Wordpress - Good Or Bad ?

[virtualwords]

Hi

I love building websites in my spare time using a do your own site package.

I would love to have more flexibility when building my minisites and try and keep the costs down more.

I am no good at coding but can build using tables quite easily.

Which website software is best for building minisites or even larger websites without having to be a coding expert.

I have tried dreamweaver but don't really want to shell out £300 at this moment in time.

Have seen wordpress and frontpage but have never used either.

What could any of you reccommened to me.

Thanks Kindly

Gav

 

[denchomsky]

Wordpress seems to be the choice of many who do not have coding knowledge because of it's many themes and supposed ease of use.

But what many fail to realise is that wordpress is an application, and a pretty heavy one at that, and it's a blog not a website building tool.

To achieve a 3 page minisite wordpress IMO is like hitting a nail with a ship, it has loads of built in functionality that you will never use and this is all sitting there on your server taking up valuable space.

It's main attraction is it is free, though in my opinion it is not the correct tool for the job.

 

[virtualwords]

Thanks denchomsky For your reply.

What would you reccommend to use to build mini sites as I don't know how to code.

As I mentioned before I use package sites at the minute but they can be expensive and you are slightly limited in certain areas.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Gav

 

[joned]

I'd recommend giving Wordpress a try, if only for the SEO benefits (the Big G does seem fond of WP sites). There's quite a learning curve at the start - try Yoast.com for lots of good articles about the best ways to use it for SEO

We recently converted a client's website (a beauty salon) from a static site to Wordpress, and within 5 weeks traffic had gone up by >800% and she reckons she's making an extra 10 grand a month from it! (Wordpress was only one factor, but I think it was an important one)

Cheers, Jon

 

[bensd]

I'd recommend giving Wordpress a try, if only for the SEO benefits (the Big G does seem fond of WP sites).

Do you mean as a blog format because it is unique fresh content?

 

[rob]

I am a fan of WP after going through a few other CMS style software, the amount of existing plugins does it for me and speed to roll something out on a standard platform.

Currently my default install has around 60ish plugins so does take up space, but its easy when using a single skeleton to kick off with.

WP sites can be blog based and can be adapted to look as static as you want.

It does have its downsides, but to me there isnt alot that comes close to it for ease and ability to dig in the guts raw php code style if you need to.

 

[joned]

Do you mean as a blog format because it is unique fresh content?

Fresh content certainly helps, and WP makes it easy to do. But I was talking more about the pages and site structure that it produces. If you pick the right plugins and follow the right advice (I follow Yoast.com) you get valid html, seo-friendly URLS, meta-tags, no-duplicate content, sitemap, no-indexing on pages you don't want shown..... you can do all the SEO buzzwords like internal-page-rank-sculpting and site-siloing...

More and more people are using it for static sites as well as blogs/news. For client-sites I usually go for a bit of both - mostly static pages, like a normal site, with a monthly special offer or promo or news piece (to give fresh content)

HTH ?

Cheers, Jon

 

[tifosi]

WP 2.7 is pretty good for cms, and there's quite a few cms style templates. Be prepared for learning how to create page_templates & sidebars if you want to take advantage. May need tome basic php skills for optimum cms benefits.

Did anyname.co.uk on wp with the old revolution theme starting point.

S

 

[virtualwords]

Thanks for your advice guys.

I really do not know anything about php ect.

Do you think I should stick with what I know and build mini sites with the package site dyos.

This costs me £5.88 + vat per month per site. ( Is this to expensive per mini site ? )

However this does allow me up to 1000 pages and also up to 10,000 products should I ever need to list products ect.

Regards

Gav

 

[aZooZa]

I can't write a single line of html or php, but every time I need to knock something out, I install WP - it takes about three minutes to install, and getting it knocked into shape is just very intuitive. I recommend it! Loads of free themes as well.

 

[tifosi]

Do you think I should stick with what I know and build mini sites with the package site dyos.

This costs me £5.88 + vat per month per site. ( Is this to expensive per mini site ? )

seems pricey for what you're doing. A basic reseller hosting package with cpanel & ability to host ~100 domains & auto-install wordpress would cost about the same.

10 sites @ 5.88 is the same as a basic dedi server package!

S

 

[joned]

Thanks for your advice guys.

I really do not know anything about php ect.

Do you think I should stick with what I know and build mini sites with the package site dyos.

This costs me £5.88 + vat per month per site. ( Is this to expensive per mini site ? )

However this does allow me up to 1000 pages and also up to 10,000 products should I ever need to list products ect.

Regards

Gav

Maybe have a look at Domainpress.com (I think they've officially launched now). They auto-setup a free WP site for you, with many of the SEO tweaks and plugins done for you. They take a percentage of any ad revenue you earn, like a parking company

(Haven't tried it myself yet, but plan to in the future)

Cheers, Jon

 

[virtualwords]

Thank so much for all your comments and advice.

I think that I will download wordpress and have a play with it. I have nothing to lose as it is free.

I have nearly all my domains parked at whypark at the moment and have not made a penny, I really want to make some of them into mini sites and hopefully attract a sale of some of the domains, and also make some income from them.

Thansk again

Gav

 

[aZooZa]

Thank so much for all your comments and advice.

I think that I will download wordpress and have a play with it. I have nothing to lose as it is free.

I have nearly all my domains parked at whypark at the moment and have not made a penny, I really want to make some of them into mini sites and hopefully attract a sale of some of the domains, and also make some income from them.

Thansk again

Gav

Well in a sort of way, you can guide your own destiny with WP. Good luck!

 

[julian]

imho wordpress is great but total overkill for minisites - its not portable enough

 

[scrizzle]

Wordpress is fab. Just one tip. Install 'All in one seo" plugin. Honestly mate your traffic will go up.

 

[rob]

hotline doing crap link building then... smooth

edit: hotline.co.uk/links.aspx they are doing link farm as well it seems

 

[grantw]

Classy marketing tactic :roll:

Grant

 

[davedevelopment]

I've been using wordpress for my new minisites, I've created a simple theme and use it on top of wordpress mu. That means I just have to add sites through the control panel, which is nice, then just work on a little content. If I want to, I can change the colours and add custom code in the footer (good for analytics).

Examples: deckingmaterials.co.uk | nasdrives.co.uk

I'd be tempted to share the theme, but part of me thinks there's potential money to be made, maybe hosting purely minisites, but looks like domainpress beat me to it.

 

[stevebrowne]

I'm also using WPMU, and trying out different types of template and affiliate models, eg: Instant Digital Camera , Designer Wellies - Cool Festival Boots