londonwarrior

Which of these two is best if you are building a number of websites? Wordpress obviously has the upper hand if you go by the number of people using it, but is it really that good?

Wordpress is free, so that is a big plus for many people. It also comes with countless plugins that can do almost anything you want. There are lots of free themes, so again, a major plus point. This is all starting to sound too good to be true? But is it?

In my experience, and also that of other people I know, Wordpress can be great at times, but can also be very frustrating and overly complex. I have built websites with both sets of software and for a simple blog you can't beat Wordpress. But what I find is that many people try to build websites that aren't blogs and so I don't think they should be using Wordpress.

I switched to XSitePro over a year ago and am more than happy. Since the recent upgrade to version 2.5 I am even more impressed.

I recently set up a one-page website (more pages to be added daily) using XSitePro. From start to finish took me just a few minutes. It was just a matter of choosing a template from the 100s available, adding my content, adding facebook and twitter buttons, sitemap, etc. All done in minutes. Then just a click of a button to upload to my server.

I then tried building a similar site in Wordpress. It took me between 1-2 hours. The major problems I came across were the following...

1. Finding a theme that was suitable. Themes are scattered all over the place. If you want to change the theme later it means finding another, uploading to your server, etc. What a drag.
2. Finding the correct plugins. I knew some, but what if you are new to Wordpress? How do you know which plugins to get? And if you know roughly what you want, how do you choose between all the competing ones that seem to offer the same capabilities.
3. Adding Worpress to my server initially was pretty straightforward for me, but does require technical skills. My girlfriend had no idea how to add anything to her server when she first tried Wordpress. She insisted on using it because she heard it was easy. She has now built an XSitePro site and is really pleased about how easy it is to use.

Another major differenece is that XSitePro has support, so if you have any problems or something you don't understand there is a dedicated support team. So you aren't left on your own struggling to find answers, as is often the case with Wordpress.

There are also webinars available for XSitePro users and I have found these really useful.

My conclusion is that if you want a very simple blog, hosted by Wordpress, then Wordpress is great. But if you want to host your own website, aren't technically minded and want something very easy to use, yet very powerful, then XSitePro is the way to go.

This is obviously only my opinion. I'd be interested to hear from others who have tried both Wordpress and XSitePro.

JMichaelZ

XSP has come a long way from version 1. 2.51 is a pretty good deal. I have both and I have sites made with both. I tend to use WP more these days, I have a couple of premium themes that are very customizable and I like those.

But I still have a good spot in my heart for XSP.

londonwarrior

How much did the premium themes cost?

VictorV

Dreamweaver all the way

(unless it's a blog. Wordpress is king)

snginnovations

You can't beat the level of "adoption" of wordpress. There are so many plugins out there (even free ones) that makes it really unbeatable in my opinion.

Of course I'm a developer and I can code the junk out of it, so I'm a little biased. Still the CMS features make it easy for my clients to use.

NerdBoySEO

My two cents is:
If the site is for me and is say and adsense site, or a review site or even a authority site that doesn't require constant changing then it is Xsitepro all the way - it is fast, it is simple and I can tweak it how I want pretty easily. One thing that I do like about it is the sites load quicker than wordpress sites when they are only a couple of pages.

For clients I tend to go with Wordpress these days so they can do their own CMS stuff and aren't calling me to change a few words or one picture. One downside can be though thatthe constant wordpress updating can mean having to make sure plugins etc remain compatible and clients don't just click the 'update' button themselves and end up breaking things.

So I love them both

JohnCalvinII

It's all about using the right tool for the job.If all I need is a static website with a few pages, I'll use XSitePro. The recent upgrade has made it even a better tool. Otherwise I'll go with WordPress.

I find the secret to using WordPress is not to get overly excited about plugins. The more you use, the more updating you have to do. While that may not matter if you just have one or two blogs but once you have more than a few, it becomes a real pain to go through and update the plugins every time there's a change. Especially if they are set and forget sites.

JDiNozzo

I totally agree, since I first got XSitePro, I haven't stopped enjoying it! This great website design software really helped me out when I started doing online marketing, and it continues to benefit me even today, thanks to its SEO ready functionality.

The new features in version 2.5 have been a great addition, like social media plugins (Facebook, Twitter). Overall it hasn't let me down and its speed and ease of use has always been helpful.

londonwarrior

I'm glad someone else agrees. This is exactly what I thought. I could have built about 5 websites in all the time it has taken me to mess around with my girlfriend's WP site. And it's still not how she wants it. XSitePro is so quick and easy. Are you following the user webinars? There's another tonight. Or this morning if you're in USA.

christopher jon

But could you build your girlfriends site, like she wants it, with xsitepro?

