Search “WordPress development agency” and you’ll get thousands of results, all promising more or less the same thing: fast, responsive, SEO-friendly websites at a competitive price. The pitches blur together. The real differences show up later, usually after you’ve signed with the wrong one.

So it’s worth knowing what actually matters before you hand over your project.

Anyone Can Install a Theme. That’s Not Development

The first thing to understand is that a lot of “WordPress agencies” aren’t really doing development at all. They’re buying a premium theme, dropping in your logo and content, and handing it back. That works fine for a simple brochure site, and if that’s genuinely all you need, you shouldn’t overpay for more.

But the moment your requirements get specific, a custom booking flow, a membership area, a product configurator, an integration with your CRM, the limits of the theme-and-plugin approach show up fast. You end up with a site held together by fifteen plugins that fight each other, slow the whole thing down, and break every time WordPress updates. A genuine development agency writes custom code where custom code is needed, and knows when a plugin is the smarter choice. Knowing the difference is most of the job.

Speed and Security Are Where Cheap Builds Fall Apart

A WordPress site that looks great on launch day can still be a liability underneath. Bloated page weight, unoptimised images, and a pile of unnecessary plugins will tank your load times, and slow sites lose both visitors and search rankings. Google has been clear for years that page experience affects where you rank, and it’s only gotten stricter.

Security is the other quiet failure point. WordPress powers so much of the web that it’s a constant target, and a poorly maintained site is an open door. A serious agency builds with clean, updatable code, sets up proper backups, and thinks about hardening from the start rather than bolting it on after something goes wrong. This is the kind of work you never see and never think about, right up until the day it’s missing.

Look for a Partner, Not a Vendor

The best agencies treat a build as the start of a relationship, not the end of a transaction. Your site will need updates, new features, and maintenance as your business grows, and an agency that understands your goals will make far better decisions on your behalf than one that just ticks off a spec sheet and disappears.

This is where working with true WordPress Development Specialists pays off. Specialists who live and breathe the platform tend to catch the problems a generalist misses, build with the long term in mind, and give you a site that keeps working well after launch instead of slowly falling apart.

The Bottom Line

Choosing a WordPress development agency isn’t really about who has the slickest portfolio or the lowest quote. It’s about who understands the difference between assembling a website and building one. Ask how they handle custom functionality, how they approach speed and security, and what happens after the site goes live. The answers will tell you far more than any sales page.

Get that decision right, and your website becomes an asset that works for you for years. Get it wrong, and you’ll be paying someone else to rebuild it sooner than you’d like.

The Durham University spin-out has secured funding from a number of sources

A North East tech company supporting new medicine discoveries has secured £1.3m to accelerate its work.

Magnitude Biosciences, a spinout from Durham University, has secured the funding to accelerate the commercialisation of VivoScan, which provides pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with faster and more cost-effective ways to identify promising new treatments for ageing, longevity and neurodegenerative diseases.

VivoScan uses hundreds of nematode worms as a biological model to evaluate potential therapies. By combining the worms with advanced imaging, machine learning, agentic AI, automation and robotics, Magnitude Biosciences can generate whole-organism data in weeks rather than years.

The company’s work aims to offer faster alternatives to traditional drug testing models while supporting the growing industry shift towards research that is not performed on mammals.

Northstar Ventures has led the new round of investment into the company, committing capital from the North East Spinout Inspire Fund backed by the region’s five universities, as well as from the North East Innovation Fund and the Northstar EIS Growth Fund.

The funding will also mean that Magnitude Biosciences can access a £217,000 Innovate UK Investor Partnership grant.

Dr Fozia Saleem, CEO at Magnitude Biosciences, says: “Our ambition is to become the first company to provide a platform to screen millions of compounds in a whole organism. This investment in VivoScan gives us the opportunity to turn that ambition into reality and fundamentally change the scale and speed at which drug discovery can be done.

“We are building a platform that can move beyond simply screening more compounds. VivoScan generates rich, whole organism biological data that can help researchers understand how potential therapies affect health, ageing and disease. By making data generation faster and more cost effective, we will be able to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies identify better drug candidates earlier and ultimately accelerate the development of new treatments.”

