wordpress vs blogengine.net and the old web designer vs seo argument

[whseo99]

Hi all, id really like some input here, im an SEO Manager and im in the asp vs php battle with the technical developers from our company, they want to develop a big intranet/extranet type system where our company backend will be somewhat integrated with the website along with an intranet, they are just pressing on developing this without consulting me as per usual with those type of people.

I keep suggesting wordpress as i come from marketing bckgrnd and obviously this is the blogging platform of choice that can also be used for the platform for the company website, with many add ons and great seo capabilities.

They are just not interested, dont use add ons or extensions, just develop everything in house, so its quite frustrating for me, they say they can take the blogengine platform and get it to do everything wordpress can do, but I am not technically minded enough with asp coding to argue this.

I want to use wordpress for the platform and have the developer make a template for it, however its just a case of 'your on your own' type attitude if you do that, so im stuck with what to do, any advice from people who been in that sitution or know both platforms would be great.

ps i already know wordpress is great thanks

[Jason Johns]

Hi there,

You need to hit them on cost I think. Point out the benefits in using existing software. It allows for a faster time to market and reduces all costs involved.

Focus on the business benefits, i.e. no need for extensive testing and development, speed of delivery, development costs minimal, software costs low, contiual updates with no cost and so on.

If you appeal to their pocket they are almost guaranteed to listen ... I've not met a company yet that doesn't perk up at the thought of saving money!

All the best

Jason

Personally I would build it from the ground up and use Php, so sorry as a developer and designer I agree with your developers.

There is a huge difference between using a unsecured open source platform and building a custom platform yourself. The benefits of building it yourself outweight using the pre-exisiting platform. Who cares about cost, I would rather have high quality, no plugins needed, and have exactly what I want and need built from the start.

James

[whseo99]

Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet

Personally I would build it from the ground up and use Php, so sorry as a developer and designer I agree with your developers.

There is a huge difference between using a unsecured open source platform and building a custom platform yourself. The benefits of building it yourself outweight using the pre-exisiting platform. Who cares about cost, I would rather have high quality, no plugins needed, and have exactly what I want and need built from the start.

James

thanks james, but my argument is they only want to work in asp, what i want to know is, based on blog engine can it be built to be equal to wordpress for seo functionality, if so, then im happy to work with them, if not then i have to argue my point more

Originally Posted by whseo99

thanks james, but my argument is they only want to work in asp, what i want to know is, based on blog engine can it be built to be equal to wordpress for seo functionality, if so, then im happy to work with them, if not then i have to argue my point more

Yes, any developer can build a platform much like wordpress.. Depending upon the developers skills and how much they know about security (very few developers actually build security into scripts). Would I build it in asp, no way... That is really one of the stupidest things they could do.

If they are skilled developers then I would argue the point for php and if they do not want to do it in php then I would have to agree with your point and in this case you need to argue your point more.

James

[bgmacaw]

I do both ASP.NET and PHP programming with over 10 years of web development experience.

The problem that I've noticed with a lot of ASP.NET frameworks is that they often have poor SEO optimization as compared to open source LAMP solutions like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. They're great for internal apps and customer facing applications but usually not so great for search engine fodder. That's why you'll often see hybrid arrangements with a LAMP corporate front end and a ASP.NET app running on a subdomain. This is the arrangement I'd recommend if you want a hybrid environment.

Convincing your development staff to go along with the idea might be tough since C# based ASP.NET development is a lot more profitable salary-wise than PHP, at least in most US employment markets. In other words, you may have to move up the food chain to get results.

[whseo99]

thanks guys, just as i thought, does anyone whos into programming and technical side of seo have more insight on just why they dont do so well for seo? would like to extend my argument as much possible as in a company meeting, just saying it doesnt work as well always gets the why question, and their argument is

wordpress is so popular cos its free

and

what can it do that asp cant do

so i cant really answer those questions without understanding of tech stuff

thx

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by whseo99

thanks guys, just as i thought, does anyone whos into programming and technical side of seo have more insight on just why they dont do so well for seo?

There's no built-in reason why an ASP.NET site would do bad SEO-wise. However, SEO isn't a big topic in the ASP.NET development community because the vast majority of web apps developed with it are for internal use only within a mid to large sized corporation. All of the .NET web development frameworks and sample applications I've used don't take basic onsite SEO techniques into account. If your development team knows SEO and has the resources (time, money personnel) to put into developing a SEO friendly CMS system, let them go for it.

And, there's your opening. They're spending company resources to re-invent the wheel. WordPress is free, it works well and the cost of implementation is very low. Developing a new SEO friendly CMS system from scratch will be quite expensive, perhaps totaling well over $100K and 6 months to a year of development time from multiple developers. Blogengine.net isn't SEO friendly out of the box and will require considerable modifications at a considerable expense to make it so. The same is true of a lot of the .NET development frameworks and open source code.