Chris Kent

I still use XSite Pro v.1. Maybe some day I will upgrade but I don't see the need to right now.

Static sites can't get mysql injection hacked like other scripted sites.

londonwarrior

yes, definitely, but it's a bit late now. She is going to build all her future sites in XSitePro, but teh Wordpress on has too many links back to strange page names, so best to leave it where it is and just change to a simpler theme.

londonwarrior

Do you know that it is free to upgrade? There are tons of new features on the latest version.

Chris Kent

It's not free to upgrade last time I checked. I would have had to pay. Which sucks.

londonwarrior

I just upgraded mine, but I was on V2 to begin with, so maybe you can't from V1. What happens if you click the 'Check for Updates' button on the Help menu?

clickbump

I have lots of customers who were XSitePro users prior to purchasing my WordPress based software.

I think you make a good point about the fact that cobbling together a workable solution by cherry picking themes and plugins can be a very frustrating experience. As your own experience shows. And I'm not saying that XSP is bad or that WordPress is better. The "best" choice is highly dependent on the individual choosing the solution...

However, there are "Solutions Driven" packages built around WordPress that are available and have been created with a "Begin with the End in Mind" philosophy to make WordPress an extremely compelling option for monetized site publishing - and I've got a pretty long list of testimonials to account for that fact.

So my advice is to search for a solution, that has quality support and has been built to do exactly what you are wanting to do, monetize traffic, not write code.

Anyone wanting to see some actual feedback from actual people, many of them Warrior's, who are happily using WordPress to monetize traffic, can check out my testimonials page. I'm sure there are just as many or more testimonials in support of XSP from XSP users as well, but I'm presenting the WP side of the discussion so that's where I am.

kerron.a

This is a great discussion. I'm curious though, for users of both XSP and Wordpress, have you any difficulty in ranking in the SERPs using static sites built by XSP?

I know everyone says wordpress is the best platform to go with if you want to rank high in the search engines especially in Google.

londonwarrior

I haven't found any difference at all for ranking with Wordpress and XSitePro. I have got to No. 1 with both. Links are the biggest factor in how well you rank and also on page SEO. Wordpress and XSitePro are both great at on page SEO.

londonwarrior

I've heard of clickbump and heard people say good things about it. But that quote from Mark shows how misguided some people are. I don't know if he actually thinks this but seems to suggest that someone got to number 1 just because they were using WP. That's a load of nonsense. Google doesn't give WP preferential treatment. I have many XSitePro website at No 1 with WP sites below me.

They both have good on page SEO, so that helps with the ranking, but there are far to many myths around, such as Google loves Wordpress. That is complete tosh.

But I suppose it seems to be coming down to what suits the individual. If people are happy with WP, that's great. It just doesn't work for me.

Danny Turner

OK I have become a wordpress devotee
If I was not using that
I would use
KompoZer - Easy web authoring
or
WYSIWYG Web Builder

as to SEO - as stated - it's what you do with it that counts!
wordpress does provide a structure that SE's understand
and tools to easily to do the things required

tedflg

I just loaded Wordpress onto my first site and although it seems pretty simple, my first intent was to produce content not necessarily in blog format. In the future I'd like to produce some "squeeze pages" too so I'm considering XSITEPRO. I don't have any content I'm concerned with losing and I'd be interested in learning how difficult it would be to switch off WP to XSITEPRO. Any input would be helpful.

RoyChan

Xsitepro is very easy to use. In fact, one of the tweak you could use is to build a blog on a xsitepro so that you can have the benefits of both systems, which I used to do - a cool trick that you may take advantages of blog and xsp

Sometimes, I don't like wordpress for the inflexibility of creating a standalone sales page, but in the other times, wordpress has viral plugins that you just can't do with xsp.

Different tools for different purpose I guess.

RoyChan

Telflg: You may download some squeeze theme/ sales page theme, so that it stops being a blog. There is plenty of free template out there you may download so that you may save a buck or two on squeeze pages.

unlimitedmarketing

I think WP is the best So easy to customize, add plug-ins, automate, etc. I am currently working on transferring all my HTML sites to WP sites.