The funding will be used to scale Magnitude Bioscience’s VivoScanTM platform, expand commercial activity with global pharmaceutical companies, invest in additional equipment and automation, as well as recruit new staff as the business enters the next stage of its evolution.

Dr Will Cousins, investment manager at Northstar Ventures, said: “The North East continues to generate world-class innovations with the potential to compete on the global stage. Supporting ambitious companies with the capital they need to grow is essential if we are to unlock that potential. Having worked closely with Magnitude Biosciences throughout its journey, we have seen first-hand the strength of the team, the technology and the opportunity ahead. We are proud to continue backing a business that is helping to shape the future of drug discovery.”

Sarah Newbould, Senior Investment Manager at the British Business Bank, said: “We’re continuing to back the businesses that are driving innovation across the UK economy, with this new funding round helping to bring Magnitude Biosciences’ new technology to market. With NPIF II providing initial investment in May last year, we’re able to support businesses throughout their journey, fuelling the Government’s Industrial Strategy and ensuring the North East’s life sciences sector continues to thrive.”

LOS ANGELES — A California surrogate says she only learned the true identity of the man whose child she was carrying after CBS News journalists connected her pregnancy to Xu Bo, a reclusive Chinese gaming billionaire whose former partner has alleged he has fathered as many as 300 children through surrogacy arrangements in the United States.

The surrogate, identified only as Judy to protect her privacy, told CBS News she was roughly 12 weeks pregnant when reporters informed her that leaked documents identified Xu, founder of Guangzhou-based gaming company Duoyi Network, as the intended father. “Do I even have a right to know?” Judy said, describing her reaction after learning more about the scale of the family arrangement she had unknowingly become part of.

According to Judy’s account, she responded to an Instagram advertisement offering £88,839, or roughly $120,000, for a surrogacy arrangement. As a single mother raising a seven-year-old daughter, she said the payment appeared to offer a path toward greater financial stability and eventually a home of her own. After being matched through the agency Patriot Conceptions, which CBS reported lists Haotian Bai as its founder, Judy said she was told the intended parent was a single father hoping to expand his family. She said she grew curious about whether other women were carrying children for the same man and was told the number was close to two dozen.

CBS News’ investigation, which the outlet said involved interviews with 32 surrogates along with a review of contracts and court documents, ultimately connected Judy’s pregnancy to Xu through leaked paperwork. Judy said she felt blindsided by the revelation and had repeatedly tried, without success, to arrange a meeting with the man for whom she was carrying the child.

The scale of Xu’s family has become the subject of disputed and evolving public claims. His former partner, Tang Jing, who is currently engaged in a custody and financial dispute with Xu in China, has publicly alleged he may have as many as 300 children. Duoyi Network has pushed back on that figure. Following a December 2025 Wall Street Journal investigation into Xu’s surrogacy arrangements, the company acknowledged that years of effort through U.S. surrogacy had produced what it described as “only a little over 100” children. In a separate statement cited by CBS, Xu disputed the larger estimates and said he has custody of 12 children born through surrogacy in the United States specifically.

Tang Jing has said separately that she helped raise 13 of Xu’s children in Japan, including two she described as their shared biological daughters and 11 others born through surrogacy, and that she is currently raising 11 of the children amid the ongoing custody dispute. She has said the broader group of children live across properties in multiple countries. Xu himself is reported to live in China and has been described as a recluse who is not directly involved in day-to-day parenting of the children.

Xu has posted an image on a social media account linked to him showing more than 100 young children seated in rows. A Chinese-language statement attributed to Xu accompanying similar posts said that “more children bring more blessings” and that he hoped his actions would contribute to what he described as China’s long-term development.

The Wall Street Journal’s earlier investigation additionally reported on court proceedings tied to Xu’s surrogacy arrangements, including petitions filed over parental rights involving unborn children, and found that a California judge had encountered multiple such applications while Xu was in the process of fathering additional children through separate surrogacy arrangements around the same time. The Journal reported separately that Xu had discussed wanting children born in the United States who could eventually take over his business, though that reported ambition remains attributed specifically to the Journal’s own sourcing rather than an independently confirmed statement from Xu himself, particularly given the range of competing accounts surrounding his family circumstances.

