Why WordPress?

[Saidar]

Hello Warriors

I've been designing my sites in dreamweaver ever since I started with IM... I didn't hear about WordPress until I joined this forum.

Now my question, why use WordPress? I know if you want a blog then maybe you don't have a choice but I've seen wordpress sites only with static pages. In my opinion it's difficult to do SEO perfect using wordpress, and I don't really see what those SEO plugins really do to help the whole situation of database driven pages.

Can somebody please explain to me what I'm seeing or doing wrong and if there's more to wordpress than I know?

Thanks!

[dzoaffiliate]

if you're doing 1 page landing pages or CPA offers then you don't need wordpress. But if you plan to create an interactive site very quickly and thinking long term then a wordpress site makes sense. With wordpress you get a ton of plugins that do SEO, sitemap, Adsense, etc etc. if You can name it - there's probably a plugin for it!

DZ

[linkisking]

I agree.wordpress has all the plugins you need to optimize your blog.
The "All in one SEO" plugin is the best plugin ever!!
No need to worry about doing metatags and stuff.They do it for you automatically.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Saidar

Can somebody please explain to me what I'm seeing or doing wrong and if there's more to wordpress than I know?

Thanks!

I don't know what you've done with Wordpress so that question would
be hard to answer. Here are my reasons for using it.

Usability

I find wordpress easy to use without being tech savvy. You can create
a decent looking usable site in minutes. You can change the look and
features in minutes too with different themes, plugins, and widgets.

SEO

Wordpress is widely regarded as being beneficial to SEO. Also, on page
optimization is simple and you can get plugins to help you out with that.

Diversity

You can use wordpress as a blog, squeeze page, or static page and
you can add or remove features.

Ultimately the decision to use the wordpress platform or not is upto you
and depends on what you want and for what purpose. The above is just
my reasons for using it.



-Paul

[DeanJames]

@Saidar - Nothing wrong with Dreamweaver. If you are getting good results with that and have no compelling reason to use Wordpress then I would not worry about what you are missing out on particularly if you are cranking out static sites that serve their purpose and perform. It all comes back to the K.I.S.S. principle. Now if you have a good reason to use Wordpress over Dreamweaver for a site then you're talking

Dean

[Travish90]

Dreamweaver is a great program to build sites. You can make navigation menu, add AJAX, javascript code, etc.

Wordpress is great for starting and maintaining blogs in under 5 minutes. There are lots of benefits in using Wordpress. There are tons of themes and plugins, extensive help. Plus, Wordpress is very secure.

[DeanJames]

Originally Posted by Travish90

Plus, Wordpress is very secure.

I would argue that static sites are much more secure than Wordpress, particularly if standard Wordpress installations are used. Agree that Wordpress great for creating quick blogs it's an awesome social platform.

Dean

[Abledragon]

I use WordPress for blogs (its original intention) but many also use it to create static sites with an integrated blog.

You can do that by simply selecting options in the Settings screens.

However, using WordPress as a static site has some limitations, particularly with on-page styling, because it reserves H1 and H2 for blog and page titles.

Also, using the HTML view for writing posts and pages is pretty frustrating because WP frequently ignores or over-rides the code you put in.

For blogs, though, it's truly excellent.

As others have said, there are all sorts of SEO related plugins that are extremely effective, but one of the reasons the platform itself is naturally well optimised is its structure of Categories and Tags.

As long as these are correctly used to group and link articles on a similar subject together, they give both readers and the search engines an extremely easy way of finding their way around the site to content relevant to their interest.

Cheers,

Martin.

[petevamp]

Originally Posted by Saidar

Hello Warriors

I've been designing my sites in dreamweaver ever since I started with IM... I didn't hear about WordPress until I joined this forum.

Now my question, why use WordPress? I know if you want a blog then maybe you don't have a choice but I've seen wordpress sites only with static pages. In my opinion it's difficult to do SEO perfect using wordpress, and I don't really see what those SEO plugins really do to help the whole situation of database driven pages.

Can somebody please explain to me what I'm seeing or doing wrong and if there's more to wordpress than I know?

Thanks!

Hi Saidar

I wrote a nice little segment about wordpress at my blog Advantages of Using WordPress to Build Your Website | Massive Marketers It may not be what you are looking for how ever the article is jampacked with info all about wp

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Abledragon

However, using WordPress as a static site has some limitations, particularly with on-page styling, because it reserves H1 and H2 for blog and page titles.

These aren't reserved by WordPress. This is theme based. Change your theme, change the behavior.

Originally Posted by Abledragon

Also, using the HTML view for writing posts and pages is pretty frustrating because WP frequently ignores or over-rides the code you put in.

You can enter posts in HTML mode and avoid the 'help' if you want. There are plugins available that further enhance your ability in this area.

