[housekeeper]

...all good orders, but you'll have to settle for half a pepperoni slice...

Anyhow, with defference to the question, I tend to do well with html static pages, particularly when used for fhg's or promotional one pages. But also as a designer I like making pages from scratch, and have the flexibility towards adding or doing what I choose. The search engines serve me well in that regard, but I've come to find out that the image search, tends to finds it's way to blogs. I like the image search, G loves the image search, Mikey likes the image search so on....

The other thing for me is, I'm not a power blogger, I'd love to be, but I'm not. I'm not overly blog savvy either, and in a small way that could play into my dilligence towards updates. But I like blogging and what it has to offer, there is that ease of use and certainly that is a major consideration when getting out the plethora of updates that come in everyday.

Now, another thing that has been on my mind, are blogs becoming a little passe? I mean, from a surfers standpoint. Given that there are so many bad blogs (or splogs) out there. Do surfers head straight to their favorite sites, or is the blog the main source of reference for surfers in the know. I tend to see a lot of blogs that simply aren't updated enough, to my view a blog should serve the same purpose as a newspaper. But as an industry person myself, I tend to get my info from forums and social media...

Anyhow, my two cents...who wants the rest of this slice?

[Tigger]

Anyhow, with defference to the question, I tend to do well with html static pages, particularly when used for fhg's or promotional one pages. But also as a designer I like making pages from scratch, and have the flexibility towards adding or doing what I choose

agree completely I've been working with blogs pretty heavily over the last few weeks but I'm now on a html site rebuild and its so nice to have complete control and put things where I want

and the coffee is !!!

[housekeeper]

Originally Posted by Tigger

and the coffee is !!!

Oops, sorry Tigger, I got de-caff by mistake...

[VoyGeorge]

Okay, so it sounds like what people might really want, and use, is an offline web site template system that is as easy to use as WordPress, allows five-minute pages, and might even have an FTP upload feature built in to transfer the page, images, and other assets straight to your Web site.

Okay, these exist. Not sure how good they are, but they're around. Maybe we should have S4E research these for us, since he started the thread!

BUT... a while back I mentioned this same thing as a possible product and the result was crickets. Maybe people really don't want this, or they have a hard time understanding the concept, or I didn't phrase it right.

I'd personally prefer developing this as a desktop app, but S4E could whip this out in a weekend running PHP. Two weekends if it uses WordPress codex (but produces completely standalone pages, therefore no comments or real-time plugins - IOW, forget the Web 2.0 stuff). Three weekends with bug fixes. (No, make that four. It IS close to football season, after all.)

[Tigger]

de-caff

swear at me like that again and well I'll set Brent on you

[gonzogone]

Originally Posted by VoyGeorge

I'd personally prefer developing this as a desktop app, but S4E could whip this out in a weekend running PHP. Two weekends if it uses WordPress codex (but produces completely standalone pages, therefore no comments or real-time plugins - IOW, forget the Web 2.0 stuff). Three weekends with bug fixes. (No, make that four. It IS close to football season, after all.)

that's kinda in the direction I've gone with a couple sites. Just built a basic DB backend and put a template together that I use for each page. The template page includes navigation that can find new pages as I put them in. For each page, I can do my SEO specific to the content quick and easy, and then one function pulls the DB content I want into the page.

It's sort of a static site and sort of a CMS - about right down the middle. Once the template and DB are built, it's fairly quick to input content into the control panel that tells the site what pages to put things on. Upload the new page and it just starts working.

Are we at a point where all of this just takes work?!
It's either some extra work up front or the extra work on the back end - maybe it's all in how each of us wants to think about our sites?

[Gaystoryman]

I think we are straying from the issue here. Blogs versus Static, is not just about which is best, or even which does a better job even. I myself prefer a nice html page, css driven, but the bottom line is that while some can take 2 or 4 weekends to build their own nice db and template pages, the VAST majority of webmasters today, CANNOT. Nor can they afford to pay someone to do it for them.