Judy told CBS she continued with the pregnancy after signing her surrogacy agreement because she needed the income, saying friends and relatives encouraged her to proceed despite her growing concerns. Those concerns, as described in CBS’s reporting, centered less on the pregnancy itself than on what she viewed as a lack of transparency from the agency about the intended father’s identity and broader family circumstances before she committed to the arrangement. “I feel blindsided. I feel misled,” Judy said of learning the full picture only after becoming pregnant.

The revelations have prompted a wide range of reactions online, though such reactions reflect individual opinions rather than independently verified findings about Xu or the legality of his surrogacy arrangements. Some social media commentary has focused on the reported scale of the arrangements, while other commentary has called more broadly for greater transparency and stronger regulatory safeguards within the commercial surrogacy industry. None of that reaction establishes that Xu violated U.S. law or that he deliberately exploited legal loopholes; the underlying reporting instead centers on Judy’s firsthand account, documents linking Xu to her pregnancy, and the broader, still-disputed questions about exactly how many children have been born through his surrogacy arrangements and how those arrangements have been disclosed, or not disclosed, to the women carrying them.

Every child born in the United States is automatically granted U.S. citizenship at birth under current law, a legal framework that has drawn its own scrutiny in the context of large-scale international surrogacy arrangements like those reported in Xu’s case, even as questions specific to his family circumstances, and the surrogates involved in carrying his children, remain the subject of ongoing reporting and disputed public claims from those closest to the situation.

That works, but it also means missing out on half the fun. Understanding how odds are built, and what they are really saying, turns betting from a blind guess into something genuinely engaging. Platforms like bizbet display all three major odds formats at once, which is actually a handy way to start seeing how they connect to each other.

What the Different Odds Formats Mean

There are three formats used globally, and they all say the same thing — the difference is just in how they say it. Decimal odds show the full return per unit staked, stake included. So 2.50 on a €10 bet returns €25 total, meaning €15 profit. Browsing through something like bizbet bonus offers a real-world look at how these formats sit side by side on an actual platform, which makes the comparison much easier to grasp than reading about it in theory. Below 2.00 means favourite, above 2.00 means underdog — that one rule alone covers most situations.

Fractional odds, still widely used in racing, show profit against stake. At 5/1, a €1 bet returns €5 profit. At 1/2, the stake is larger than the return — that is what odds look like when the bookmaker considers something close to a certainty.

American odds work differently. A minus sign means favourite — -200 requires a €200 stake to win €100. A plus sign means underdog — +180 returns €180 profit on a €100 stake. It feels strange at first but follows a consistent logic once seen a few times.

Here is a simple side-by-side comparison of all three:

Decimal	Fractional	American	Chance of winning
1.50	1/2	-200	66.7%
2.00	Evens	+100	50.0%
2.50	6/4	+150	40.0%
3.00	2/1	+200	33.3%
6.00	5/1	+500	16.7%

All three rows say the same thing — just in three different languages.

The Margin Hidden Inside Every Bet

Every set of odds has a margin built into it, and most bettors never know it is there. It is called the overround or vig, and it does not appear as a separate line anywhere — it is folded directly into the numbers.

In a truly fair market, the implied chances of all outcomes would add up to exactly 100%. Bookmakers push that total above 100% — usually to around 105–110% at mainstream sportsbooks, and closer to 102–103% at more competitive ones. That extra percentage is their margin, and it means every bet placed costs a little more than the raw odds suggest.

Knowing this does not make betting less fun — if anything it makes the numbers more interesting to look at. Here are four practical ideas that follow naturally from understanding how odds work:

• Implied probability: every set of odds is really a percentage in disguise. Converting them reveals what the bookmaker genuinely thinks will happen.
• Line shopping: the same event priced across different platforms often shows meaningful differences — sometimes 5 to 10% better return for the identical bet.
• Value: when an outcome seems more likely than the odds suggest, that difference is called value. Finding it is what separates informed betting from random picking.
• Margin check: adding the implied probabilities of all outcomes in a market together shows the total bookmaker margin in seconds.

Betting stays enjoyable when there is a clear budget set before a session starts. Most platforms have deposit limit tools in the account settings — straightforward to set up and genuinely useful for keeping things in check.