[paulgl]

I was going to ask a similar question:
If one were to do one or the other, which would you do,
a niche site or a blog?

I opted for the blog, as I learned how wordpress had
taken the blog community by storm. Along with a quick way
of doing, in effect, a niche site. I already had the domains
and hosting, so used cpanel to install wordpress and man
has it been great. You can add subpages, html, etc. to
almost any theme. And the free themes give an almost
endless list of possibilities. The SEO has proved to be almost
built-in. That's my support of wordpress.

Paul

[Saidar]

So far I have only heard complements to wordpress... Maybe it's time for me to try it out for a new site of mine... I was just a little worried about SEO but it sounds like wordpress is better for SEO than a normal static website?

The template I've tried puts the same H1 and H2 tag on every page, does those SEO plugins change that? Changing it myself is rather difficult because I've notcied that WP use one template for the header etc etc, so changing the template changes the entire website.

What is the best SEO plugin? All in one SEO or platinum SEO?

[Red_Virus]

I use wordpress for all my sites/ I mean which other platform gives you the flexibility of CMS and a blogging platform.

[Saidar]

Originally Posted by petevamp

Hi Saidar

I wrote a nice little segment about wordpress at my blog Advantages of Using WordPress to Build Your Website | Massive Marketers It may not be what you are looking for how ever the article is jampacked with info all about wp

Now that I see what you have done with your site I'm starting to like wordpress. What are the plugins that you use? How did you change the categories to a horizontal menu without changing the internal code yourself? How did you get those nice vertical menus? A theme?

[Travish90]

Originally Posted by Saidar

Now that I see what you have done with your site I'm starting to like wordpress. What are the plugins that you use? How did you change the categories to a horizontal menu without changing the internal code yourself? How did you get those nice vertical menus? A theme?

There are many themes available for Wordpress. You can develop your own or hire someone to develop one.

Here are some of the plugins, that I use:
Akismet
WP AJAX Comments
Google Sitemap Generator
Related Posts
Contact Form 7
No Follow Free

[Saidar]

Originally Posted by petevamp

Hi Saidar

I wrote a nice little segment about wordpress at my blog Advantages of Using WordPress to Build Your Website | Massive Marketers It may not be what you are looking for how ever the article is jampacked with info all about wp

Now that I see what you have done with your site I'm starting to like wordpress. What are the plugins that you use? How did you change the categories to a horizontal menu without changing the internal code yourself? How did you get those nice vertical menus? A theme?

[Saidar]

Originally Posted by Travish90

There are many themes available for Wordpress. You can develop your own or hire someone to develop one.

Here are some of the plugins, that I use:
Akismet
WP AJAX Comments
Google Sitemap Generator
Related Posts
Contact Form 7
No Follow Free

Thanks man appreciate it

[Solidsnake]

Originally Posted by Saidar

Hello Warriors

I've been designing my sites in dreamweaver ever since I started with IM... I didn't hear about WordPress until I joined this forum.

Now my question, why use WordPress? I know if you want a blog then maybe you don't have a choice but I've seen wordpress sites only with static pages. In my opinion it's difficult to do SEO perfect using wordpress, and I don't really see what those SEO plugins really do to help the whole situation of database driven pages.

Can somebody please explain to me what I'm seeing or doing wrong and if there's more to wordpress than I know?

Thanks!

Contrary to what you believe, wordpress is the easiest thing to SEO.. Especially if you are adding content daily, wordpress is a real deal..

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Saidar

The template I've tried puts the same H1 and H2 tag on every page, does those SEO plugins change that? Changing it myself is rather difficult because I've notcied that WP use one template for the header etc etc, so changing the template changes the entire website.

SEO plugins don't do that. It's up to the theme. To customize WordPress themes it does take some HTML, CSS and PHP knowledge (and maybe a little Javascript too) but it's not terribly difficult. You might try my stripped down themes in my sig. They're really bare bones but are good to learn with since they've been simplified so much.

Originally Posted by Saidar

What is the best SEO plugin? All in one SEO or platinum SEO?

Platinum is a development branch off of All-In-One so they're about the same. Platinum has a few extra features that are useful for some configurations but on basic performance they're essentially the same.

[Saidar]

Originally Posted by anildewani

Wordpress is the best CMS i have ever used.
I prefer wordpress because of SEO, google loves wordpress.

Though it is a blogging CMS, i see many customized theme for every niche
SEO plugins, create excerpts add tags for each page and some also ping back to various search engines for update.

How exactly to I configure wordpress to ping to all the search engines? is it automated or do I have to add code somewhere?

[Saidar]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

SEO plugins don't do that. It's up to the theme. To customize WordPress themes it does take some HTML, CSS and PHP knowledge (and maybe a little Javascript too) but it's not terribly difficult. You might try my stripped down themes in my sig. They're really bare bones but are good to learn with since they've been simplified so much.