JDiNozzo

Yes I watched most of the webinars, they were just great, especially the features webinars from this week, which were brilliant refresher courses. Would like to see them again, apparantly we'll be able to access the recordings soon.

Global365

I think the mistake a lot of people make with WP is they bounce around from theme to theme and each theme has its learning curve which makes it difficult to master any single version.

If you find one truly versatile theme and focus on that you can make any style of website you want from landing pages, to blogs, to video capture pages all from a single WP theme, after you truly get the hang of editing that single theme..

Barry

Hortensia

XSitePro all the way..

-Webpages load quicker
-Less vulnerable to hackers
-No updates all the time
-Easier to backup and change ip and host in a few minutes
-Possible to build the site completely offline
-Fewer clicks to do stuff. Wordpress is a lot of navigating here, there and everywhere
-Cheaper as well. Wordpress is free, but themes and some plugins are not
-In the same time that you can build one wp site you can build numorous sites with xsp

I am curious to hear from Clickbump which specials plugins he uses to finetune wp in a way that gives wp the edge over xsp.

Cheers,
JanPaul

londonwarrior

My experience is the same, which is why I just can't understand why so many people recommend WP. Prehaps they've never tried XSP and think WP is as good as it gets.

londonwarrior

I think you'd just need to cut and paste the content from WP to XSP. IT's pretty straightforward. If there's something more specific you need to know, just ask.

Hortensia

I think it's just about business.

The iphone is not a very special phone, but making apps can be lucrative. Therefore many people write great reviews about the iphone, to sell their own apps.

You see the same with wordpress. Everybody is pitching their own plugin that's doing something very special that no other plugin can do, as a moneymaker in particular ;-)

It's also nice to push complicated software, so that you can sell 'solutions'. It's even happening in this thread.

Since people can't make money offering solutions for XSitePro, because there are no problems to solve, they remain vague about XSitePro, suggesting that you still better can go for wp, of course without coming up with any straightforward reasons why.

ngywng

Barry, I agree with you. We need to focus on theme and master it.
Currently, I use Xsitepro, Wordpress , Blogger. My experience told me that wordpress is good for SEO.

londonwarrior

I'd never thought of that, but I think you're right. Get people to use a duff product and then sell them endless solutions to fix all the problems they have. And most people have fallen for it.

Hortensia

All in all I prefer XSitePro...what I still forgot to mention earlier on:

-Speed of implementation, being online before anybody else in case of a trend
-If you have many sites to manage, maintaining them all can be hard and time consuming with wordpress.

clickbump

Hi JanPaul, I think you've hit on the one of the secrets that's not so much a secret. I don't use plugins at all. At least not ones that affect the public side of the site and put a drag on every page load.

My "edge" comes from my theme and the way I've coded it. If one of your competitors were running my theme and you happened to click on the "view source", you would not be able to tell the difference from a static site (except that I'd bet you a diet coke that mine is cleaner :-)

I'm the first to admit, since I see it every day when I'm troubleshooting support, that far too many WordPress sites get larded up with Plugins. I don't see this as much on sites that were built with my theme onboard from day one. But on sites where the owner added my system after using another WordPress theme, I've seen as many as 40 plugins on a single site!

I call it "plugin-itus" and Its the closest thing to a virtual addiction I've seen. It usually starts with one, (actually "All in One" but that's a different story) and then from there they add another, then another and before you know it, there's 20 plugins active on the site and the owner has forgotten about half of them. But they are there all the time, taking up precious CPU cycles on each and every page load.

And then the problem starts to present at the worst possible time, when the site starts to get some meaningful traffic, and the weight of the bloat starts to manifest a noticeable drag on the site.

Rant over, now to answer your question... :-)

The way I achieve static site speeds with a dynamic page generation engine is that I build my sites as if they ARE static. If you look at the view source on one of my sites, you can see this pretty clearly. My theme has a complete separation of style and structure.

I'm not doing anything groundbreaking or novel in that regard. After all, its basic "Web Standards" design best practices to use structurally semantic xhtml and clean, well-formed css in linked, cache-friendly stylesheets. However, only a fraction of all WordPress themes are coded to fully leverage this technique.

The second thing is that over the years, I've learned a trick or two about how to get more out of 50 lines of css than some themes take 1000 to do. It sounds like I'm bragging but I think its probably more reflective of just how little attention many theme designers have paid to efficient css design techniques.