 

Some experts share the view that, in the short-term at least, it is up to the AI companies to regulate themselves responsibly.

“You might want an act of Congress, and I would love a congressionally mandated regime that requires safety and testing and bias testing,” said Asad Ramzanali, the director of AI & Technology Policy at Vanderbilt University.

“But absent that action, the companies have autonomy.”

Others have expressed scepticism at the recent flurry of warnings by AI staffers.

Trevor Traina, a tech executive who was a diplomat during Trump’s first term, said: “I don’t think the typical citizen has encountered anything scary or really problematic with AI.”

“We’re relying on the tweets of a half-dozen people who are all vying for perceived supremacy,” he said. “The cynic in me thinks, ‘Are they are really concerned, or are they trying to prove which model is the most awesome?’”

Alexandra Reeve Givens, who previously worked in government and now leads the US non-profit the Center for Democracy and Technology, said she did not think meaningful federal AI regulation would pass in the foreseeable future.

While the Trump administration has set up an entirely voluntary framework for AI companies to submit their models and tools for government assessment, Givens noted that the framework itself remains a secret.

“There’s no clear standard to make sure that the approach is even grounded in the rule of law,” she said.

Appeals from various groups to release the framework have so far gone ignored.

The White House approach, combined with a lack of political will and consensus, makes passing laws around AI difficult.

“There is no question that federal legislation is challenging in this climate, but Congress also has to grapple with which of the many types of AI risk need to be addressed,” Givens said.

“It’s not that AI is ungovernable, it’s that each risk needs a tailored approach.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi said the roughly 3,300 corporate jobs the company eliminated earlier this month will ultimately benefit customers through lower ride prices, a promise that follows a familiar pattern among corporations defending mass layoffs, one that has not always held up in practice at other companies.

Uber announced September 2 that it was cutting 10% of its corporate staff, affecting approximately 3,300 positions out of a global workforce of roughly 34,000 employees, in an effort to flatten management layers across the company. The reduction marks Uber’s deepest round of job cuts since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference on September 10, Khosrowshahi laid out how the company plans to use the savings generated by the cuts. “We are going to take the savings there and essentially reinvest it back in the business, lowering prices, improving selection, and continuing to invest in our growth program,” he told investors. He said separately that the layoffs would generate “savings that we intend to reinvest in growth, innovation, and the capabilities that will matter most over the coming years.”

Khosrowshahi indicated that reduced insurance costs would also contribute to the savings being funneled toward lower rider prices. Uber’s U.S. mobility insurance costs had increased by more than 50% per ride over the several years through the first quarter of 2025, according to the company, a trend Khosrowshahi said has now begun to reverse. Analysts estimate the layoffs alone could generate close to $2 billion in annual savings for the company, though Khosrowshahi has not offered specific fare targets or a timeline for when riders might actually see lower prices reflected in the app.

A portion of the freed-up capital is also being directed toward Uber’s autonomous vehicle ambitions. The company has said it plans to invest more than $1 billion in its self-driving taxi network as it works to compete with rivals including Alphabet-owned Waymo, with broader reporting indicating Uber has committed more than $10 billion over the coming years to autonomous vehicles, acting as both an investor in and a customer of nearly 30 different self-driving technology partners.

Khosrowshahi acknowledged that the layoffs came at a moment of relative financial strength for the company rather than distress, noting that Uber had recently posted quarterly earnings that exceeded analyst expectations. “Some companies wait,” he said. “We don’t believe in waiting.” Uber shares rose roughly 2% following disclosures suggesting the company had approached the restructuring from a position of strength rather than as a response to financial trouble.

Khosrowshahi also pointed to artificial intelligence as a factor behind the timing of the cuts, telling attendees at the same Goldman Sachs event that AI has contributed to “real tailwinds as it relates to productivity” within the company, a dynamic that has become increasingly common across the technology sector as companies credit AI-driven efficiency gains for enabling workforce reductions. Uber’s cuts followed a broader trend of tech layoffs framed around productivity improvements; fintech company Block, led by CEO Jack Dorsey, saw its stock jump roughly 24% earlier this year after announcing plans to cut 40% of its workforce as part of a push toward AI-driven efficiency.

