New wordpress based site..

Post by **Wes** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 10:21 pm

Just wanted to do a quick post to give some info about a kinda new trend with websites and to get a little bit of feedback on my new blogsite.

If you don't want to learn a lot of html, dreamweaver, etc or spend a lot of money on a website design, you should look into using wordpress as your website. With the last couple versions, and with some of the new plugin's, it isn't hard to run a full scale website off wordpress.

Couple of the advantages:
One of the best things, is that you separate the content from the tech stuff. So, anyone that can write an email or bbs post can add or edit content on a webpage - no problem
Free! (you just need a host that supports it, which almost all do)
Mostly wysiwyg editing once you have the basic setup going. You can still use html coding if you want though.
Edit content anywhere, from any modern browser. You can update your site anytime, without having a dedicated program. Want to make a quick change to your homepage - just fire up a browser, click a couple links, make some edits, and you are good to go.
Fast - wordpress is fast, with pretty tight code.
Standards based
Security is pretty good, as long as your host keeps up the code versions.
Easy to change the look. Since it is theme based, just change to a new theme (or part of your current theme) and your site has a totally new look. There are lots of free themes, and they aren't too hard to change around a bit (if you know a little css). Or you can buy templates.
Great for SEO
Great and easy to use plugin's for stats

Some drawbacks
To really tweak it out, you need to know CSS, HTML and PHP.
Without a lot of work, the sites can look a bit generic
Might not be real easy to add e-commerce features.

I am sure there are other pluses and minuses as well. But the big thing is that, even if you have to pay to have the site set up at first, you are in control of the content - no need to have someone make changes for you.

My new wordpress based site for our commercial / event photography:

http://www.radicalangles.com

All done with free software, free templates, etc. Didn't take a really long time to setup so far, and once the basics were done, adding the content pages was pretty easy. Still not done, and not happy with a few things, but I think it is better then the flash template and iweb sites I had before. Will be moving our Wedding photography site to something like this once I get the kinks worked out.

For more info and some better examples, google wordpress as cms or wordpress as website.

Post by **Saxman** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 11:31 pm

Great post. Thanks Wes.

Post by **Andrew** » Sat Jul 04, 2009 12:45 pm

Thanks wes, good stuff.

Post by **ElectricDisciple** » Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:46 pm

Wes:

I also run a Wordpress Site and have found it to be incredibly easy to use and with a little effort I can make an awesome site. Yours looks really cool with the images that change out on the header. There are a few plug-ins for e-commerce, but not doing e-commerce on my page I can't speak to it.

Great site!

Post by **Dhaulagiri** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 11:50 am

I agree that it would be nice if modifying the themes were easier for the average user, but for everything else I think wordpress is a great option.

Post by **Paul3eb** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 3:42 pm

it's been a while in getting there but yeah, wordpress is pretty much where it's at. have loved it for several years now and, as of 2.7, it's fully matured. just be a little careful with security and, related to that, avoid adding tons of plugins - they'll slow you down and open you up to holes.

http://blogsecurity.net/

if you're thinking about flash sites, the only things i'd remind people of is 1) not everyone has flash enabled (same argument can apply for javascript, though), 2) not mobile (specifically, iphone) friendly, and 3) for the long term, it's harder to find people to do/edit flash sites than html.

Post by **Dhaulagiri** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 3:45 pm

Corporate Whore wrote: if you're thinking about flash sites, the only things i'd remind people of is 1) not everyone has flash enabled (same argument can apply for javascript, though), 2) not mobile (specifically, iphone) friendly, and 3) for the long term, it's harder to find people to do/edit flash sites than html.

There is also the SEO limitations involved with developing in Flash although I believe recent developments have helped improve that. #2 is a biggie for me since I use my iPhone to browse alot (mostly sites blocked at work). However, something I did to my site has rendered it un-loadable on my iPhone so what do I really know

Post by **captain static** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 4:24 pm

rrgcc.org is a wordpress based site thanks very much to Pablo!

Post by **ElectricDisciple** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 6:40 pm

WP is now up to 2.8.1, FYI.

And if you know CSS and get a decent theme, you can make it somethin' special.

Post by **ecp88** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 8:51 pm

Looks like I need to up my climbing game or get married if I want to ever get in one of those galleries. Great photos.