An example of this is my remix of Inove, a very popular theme made even more so by the fact that it was George Brown's top recommendation for Google Sniper sites. If you look at the original, there's more than 1700 lines of css there. I did it in 50 lines.

That's just one example. But I think its indicative of what we are missing in this argument of XSP vs WP. Clean coding beats Sh@t coding regardless of platform. I bet you that I could find a fair number of bloated and slow XSP static sites if I wanted to. Its the way the site is coded that's ultimately responsible for the speed.

My background is in static sites. Specifically building static sites with Web Standards best practices using xhtml and css and so before WordPress, I hand-coded every page of my site. Ironically, I still-hand code my templates and css.

The difference in then and now is that now I have an incredibly robust platform to manage site structure and navigation and customer feedback and post/page comments and rss and social media integration and on and on...All the things that can really be a hassle to maintain, if you are trying to do it all yourself (like in the old days of truly static sites, anyone remember GoLive Studio?)

I think that in a broad context, XSP is essentially doing the same thing WP is doing, except offline. For example, with the right tools, you can host WordPress locally (offline) and you could even make it spit out static pages that you'd upload to the server just like XSP. Then if you had a change or drop a menu from the nav, you'd just make that change in WordPress and rebuild the site on export. Since WP can be hosted locally offline (I build and test all of my new templates on a localhost copy of WordPress), this is a feasible possibility if anyone wanted to try it.

Anyway, I'm not saying one is necessarily hands-down better than the other. Its horses for courses.

But for me, once I discovered WP, I sought to take everything I'd learned about static pages and build a theme for that platform where you couldn't tell the difference between it and a static site. I'm happy with the fact that CE4 represents that pretty faithfully and if you visit one of my customer's sites and right click to view source, you'll see what I mean.

Hortensia

Thanks for your explanation. I understand what you say. Although I can't know how clean your code is, I am happy to hear that you're not using all these plug ins. Also testing sites locally sounds good.

Like you say: it's horses for courses.

But above all I believe in simplicity, so that we have more time to do marketing and not get sidetracked by stuff that does not really matter all that much.

In that respect I share londonwarrior's surprise. Especially since the latest updates.

I still think when managing a ton of sites in particular, xsp is hard to beat.

In the end it's mostly a personal choice of course. How comfortable you feel...

Cheers,
JanPaul

Bruce NewMedia

I must be odd, but I find WP too restrictive when it comes to design. Whereas Xsite Pro gives the kind of flexibility that I like. ...and I'll admit, I hate all the updates etc that you should really do with WP.
Xsite Pro has been improved 'loads' since the original version, btw.
_____
Bruce

RoyChan

Good thinking there... I've never heard of this. However, there is one thing about Wordpress that XSP can't do, is that, you can do posts/pages with mobile devices (i.e. Iphone) with Wordpress Apps which is free. XSP does not have that function (yet

dcushion

There are many good thoughts here. I am glad to hear so many people support XSitePro with very good reasons.

I use both Wordpress and XSP and like both. What with all the recent support for WP and the development of many great themes, WP seems to have jumped to the forefront.

I have even converted some static sites to WP.

But... the only sites of mine that have been hacked have been WP sites. And it is frustrating and time-consuming to bring them back.

So, I am now more carefully deciding on which platform to use for new sites... and not just jumping in with all WP sites.

I have several premium themes and it is very tempting to just create sites with WP.

But, thanks to the many useful comments in this thread, I realize that others have had the same concerns/issues that I have had.

This is a great forum for keeping up with issues like this.

Thanks for all the great comments.

JKing

A good friend of mine ask me if I would convert some of his XSitePro templates to WordPress for him.

I used Turbo Flex Pro Theme Master to do three entire blog themes in just under 2 hours.

Check them out!

Registry Repair Software Reviews Template

Workout Guide Reviews Template

Guitar Course Reviews Template

Just thought I would share since this tread is about both XSitePro and WordPress.

Theme Master is turning into an AWESOME tool. Glad I created it.

John King

kerron.a

I have been following this thread with some interest and despite being mostly a wordpress user myself... I still view XsitePro as a valuable tool in being able to publish website quickly for testing purposes etc. I still have to exploit the full power of the XsitePro software as it seems capable of delivering more than just a basic html website.

I do have a question though for more experiences users of both platforms. I have an idea for a review style website I would like to develop.

In a nutshell the site would be based on user reviews and ratings for restaurants, bars and various services in my country. I would like to set it up in a way that it is also mobile friendly where visitors can instantly upload their comments and ratings (sort of facebook like) directly from their mobile phones in real time to the site.