Whether Uber’s promise of lower prices will actually materialize remains, for now, solely a matter of Khosrowshahi’s word, and similar corporate assurances tied to layoffs have not always played out as promised at other companies. When T-Mobile announced roughly 5,000 job cuts in August 2023, then-CEO Mike Sievert said the restructuring would help the company deliver better value and an improved customer experience. Less than a year later, T-Mobile announced price increases on some of its older plans, including an additional $2 to $5 per voice line each month, according to reporting at the time, illustrating how the definition of “better value” following a round of layoffs can shift considerably by the time changes actually reach customers.

Uber’s own recent regulatory record adds another layer of financial pressure competing for the same savings Khosrowshahi has pledged to redirect toward riders. The company was recently fined nearly $1 billion by European Union regulators after a Dutch data protection authority found that Uber had automatically suspended or deactivated drivers suspected of fraud or poor ratings between 2018 and 2022 without any human review of those decisions, a practice the regulator determined violated European data protection rules governing automated decisions with significant personal or financial consequences for those affected. Uber is appealing the fine, though the penalty still represents a competing claim on the same pool of savings the company has said will fund lower prices for customers.

Uber’s layoffs and the accompanying promises come as the broader ride-hailing and technology sectors continue navigating a period of workforce reductions justified, at least in part, by efficiency gains attributed to artificial intelligence tools, even as skepticism persists among analysts and consumers about whether such promised savings reliably translate into lower prices rather than simply improved corporate profit margins.

With no specific fare targets or implementation timeline yet disclosed by Uber, riders and industry observers are likely to spend the coming months watching for concrete evidence of price reductions in specific markets before drawing conclusions about whether Khosrowshahi’s promise proves more durable than similar assurances made by other companies following their own rounds of layoffs in recent years.

Shares of HDFC Bank rallied 3% to their day’s high of Rs 727 on the NSE on Tuesday after the private lender submitted two candidates’ names to the RBI for the role of CEO. This formally begins the succession process for Sashidhar Jagdishan, who is due to retire later this year, with brokerages maintaining their bullish calls for the stock.

While the lender has not named the two candidates yet, people familiar with the matter told The Economic Times that deputy managing director Kaizad Bharucha and one external candidate are on the list. ICICI Prudential Life CEO Anup Bagchi and Citi India CEO K Balasubramanian are among the prospective picks for the external candidate, sources said.

Also read | HDFC CEO race: One insider, one outsider in contention for the top job

This comes as concerns over the governance cloud that began in March this year after its former part-time Chairman Atanu Chakraborty resigned, stating that some practices within the bank did not match his personal values and ethics, continue to ease. The governance cloud led to a massive selloff in the shares of the company that recovered slightly after the bank made leadership changes.

Nomura on HDFC Bank share price

Nomura believes that the possible internal appointment of Kaizad Bharucha could provide initial relief by ensuring continuity and limiting disruption. Kaizad’s familiarity with the bank and its businesses would also allow for a smoother transition, it said. However, it added that a credible external candidate could offer a longer runway and a cleaner slate.

“In our view, this could be more significant for the stock over the medium term, as a new leader would have greater scope to reassess strategy, challenge existing practices and drive a strategic reset. With the stock having materially underperformed, a credible external appointment with a strong operating track record could therefore emerge as a catalyst for a re-rating, particularly if accompanied by a clear roadmap on growth, deposits, margins and returns,” Nomura said.
The international brokerage maintained its ‘Buy’ call on the stock with a target price of Rs 950 apiece, implying more than 34% upside potential from the stock’s previous closing price of Rs 708.25 apiece on NSE.

Bernstein on HDFC Bank share price

Bernstein maintained its ‘Outperform’ rating on the shares of HDFC Bank with a target price of Rs 1,150 apiece. This implies an upside potential of more than 62% over the stock’s previous closing price.

The international brokerage noted that the board of HDFC Bank has proposed elevating Jimmy Tata to the role of whole-time director, and bring the total number of seats to four, ET Now reported. It added that the leadership succession timeline remains on track ahead of the current CEO’s retirement.

Also read | HDFC Bank shares hit 52-week lows over consecutive sessions while analysts scream Buy. Has the stock hit its bottom?