Most are just plain folk, not designers, not coders, who want to earn some money. For them, the easiest, less painful route, is not building static sites, because they do need to learn code, design, as well as the rest that goes into being a webmaster. Blogs, take the need for coding skills, design skills, out of the mix.

And that is perhaps why it is so popular?

[Tigger]

And that is perhaps why it is so popular?

agree and it is easy to fall back on the WP site pick a template and 20 minutes later your adding the money making content into the site -

so whats the take on adding blogs onto static sites, so you have the main site with a folder that holds a blog, do you find adding the blog helps the static site out? or does G just turn its attention to the blog and ignore the static pages, or do you not bother

[Gaystoryman]

Oh I bother, but you know, if the blog isn't in the root, well, I think it simply gets treated like a separate entity.

I would hazard a guess, that without some deep linking, a different htaccess file even, that a blog may pull better, than an ignored static section of the site.

[NeteQuette]

I would hazard a guess, that without some deep linking, a different htaccess file even, that a blog may pull better, than an ignored static section of the site.

Having done this a couple of times I fully agree with you Ian. The blog section draws all the SE traffic and the static pages just become dormant.

[Tigger]

I'm experiementing with a blog in a folder and a sub and in both cases the blog is pulling more G traffic but as I expected the static sites are getting more attention from MSN - but their again we all know G prefers blogs..........right now

[oceania]

Originally Posted by housekeeper

Great topic, I'm gong to jump in when I get back from lunch. Anyone need anything from the Deli?

hmm Tiggers batteries are running low
maybe the vibrators need to be hooked to a generator LOL
just bring back you sweetie
hugs

[alvidk]

Originally Posted by student4ever

Ok, so I think just about everybody is agreed that WP can be a pain in the arse when it comes to updates and some plug-ins and such.

A couple people have said that they may end up going another direction...
A couple people are not sure how long G and the other SEs will look kindly on blogs...
A couple people live by (or live with as the case may be..) WP and blogging...

Lots of opinions for sure.

So what I'm wondering is what do you feel is the advantage of using WP (or other blog) versus doing the same things with a static site or other CMS? Is it the ease of posting content without having to muck around with code? The extensive list of plugin options? Other?

Is WP really worth the effort at this point? and what if the SEs stop looking kindly on blogs? Will WP still be worth the effort?

whatcha think?

The blogging platforms are very advanced those days and offering tons of great plugins- the only problem- Google gives more weight to the sites now, yes, before it was opposite but now

[milfhd]

Originally Posted by VoyGeorge

Don't miss the forest for the trees. This isn't about static hand-built sites vs CMS, but static CMS-driven pages versus active CMS-driven pages.

ANY CMS will save you time. WP isn't special here, just widespread. That's why people use CMSs. The question is, is there a better way to derive automated page output than to use WordPress, and all the issues it entails.

Assuming you don't have a lot of active content on your blog (plugins for user ratings, comments, etc.), one way around this is to turn your finished WordPress pages into static pages. One method is to install the WP Super Cache plugin, and then either click all your links, or wait a few days for your surfers to. It will cache all the pages, which you can then use as your static content. There are a couple of gotchas:

This works best if your blog is physically in a subdir, but you have rewrite rules to put it in your main dir. Then all your URLs stay the same.

Limit the ways into your pages by not using tags.

Turn off the search feature of your blog.

You can then disable your active blog by putting in an htaccess file into its directory that simply denies all. Even you can't get to it until you FTP back and remove the htaccess file. Remember that you have to take the htaccess file out if you do any kind of automatic upgrade.

The WP Super Cache method is clumsy, and I'm willing to bet a vacation to the eastern seaboard of Spain that eventually there will be not one but several plugins for automating the creation of static pages from an active WordPress blog.

Yes agree, WP Super Cache is great, saves a lot of server resources. But if you want to take advantages of easy to use CMS and static website, why not to try MovableType with its static rendering model ? It has a big community (not as big as WP though) and commercially supported, while you can use it for free. I wonder why so few bloggers use this platform these days.