Wordpress or hard code ?

[dee]

Hi All,

Is there and real advantage in usung a CMS such as wordpress over plain old html on a mini site ? Say for example I have a domain for a well known venue. Im aiming to do a mini site with info/ history / seating plan etc . If the content is relatively static is wordpress overkill ? It means i dont have to worry about SQL etc and updates.

 

[dee]

Wordpress sites used to be looked on VERY favourably by Google but I no longer think this is the case. I'd go with plain old html.

Really ? There was a preference ? Based on seo out of the box do you think ?

 

[Edwin]

All other things being well, plain HTML should load much quicker, especially if you write lean HTML, embed CSS etc. It's also more secure (nothing to hack) and should be easier to SEO as you have 100% granular control over every tag and element. Finally, it's more portable: you can chuck HTML on any hosting platform, and move a site in minutes...

 

[RobM]

Wordpress is bloated and the umpteen hundreds of plugins that people add without removing non-used plugins only bloat it further, make it slower, and decrease it's already appalling security. I recommend it to people with no html knowledge. I wouldn't however recommend anyone hosting a site for anyone else to ever have this POS software within 100 miles of their server

 

[dee]

All other things being well, plain HTML should load much quicker, especially if you write lean HTML, embed CSS etc. It's also more secure (nothing to hack) and should be easier to SEO as you have 100% granular control over every tag and element. Finally, it's more portable: you can chuck HTML on any hosting platform, and move a site in minutes...

Wordpress is bloated and the umpteen hundreds of plugins that people add without removing non-used plugins only bloat it further, make it slower, and decrease it's already appalling security. I recommend it to people with no html knowledge. I wouldn't however recommend anyone hosting a site for anyone else to ever have this POS software within 100 miles of their server

Totally makes sense. Thats what i thought, just wanted to make sure i wasnt missing something.

Thanks. Job done. Wordpress....get your coat and leg it

 

[TallBloke]

If you go with wordpress you do get the option to expand the site easily if you want to. You could include a news blog for the venue and allow comments for instance.

Personally I don't find wordpress too much of a chore to maintain so I stick with it.

 

[dee]

WIth that in mind and while I think of it . You know of any better CMS options ? Ive thought of trying my own using php includes or something simple.

 

[TallBloke]

Wordpress is bloated and the umpteen hundreds of plugins that people add without removing non-used plugins only bloat it further, make it slower, and decrease it's already appalling security.

That's not so much a problem with wordpress, more the users who install all the guff.

 

[TallBloke]

WIth that in mind and while I think of it . You know of any better CMS options ? Ive thought of trying my own using php includes or something simple.

Don't know if they're any better but off the top my head there's drupal, ghost, perch

 

[RobM]

That's not so much a problem with wordpress, more the users who install all the guff.

True the holes in wordpress have mostly been solved. However the users *couldn't* install all the guff if they weren't using it. If you can install plugins at the click of a button then it is inevitable that people will do that without any thought about where the plugin originated, who wrote it, and how reliable it was. Therefore no wordpress = no aggro. Also wordpress sites are easily spotted and although they may look ok for casual content I don't think they instil much confidence in a serious site with serious products.

 

[dazc]

WIth that in mind and while I think of it . You know of any better CMS options ? Ive thought of trying my own using php includes or something simple.

For a relatively static site Bootstrap works pretty well across any platform.

 

[atlas]

Also wordpress sites are easily spotted and although they may look ok for casual content I don't think they instil much confidence in a serious site with serious products.

Like this site that is using Wordpress:

https://nominet.uk/wp-admin

 

[RobM]

That's probably why it's naff Anyway it's personal opinion. However speaking from a programming end all the problems I ever had hosting was with insecure wordpress plugins. Once I stopped hosting them years ago it freed me up. I have an advertising agency and one of the things we do is design bespoke websites for people who want systems that are unique and powerful - both of which wordpress aren't and clients have been more and more ditching it for their own looks. I guess some people love it - I'm just saying I think you're better off designing (or getting designed) your own system. You can be faster, more reliable, and prettier.

 

[dee]

Cheers for the comments. This is why I asked in the first place. Ive always found wordpress slow and a bit of a bodge. Not that im capable of rolling my own, unless its a static html/css

 

[accelerator]

The big advantage of Wordpress is that the CMS provides a very quick way to make updates to the site. This is particularly useful when you have a customer that needs to make updates, because you can just give them a log in and let them do it.

If it is going to be a very static site, then you could go old school and do it yourself. The advantage here is you can make a very light and fast site, but it can be a pain to make site wide changes.

 

[Edwin]

If you structure the site very, very carefully, you can use a multi-file search and replace tool to make global changes.

For example, if the navigation HTML code is identical across hundreds of pages, you can change one page worth of code to incorporate whatever updates you want, then cut and paste the changed HTML into the search and replace tool and update every other page the same.

It does require a huge amount of discipline, though, to make sure every instance of repeated code is absolutely identical at all times.

 

[RobM]

You know if you make the page a .php page on a server that runs php you can then just include another page? Any changes you make to that will be changed across every page including it.
Eg renaming your index.html to index.php will still be the same but wherever you want you can just type <?php include 'myfile.html'; ?> and whatever is in that file will be put in its place

 

[dee]

You know if you make the page a .php page on a server that runs php you can then just include another page? Any changes you make to that will be changed across every page including it.
Eg renaming your index.html to index.php will still be the same but wherever you want you can just type <?php include 'myfile.html'; ?> and whatever is in that file will be put in its place

Yep. Also separating menus out etc and including into every page rather than having to update every page if you add a menu item for instance.

 

[Edwin]

The snag with that is that you've got to run a PHP script behind the scenes for every page-load. That's fine on a small to medium traffic site, but on a busy site it's quite a hefty extra load compared to just loading a few KB of highly-optimised, minified static HTML.

Plus unless you fiddle with server settings to run all .html files through the PHP processor, it forces you to create links that end in filenames like page1.php, which will then be less portable (since you've got to have PHP running on the hosting package). They also don't look as intuitive as .html pages, and I believe they may not save as readily in some browsers either.

But using a bunch of includes makes content management a lot easier, so it's swings and roundabouts.

 

[Carlos]

You can make a caching script to serve only static HTML. If you want to update something you just need to manually execute your script to make new HTML files for your cache or you can create a cron job for automatic periodic recaching.
That way you can update multiple pages like with a dynamic site but your server will only be loading static HTML.
It is not so difficult to do with PHP.