Macquarie on HDFC Bank share price

Macquarie maintained its ‘Outperform’ rating on the shares of HDFC Bank with a target price of Rs 1,150 apiece. This implies an upside potential of more than 62% over the stock’s previous closing price.

The international brokerage said an external CEO appointment is viewed as the primary catalyst for a stock re-rating.

HDFC Bank share price

Shares of heavyweight HDFC Bank have been hitting fresh 52-week lows for several consecutive sessions now, even as analysts maintained their ‘Buy’ calls after the stock tumbled around 29% in 2026 so far. The stock of India’s largest private lender dropped to a fresh 52-week low of Rs 681.90 apiece on Friday. This marks more than a 33% fall in less than 11 months after hitting a record high of Rs 1,020.50 apiece in October last year.

HDFC Bank shares have been the weakest among all Nifty Bank constituents, declining 29% so far in 2026. Not only has the performance been disappointing this calendar year, but the stock has also delivered weak returns over the past three to five years, declining nearly 14% and 9%, respectively. “Despite the significant underperformance of this banking heavyweight, there are still no meaningful signs of a turnaround, with the technical setup remaining highly uninspiring and weak,” said Hitesh Rathi, Technical Analyst (Equity & Derivatives) at Angel One.

The stock is now displaying oversold readings across several technical parameters, while the significant disparity in its performance also leaves room for a short-term bounce, according to Rathi. “Hence, a near-term recovery cannot be ruled out. However, the broader technical setup and trend remain firmly bearish, with no meaningful signs of a trend reversal visible at this stage,” he added.

Also read | BofA turns bullish on Nifty, forecasts 12% upside by December

Disclaimer: This article has been written by Debaroti Adhikary, who is not a SEBI-registered Research Analyst or an Investment Adviser. Debaroti Adhikary and his/her ‘relative(s)’ (as defined under Section 2(77) of the Companies Act, 2013) do not hold any financial interest in the companies mentioned in this article as of the date of publication. The views/recommendations mentioned in this article, wherever applicable, are those of the respective SEBI-registered Research Analyst/brokerage and have been reproduced/reported with due attribution. They should not be construed as the views or recommendations of The Economic Times Digital or the journalist. Readers are advised to consider the original research report and make their investment decisions based on their own assessment. Brokerage disclaimers here.

Shares of infrastructure company PNC Infratech tanked as much as 20% to their day’s low of Rs 140 on the BSE on Tuesday after the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) extended the debarment of Awadh Expressway Pvt Ltd to the company for three years.

The move will prevent PNC Infratech from participating in bids floated by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), NHAI and their executing agencies during the period.

PNC Infratech said it received a letter from NHAI on September 11 extending the debarment of Awadh Expressway, the concessionaire, to the company in its capacity as promoter. The company and the concessionaire are evaluating legal remedies in the matter, according to a stock exchange filing.

The company said the debarment will not affect its status as a going concern or the execution, operation and maintenance of its ongoing projects. It added that any financial implications will be disclosed in due course as clarity emerges. The extension relates to the action taken by NHAI against Awadh Expressway and its subsequent extension to PNC Infratech as the concessionaire’s promoter.

The development follows NHAI’s action concerning the Kanpur-Lucknow Expressway project, for which Awadh Expressway is the concessionaire. In a regulatory filing dated August 6, PNC Infratech had said it had not been debarred or declared a non-performer by NHAI at that point.

A Ministry of Road Transport and Highways press release issued on August 5 said NHAI had served a notice proposing to declare PNC Infratech a non-performer. Under the proposed action, the concessionaire would become ineligible to participate in future NHAI bidding.

PNC Infra Q1 results

In August, the company reported a 23% year-on-year decline in consolidated net profit for the June quarter in August. Consolidated net profit for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 stood at Rs 332 crore, compared with Rs 431 crore in the same quarter a year earlier.Revenue from operations, however, rose 18.6% year-on-year to Rs 1,688 crore from Rs 1,423 crore in the year-ago period. EBITDA increased 42.1% to Rs 523 crore from Rs 368 crore, while EBITDA margin expanded to 31% from 25.9% a year earlier.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times.)