[whseo99]

thank you, and thats a good argument for the management, but the developers still armed with arrogance, and who dont know anything about seo just want to have more work, and more development for different things, according to them php and people who use wordpress only do so cos its free and they dont understand proper coding with asp lol

this is all like a thorn in my side thats broken off when attempting to pull it out im afraid, cant win.

I am basically left with the choice of going to management, explaining the above, tell them if they want to go with our developers recomendations then thats cool and i will do the best i can with it, but dont expect the best results. Or we hire new people, and go with what i recommend I will suggest they base it on importance of their company website, ie should it suck you off and make coffee, or should it rank top for high competition keywords that our business relies on and let them decide, then maybe ill look for a new job depending on the outcome

thanks alot guys for the input

Well I can build a CMS better than wordpress as stated above many developers can and no it would not cost $100,000... Personally I would build it in php and make sure all needed seo was built into the system. I personally take high quality over anything else and seo is apart of that plan and as such the system should be built with seo in mind.

To build a wordpress like cms only better would take 4 - 6 months and more around $35,000 which would include source code rights. If any developer would charge more than that then they just have too many developers working on the same site. Personally I do not like 5 or 10 people working on my stuff ..lol

James

[UBotBuddy]

Even if you can build a completely new CMS using PHP you are still re-inventing the wheel. WordPress is a great engine for a company just like Linux is.

ASP and the underlying .Net architecture is not all that cool. I would disagree that anyone can build something equal to a plug-in in ASP. We are talking about Microsoft here the kingpins of bloat code. Just like IBM was back in the day.

I was a career IT person and I have seen just about everything. And one thing is perfectly clear. IT people will fight tooth and nail to stay in the little world and will invent and re-invent justifications to stay in it.

I would fire them all if they do not want to change and hire half the number in PHP experience and focus on WordPress.

I do not tolerate old ideas dominating a new technology or new business idea. It's just ridiculous.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet

Well I can build a CMS better than wordpress as stated above many developers can and no it would not cost $100,000...

In my experience, in-house corporate development within the US would cost that much easily. Many corporations are willing to pay top dollar to have someone on-site doing the work that they have complete managerial control over rather than potentially saving a few dollars outsourcing the project outside the company or country.

BTW, some of my most profitable contracting projects have been coming in to fix that $30K package that was poorly developed and was way behind schedule due to communication issues with a team on the other side of the globe.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by SiteBlaster

ASP and the underlying .Net architecture is not all that cool. I would disagree that anyone can build something equal to a plug-in in ASP. We are talking about Microsoft here the kingpins of bloat code.

You can, but you have to code outside of the 'cookie cutter' development frameworks, like the Microsoft Enterprise Library and Codesmith, to do it. I have a very tight database and plugin C# library I wrote and use but it requires a non-cookie-cutter-push-button mentality to use it. I guess this comes from originally learning how to program in MASM and C many years ago.

[waynejohn]

One reason your technical team might also be pushing for a .net based app is due to them having more knowledge with it. I'm recently venturing into php from c# and find it terribly like classic asp and prone to spaghetti code.

Not only that, but php, being so popular, is also quite attractive to hackers a script kiddies.

SEO can be put into anything regardless of what you use. That's a non-issue. BlogEngine does SEO just as well as WordPress, if not better. It's also very malleable, more so than WordPress is...but then, I'm still getting my fingers around WP.

Theming either system is a snap for most anyone that understands basic html and css. At least, it isn't very hard nor time-consuming in either system.

Both BlogEngine and WP are free. One thing I would not do however is place a PHP site alongside an ASP.net site. IIS apps and PHP apps on the same box might also cause problems. At least, I'm a purist when it comes to production applications. I don't like to blend different technologies for two different solutions on the same box.

If you ask me, it sounds like the developers are going with what they feel most comfortable in. If that's the case, you really don't want to put them in a position where they are doing something they don't feel is right, or don't want to do. You'll lose that fight in the long run.

[UBotBuddy]

bgmacaw,

Ahhhh....MASM. Those were the days! I used to dream in Assembler. I used to develop whole applications in Edlin. LOL Ahhhh...the good ole days!

[waynejohn]

Oh, send your development to India only if you want to rewrite it later. That's all I'm saying on that subject.

[whseo99]

great reading, thank you guys I think asp might have a long term future, but be alot more work, I guess if i can get all the 'functions' i need for the SEO part of the site programmed then, it would be the way forward, I think its probably going to be a long hard experience though, will see what they say today