Platinum is a development branch off of All-In-One so they're about the same. Platinum has a few extra features that are useful for some configurations but on basic performance they're essentially the same.

Thanks for the themes! I know all the web languages so I'll figure it out

[petevamp]

Originally Posted by Saidar

Now that I see what you have done with your site I'm starting to like wordpress. What are the plugins that you use? How did you change the categories to a horizontal menu without changing the internal code yourself? How did you get those nice vertical menus? A theme?

There is a ton of built in themes I chose one I liked the most and then built off of it and edited a few things. That and most things there are all plugins you can download directly to your wordpress admin panel with out having to ftp them in. Which I found to be one of the greatest things.

[petevamp]

Originally Posted by Saidar

How exactly to I configure wordpress to ping to all the search engines? is it automated or do I have to add code somewhere?

The pinging system is automated all you have to do is add in your ping site addresses and then make a post. This is how I was able to recover most of my post on google so fast after permalinks change. I went through and re edited the key words for about 20 post and with in an hour I was racing up the google search again for my post.

[Jason Keith]

I used to use Dreamweaver and Frontpage to create all my websites. When I initially started hearing about WordPress I was skeptical. I now use WP for all my sites because of the simplicity of:

1. Easily doing on-page SEO stuff (as discussed in other posts)
2. Easily being able to change the entire site's look and feel without updating code.
3. Easily integrating contact forms into my site using various plugins
4. Easily adding commenting features into my sites to add user generated content

These are just a few of the reasons. I still occasionally fire up Dreamweaver or Frontpage to work up some HTML, but that's about the extent of it.

[SarahMcHarry]

I use WordPress for all my sites now.

The first advantage is that it is so quick and easy to get a new site up and running. I don't stress too much about whether the theme uses H1 or H2 or whatever. My recent experience is that Google doesn't care about the tags - what matters is that you use keywords in titles, tags and categories and that you get your permalinks configured.

I have found that WordPress is actually better for SEO. I use 'All In One SEO' and 'Google Sitemaps' plugins and they work like a dream. It's quite common for my WP sites to be indexed within 24 hours and I spend the time I would have spent fiddling about with coding on link building and adding more content.

And WordPress blogs don't have to look like a blog. I have designed several WP sites where I just use static pages, with child and parent pages and a horizontal menu. They look and feel like regular websites, except they're much easier to maintain.

WordPress any time!

Sarah

[KAINSMONEY]

I use word press for his simplicity and his plugins are very good too .

[Jenie0109]

a ++ for seo in google :->

[cocosan]

if you're doing 1 page landing pages or CPA offers then you don't need wordpress. But if you plan to create an interactive site very quickly and thinking long term then a wordpress site makes sense. With wordpress you get a ton of plugins that do SEO, sitemap, Adsense, etc etc. if You can name it - there's probably a plugin for it!

[Saidar]

Originally Posted by petevamp

The pinging system is automated all you have to do is add in your ping site addresses and then make a post. This is how I was able to recover most of my post on google so fast after permalinks change. I went through and re edited the key words for about 20 post and with in an hour I was racing up the google search again for my post.

Thanks for the advice... But what is the pinging address? Does google supply the IP or what? I'm a bit confused with this

[Saidar]

Ok, you guys convinced me to use wordpress... Now I've only got one problem left, how on earth do you remove the links in the meta sidebar? There are links for :

Log In
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
WordPress.org

How do I remove them?

[Saidar]

At the moment my largest website is a martial arts website, I'm going to redesign the entire site and put it on a new domain... Site name - martialartsheadquarters.net

Do you think I should make it a blog? It's a informational site like Wikipedia about martial arts. Should it be a blog or should I keep it static?

[KAINSMONEY]

Originally Posted by Saidar

Ok, you guys convinced me to use wordpress... Now I've only got one problem left, how on earth do you remove the links in the meta sidebar? There are links for :

Log In
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
WordPress.org

How do I remove them?

/wp-login , login in your blog and check in links , you will find some of them , just dont make it visible ( keep this link private )

[Saidar]

I've already checked there, there is no links there. Looks like that is the function of the meta widget

[BenQ]

I'm just starting to lean all this, so thanks for all the info here.

[KAINSMONEY]

appearance - widgets - Log in/out, admin, feed and WordPress links

[Nigerian Entrepreneur]

For a non-technical online entrepreneur with a lean pocket for website design, WordPress is the sure bet.

It is professional, it is simple to implement and there are tons of resources to get even a dumb person going.

I'll say Dreamweaver is for the senior website designers who wants to control all the bolts and nuts. Of course some professional website designers still use Wordpress as the framework for their work and then build on it.

[Copywriter UK]

Very useful information here, thanks.

