Wordpress blog vs HTML mini-site ?

[Tim_Hawksworth]

Hi Warriors.

I read Chucks thread last week about how he sets up his websites
with wordpress and all those plugins and he seems to do pretty well.

But then I noticed that he only puts 5 posts on the website,
at the most, on some he puts 25 posts.

I schedule the 5 posts to be posted at like day 1, day 2, day 6, day 12, and day 21 or something. I just do whatever comes to my mind at that time, no concrete rules here.

I was going to follow his recommendations, but it seems that setting up wp blog for just 5 or 10 posted articles seems a waste of time.

Wouldn't a "normal" html website ( sometimes called a mini-site) with the same content on do the job just as well.

The plugins he mentioned are:

Free Plugins
WordPress › cbnet Ping Optimizer « WordPress Plugins
Go to pingler.com and copy the ping directory URLs they use
WordPress › cbnet MBP Auto-Activate « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › Dean's FCKEditor For WordPress « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › Easy Privacy Policy « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › Google Analyticator « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › Google XML Sitemaps « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › Search for Platinum SEO Pack « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › WP-DB-Backup « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › WP No External Links « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › Yet Another Related Posts Plugin « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam « WordPress Plugins
Also use a 'socialize' plugin of your choice - for people to like you, retweet and bookmark you
I'm not going to tell you why I use each of them, their description pages will say what they are used for.

Paid Plugins
SEOPressor UNLIMITED – SEOPressor automatically optimizes your on-page SEO by bolding, italizing and underlining your main keyword. It also optimize title and image tags. You can use the Suggestion Feature to tweak your content for high search engine ranking. Version 4.0 | By Daniel Tan

Ping Crawler Turbo – Based on Ping Crawl 2 by Josh Team and Eli and Josh Phipps and LinkCurl fork from “Guerilla Blog Hacks” with Minor tweaks for speed, efficiency and security by Sean Donahoe – Every time you make a post on your blog it grabs similar posts from other blogs that allow pingbacks using the post tags. It then links to them at the bottom of the post as similar posts. It then executes the pingback on all the posts. You can specify how many posts to do per tag and that many will be done for each tag you use in your posts. Typically it has about an 80% successrate with each pingback and they are legit so the ones that fall into moderation tend to get approved. This creates quite a few deep links for each blog post you make and through time really helps with your link building. Especially for new blogs. Version 1.1 | By Sean Donahoe | Visit plugin site

Trackback Feed - Indexing Plugin and Trackback Feed Plugin I'll tell you what I use this for in the Off Page SEO section. You might even be able to figure it out yourself.

Can the effect of these plugins be duplicated easy enough on a mini-site ?

Does Google prefer "blogs" somehow ?


.

[Bradley J Anderson]

Originally Posted by Tim_Hawksworth

Can the effect of these plugins be duplicated easy enough on a mini-site ?

Does Google prefer "blogs" somehow ?

Can the effect of the plug-ins be duplicated on a mini-site? Most certainly. WP and the plug-ins will save you a lot of time, though.

I used to use mini-sites, myself, but the time you save coding is well worth the switch, just by itself.

I have much more success with the blogs, though. If you have good content on them, Google does seem to like them much better. I'm not sure how successful you will be in the long run with only 5 posts, though.

[RichardF]

Static HTML sites work just as good, it's just a matter of preference. Google doesn't care either way. Sometimes it's easier to just use Wordpress though, even if it's a set-and-forget kind of site.

[Bradley J Anderson]

Originally Posted by RichardF

Static HTML sites work just as good, it's just a matter of preference. Google doesn't care either way. Sometimes it's easier to just use Wordpress though, even if it's a set-and-forget kind of site.

Agreed on both points. The only disadvantage with a static HTML site is that any personalization or interactivity has to run client-side (i.e., in the browser), which can be restricting, at times.

Static sites with a large amount of pages can be a nightmare sometimes, too, but with a mini-site neither of these should be an issue.

[Tim_Hawksworth]

I used to use mini-sites, myself, but the time you save coding is well worth the switch, just by itself.

If you are coding yourself, I would have thought that once you have
done one, you then use it as a template for all your others - so just add
graphics and content ... no ?

Also, each time you make an SEO improvement, you can roll it out on
your other mini-sites easily though can't you ?


Did you create mini-sites with php or was it a template set that you purchased ?


.

[Bradley J Anderson]

Originally Posted by Tim_Hawksworth

If you are coding yourself, I would have thought that once you have done one, you then use it as a template for all your others - so just add graphics and content ... no ?

Yes, that is usually true.

Originally Posted by Tim_Hawksworth

Also, each time you make an SEO improvement, you can roll it out on your other mini-sites easily though can't you ?

This is also usually true.

Originally Posted by Tim_Hawksworth

Did you create mini-sites with php or was it a template set that you purchased?

I usually hand-code my own sites with XHTML, including the mini-sites. If php is needed, I sometimes enlist the services of a friend, however. I have a basic understanding of php, and can do the common, simple things, but he is a wizard so I bow to his experience.

[retsek]

I use Wordpress over HTML. Google loves Wordpress. Not to mention being able to use tags on your posts, and the ocean of plugins (both and free paid) available to make SEO and content creation easier and faster to do.

Now, if you have hundreds of websites like me ...it would be a nightmare and pretty ridiculous to have hundreds of wordpress installs to work with, especially when upgrade time comes around.

So I use the Wordpress Network feature. Over the years, it's been called different things and it looks like they've settled on Wordpress network and they've integrated it into the standard download.

I have about 250 top level domains now, and i just have 5 Installations of wordpress to manage them all. 50 sites to an installation, they all share themes, plugins and still have their seperate databases. It makes it easy to manage plugin upgrades, ad placement tweaking across many sites that use the same theme, etc.

It takes quite a bit of configuration to get it working. But there's many guides available.

Another piece of awesome software is Piwik. The real time stats are a big plus over google analytics.

[StreetBacon]

I think the biggest advantage to using a WP site is the plugins that you can also use. For example, I have a premium plugin that creates backlinks through an RSS system. You just can't do that with a static site. It's the plugins that make WP better.

If you don't need any plugins, then go with HTML. Very fast loading, no passwords to remember, never needs to be updated, etc... it has its advantages as well. But you need to be able to create the thing first. A lot of people can't.

Good luck either way!