I know there will be stuff like getting the correct review scripts and other stuff to get the functionality I desire, but i was wondering if it would be possible on a wordpress platform or is it better to build a static website using XsitePro?

Thanks for any advice offered.

JKing

There are literally thousands of plugins for WordPress that include everything you mentioned. So I would personally go with WordPress for your project.

Just my 2 cents.

John

MoneyMonkey

I would use WordPress because there are more plugins and more themes. It's just more compatible for me. I've never used XSITEPRO, is it any good?

RoyChan

It's good for what it does best - doing sites offline.

Hortensia

Many of the themes and plugins for wp that we can use, also make the sites we create (a) more vulnerable to hackers and (b) a lot slower when navigating pages.

Kevin McNally

Just depends what you are comfortable with but I would vote for XSite Pro and you could even run a blog on the site if you want to mix it up.

For anyone starting out in IM I always tell them to buy Xsite Pro if they are not sure about building a blog as XSP support and tutorials are excellent ( I know WP are too ).

XSite Pro staill has a lot of features that I haven't even used and ANYONE can use it to build a website.

kjhosein

I think @meridianseo summed it up quite nicely. All depends on requirements, type of site, not to mention your budget for the software (WP is free, XSP is not).

Droopy Dawg

Here here...

All of my content management sites are built using Wordpress... I can usually find a theme to fit my needs whether its a free one online... a premium that I must pay for, or an Artisteer creation that I must do myself.

All other site projects (HTML, ColdFusion, etc...) are done using Dreamweaver.

I need to check out XSP because I honestly have NO IDEA about it. I have used Dreamweaver since the late '90s (version 3), and I have not needed to look at any other program.

DeShon

ebrg

Which is the more robust and secure platform?

I have mainly used Wordpress, and there seems to be continual compatibility issues between WP upgades and plugins and themes. Occassionally a plugin has to be deactivated until WP or the plugin is updated.

On the security side, there is the potential of vulnerability due to heavy use of third party plugins and themes, and due to delayed update of wordpress software for the reasons mentioned above.

JMSD

My first site was built with XSitePro V1 and went to #1 for several keywords (26m competing pages) on Google within hours - admittedly, it was (still is) a site with over 50 pages of good content but even minisite I've set up for sales or a one page site for optins have gone to page one or at worst page 2 of google within days, if not hours. That's simply down to:

good keyword research which is essential AND XSitePro's inbuilt SEO page Analysis which prompts you to put your keywords where they matter.

I only use Wordpress sites if a particular software for automating functions (Mage, EasyMemberPro) are based on WP platform. For all other sites, I use XSitePro V2.0

It's easy-to-use, one or two click functions make it super-quick, the templates are numerous but you can customize them by using Photoshop Elements and/or XHeader for creating your own (I, personally, get my graphics outsourced because I prefer to use my time more productively)

You can drip-feed content to your site, have your site appear on mobile apps, insert video, audio with a click or two, autoresponder and payment processor applications are all within the editor. You name it, it does it.

Recently, I tried to create another Mage site with WP but what a hassle, configuring the theme, the plugins, the widgets, etc, etc. It would be fine if once you'd done all that it was good to go and remain so but every blessed time (every so many months), that there is a new update for a plugin, theme or WordPress, itself, you have to update to the new ones, also, otherwise you leave your site exposed to all sorts of risks, assuming it continues to function, okay after the update.

Give me XSitePro, everytime. Once it's done, it's done. Any changes you make are dependent on your choice, it's not a necessity.

Before V2, you had to add content, yourself. Now, you can upload your content and schedule the drip-feed feature so, in my book, it's as good, if not better than WP, even for blogs. I haven't explored the comments or ratings functions but I believe it has those functions, too.

Another thing I love about XSitePro is that you can send you wishlist of "wouldn't it be great of XSP could do this that and the other" and hey, presto, it's included in the next upgrade! So if comments are not a feature (as in WP), I have no doubt that it will be in the next upgrade.

James

clickbump

In terms of "robustness", I'd have to say WP is the hands down winner. It rivals iPhone/iPad in the number of add on tools (plugins, themes, widgets, etc) that are available for it.

In terms of "security", its virtually impossible to say. A hacker can compromise any system.
Surely this is true. However, WordPress, with the right theme, is an extremely capable platform for web publishing a standards-friendly, highly-optimized website without any plugins at all.