What is Wordpress like for creating a really simple landing page, the long-form letter kind with no distracting side bars or menus?

Any advice on how to do this much appreciated.

thanks

Andy

[BlogPiG.com]

1. Ease
2. Plugins
3. 'Hide in the crowd' 9depending what you're up to of course)

[seosharing]

I am using Wordpress to view and post my blogs it is very nice to use,but i want to know about advancement of the WordPress

[anuj291]

Wordpress is everything according to me...
there is nothing better than that... its userfriendly
it has all the plugins that help you do anything and everything

[petevamp]

I love wordpress its so easy to use and set up for everything. The one thing I am going to try to do with my next wordpress is set up a forum for one of my programs not entirely sure if it is possible to do yet but I will find out soon enough.

[SarahMcHarry]

Originally Posted by Copywriter UK

Very useful information here, thanks.

What is Wordpress like for creating a really simple landing page, the long-form letter kind with no distracting side bars or menus?

Any advice on how to do this much appreciated.

thanks

Andy

Andy,

WordPress isn't really designed just to be a one-page site but you can do it if you want.

Either:

• Choose (or design) a theme with no sidebars
• Edit the single page (page.php) file to remove the sidebars
• Leave the sidebars in but remove all the widgets, then they'll be blank

But, sidebars can be very useful as a navbar if you do have more than one page. WordPress is very flexible as to how you arrange the components - you just need to be a bit creative and you can end up with something very handy!

Sarah

[promo_guy]

I love wordpress even though it takes a few minutes to setup the database, etc. (I do it manually) and slap up a premium theme from Woothemes or similar and you're golden.

petevamp - have you tried the Simple Press plugin? http: //simplepressforum.com/

I hear that's pretty good. been meaning to try it

[Copywriter UK]

Hi Sarah,

Thanks very much. Sounds easier than I'd thought. Have only dealt with Wordpress.com so far, haven't self-installed on wordpress.org (wish I'd done that from the start!)

Looking forward to trying these things out.

Cheers

andy

Originally Posted by SarahMcHarry

Andy,

WordPress isn't really designed just to be a one-page site but you can do it if you want.

Either:

• Choose (or design) a theme with no sidebars
• Edit the single page (page.php) file to remove the sidebars
• Leave the sidebars in but remove all the widgets, then they'll be blank

But, sidebars can be very useful as a navbar if you do have more than one page. WordPress is very flexible as to how you arrange the components - you just need to be a bit creative and you can end up with something very handy!

Sarah

[lalit.burma]

Easy to use ... easy to control .... good for seo purpose and huge plug ins for everything ...

What else you want ?

[Wakunahum]

The best reason is that it's open source with a community of developers behind the code.

[EnergyRings]

Originally Posted by SarahMcHarry

I have found that WordPress is actually better for SEO. I use 'All In One SEO' and 'Google Sitemaps' plugins and they work like a dream.
WordPress any time!
Sarah

Hi,
I started a blog for a site that I've had for years with verry little traffic. Now I installed the google site map plugin and I see that the site map only covers the blog part of the site. The blog is in it's own directory. How do I get the sitemap to cover the entire site?

How do you remove or make invisible the links under the META heading? I can do this with the BLOGROLL links but I can't seem to get to teh links under META. Like FREE THEME/TEMPLATE and WEBHOST REFER.
When I go to appearance - widgets - Log in/out, admin, feed and WordPress links, all I can do is change the word META to something else through the edit window.

Is this a theme thing?

[SarahMcHarry]

Originally Posted by EnergyRings

Hi,
I started a blog for a site that I've had for years with verry little traffic. Now I installed the google site map plugin and I see that the site map only covers the blog part of the site. The blog is in it's own directory. How do I get the sitemap to cover the entire site?

How do you remove or make invisible the links under the META heading? I can do this with the BLOGROLL links but I can't seem to get to teh links under META. Like FREE THEME/TEMPLATE and WEBHOST REFER.
When I go to appearance - widgets - Log in/out, admin, feed and WordPress links, all I can do is change the word META to something else through the edit window.

Is this a theme thing?

Energyrings,

If your blog is on a subdirectory you'll need something more than the WordPress plugin. I am no expert on Google sitemaps but you could do worse than start here > Google Webmaster Tools

A lot of themes hard-code in the meta information which is a real bore. You can take it out if you edit the page carefully.

In the theme editor, find the page called something like sidebar.php. Copy and paste the entire page into Notepad so that you have a security copy of it. Then look down the code until you see something that mentions the meta info. It will probably be down near the bottom. You want to delete all the lines between <?php............ and ......?> that include the wording you can see on your sidebar.

Update the file and try it. If it doesn't work, restore your backup and get in touch with the theme's designer who could maybe tell you what to do.

Hope this helps!

Sarah