Thread: Site Building - Wordpress Blog or Static Website?

Originally Posted by texashiker

My traffic is directly measured, and one of my forums gets 140,000+ uniques and 3.7 - 3.8+ million page views monthly.
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I got 348,740 visitors which of 131,229 were absolute unique IP addresses (visitors) in the past 30 days. In the past 16 days I've had over 3 million ad impressions. ( dont keep the anaytics on all my pages.) I run proxy sites.

But I'm not successful that makes me barely anything to brag about and now I'm only riding on previous successes. The sites I run are using a free script that I have heavily modified to fix bug issues and I maintain a list of plugins.
The fact I have heavily modified my script and maintain a code base of plugins is the only reason I have my traffic, the traffic I have returns every day like clockwork, so they must like my site. But It require extensive knowledge of PHP to modify my websites, and also of server jargon to optimize my server to handle the traffic. I'm not going to agree that you can get by without knowing technical jargon like computer languages. Even if you are using a free script your going to have do something with it.

Even if you are using a free script your going to have do something with it.

That goes without saying..many WP themes are not SEO optimised and not customised to suit a particular niche..so a li'l tweaking is necessary..but the fact that one is using a free script wont have any effect on the visitors..all they are looking for is content..a better layout will help you too.

I dont think a visitor will come to my site and leav just because he think its a free script..and we should rely more on SERPs than Alexa..I thought webmasters stopped believing in Alexa

Originally Posted by Keldorn

The fact I have heavily modified my script and maintain a code base of plugins is the only reason I have my traffic, the traffic I have returns every day like clockwork, so they must like my site.

I run several VBulletin forums. The main one has 995,970 post, 76,386 threads and 23,277 members. My forum is successful because I posted unique and quality content to get it started. The forum has a few modifications installed, but its not heavily modded.

You can take a basic content management system - forum, blogging script, reviews script, gallery,,,,, post quality content, and there is a good chance that your site will become popular. There is no need in heavily modifying anything.

The more time you spend hacking the script, means you have less time to post content. There are only 24 hours in a day. If you spend the majority of that time coding, you have less time to post content that people want to read, watch and look at.

The "theory" that you have to spend some massive amount of time or money hacking a script to make it into a popular site is flawed.

Originally Posted by texashiker

I run several VBulletin forums. The main one has 995,970 post, 76,386 threads and 23,277 members. My forum is successful because I posted unique and quality content to get it started. The forum has a few modifications installed, but its not heavily modded.

You can take a basic content management system - forum, blogging script, reviews script, gallery,,,,, post quality content, and there is a good chance that your site will become popular. There is no need in heavily modifying anything.

The more time you spend hacking the script, means you have less time to post content. There are only 24 hours in a day. If you spend the majority of that time coding, you have less time to post content that people want to read, watch and look at.

The "theory" that you have to spend some massive amount of time or money hacking a script to make it into a popular site is flawed.

VBulletin by its nature it written to handle thousands or even millions of threads and posts. But even VBulletin costs money and needs mods to work in an optimal manner.

In the case a blogging script like wordpress, the wordpress program needs a template and modifications. You can get some free templates and plugins. But the fact is that wordpress was written a blogging software and not a content management system.

It won't make sense to put a couple of thousand dollars of content on wordpress without at least some heavy mods on the navigation.

It's like you have a restaurant. You spend all your time and money on the food and cooking. But you have considered the presentaion which is just as important. You are still going to need menus, waiters and a nice atmosphere. The atmosphere is what builds the mood to stay and enjoy the good food, or in the case of a website to stay and enoy the good content.

Originally Posted by bogart

I've been building a blog. But now I have a high number of quality articles. I'm getting second thoughts about using them on the blog. Because, I'm concerned that the articles will become quickly buried after they get their five minutes of fame.

Should I use my content on a wordpress blog or build a static site for it?

Anyway that I can improve navigation and organize the information with plugins? I'm using the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin for WordPress Plugin. It's been working well. But still have doubts about using a wp blog as a content site.

I like doing a static frontpage and then having a blog on the side.

Over the last few days I've been working with Joomla and Drupal for a new site. I didn't like Joomla. Setting up the menus and extensions are a real pain.

I installed drupal the other day and really like it. The Joomla templates are usually nicer looking. However, drupal is far better for setting up navigation menus.

Drupal also has a nice feature called drupal taxonomy that allows you to add tags and categories. You can even set up a drupal taxonomy menu. The menu will then point at all the posts in the category. The nice part is that the posts are shown as short excerpts.

You can also add modules which are similiar to wordpress plugins. Another thing that you can do is to add custom tpl.php files that modify specific kinds of pages.

Originally Posted by Pacman131

I like doing a static frontpage and then having a blog on the side.

I've done this before and it's a nice combination. I made a few pages in html and added a blog in a folder i.e. http://www.mysite/blog

The blog works as a quick and dirty cms. Wordpress is easy to use and there are a lot of great plugins.

Originally Posted by bogart

... drupal is far better for setting up navigation menus.

I didn't like Drupal menus at all until I found Nice Menus.