stories go up daily in both Kannada and English, and the newsroom keeps posting all day, so each piece has to be live on the day it happens.
The site runs on WordPress, on a theme we wrote for it alone. That theme keeps pages quick even though the homepage carries a lot of photos, and editors publish through a workflow planned around same-day stories.
What you get
All six are in the written plan, and you can check each one yourself at handover.
How it runs
Your staff get their hands on the editor before launch day, while a confusing screen is still a small fix.
We start with the people who will use the editor: who writes, who approves, what goes up each week and in which language. Their answers decide the templates and the logins.
Pages, kinds of content, the plugin list, hosting and dates, all written down for you to approve. If WordPress is the wrong tool for your site, this is where you hear it.
You approve the page designs on your own phone. Then they are built into the theme and filled with real posts and photos from your business, not filler text.
On a private test site, the people who will post use it for a few days. They publish a story or an offer, add photos and point out what confused them, and the editor is fixed as well as the pages.
The site moves to your domain. If you had an old site, each old address is pointed to its new page, so existing links still work and Google can follow the move.
WordPress, the theme and the plugins keep changing. Bigger updates are checked on the private test site before the live one gets them, backups keep running, and the same team handles the small changes you ask for.
Not a fit
WordPress fits many sites, not all of them. These are the cases where we will suggest something else.
Questions
Yes, if someone on your team will post often: news, offers, events or new stock. WordPress gives them an editor that is easy to learn, and so many developers know it that you are never tied to one. The catch is upkeep: WordPress and its plugins need updates every few weeks, so decide early who will do them.
Most WordPress sites with a custom theme take four to eight weeks from the first call to launch. A news site or a shop with many kinds of content takes longer. The slowest part is usually gathering the words and photos, and the written plan gives you a date for each stage.
Usually, yes. Posts, pages and images come across, and the design is rebuilt in the new theme rather than copied. Some builders let you export only part of a site, so we check what can come out before we promise a date. Moving the domain and email is planned so that neither stops working on the day.
Yes. Google ranks pages, not the software behind them, so a WordPress site can do as well as any other. What counts is speed on a phone, a clear title on each page, labels that help Google read the page, and useful content. A heavy theme and too many plugins are what usually hold a WordPress site back, and no developer can promise a place on page one.
Yes, even if another developer built it. We start with a check of the WordPress and plugin versions, what each plugin does, speed on a phone, security and backups. You get a written list of what to fix first. Then we fix it, update it safely, and keep looking after it if you want us to.
Change the WordPress admin and hosting passwords first, then ask your host for a clean backup from before the attack. The way in is usually an outdated plugin or a reused password, so restoring alone lets it happen again. We clean the files, find the way in and close it, then set up updates, two-step login and backups.
WooCommerce suits a business already on WordPress that wants its shop and its content in one place, under its own control. Shopify suits sellers who want the platform to handle hosting, security and updates. Both can take UPI and card payments through Indian gateways such as Razorpay. We explain the trade-offs for your products before you pick.
Yes. WordPress handles Kannada well, and each page can have a Kannada and an English version with a switch between them. Times of Karkala, the news portal we built for Karkala, publishes every day in both languages, with Kannada type that stays readable. Your editors can come to our Udupi studio to learn the editor in both languages, or we can visit you.
Worth reading first
Clean, documented, tested code on a modern, proven stack — the foundation that keeps your wordpress development fast and dependable for years.
Ready when you are
Share who will post on the site and how often, and we will send a clear, written plan for the theme, plugins, pages and dates, or say plainly if WordPress does not fit.