Who Wins ? Wordpress or HTML & CSS ?

CMS pages are html, and you can control the css playing with the template/s...

sorry hun... not sure where you are really going...

Laura

Hey Joe , any cool examples of sites that only use HTML / CSS ?

Thanks

Comparing PHP to HTML with CSS is like comparing apples and oranges, PHP is a server side scripting language that allows a programmer to write custom functionality that runs on the server.

HTML and CSS is used by just about every web based application to present data to the user, HTML is a "markup language" used to describe the elements that a web page will contain and the web browser reads the HTML and presents to the user a hopefully nice looking web page.

If a web site only uses HTML and CSS, the website is considered static because there is no programming logic there to change the information based on any parameters, e.g a user cannot be logged in on a website like this because the server and client(web browser) does not communicate with parameters like username/password that is needed for a system that can handle users of the system.

In this case the server just spits out a preformatted HTML page containing some text and images usually(made by by you) based on a URL entered in the browser.

PHP on the other hand
To give you a very common example of what you can do with a server side script written in PHP or any other server side scripting technology, is to take(receive) an email address and a name when a user fills in a form for a newsletter subscription and do what you want with it.


When the user enters the information in the form and pushes the submit button, the information is sent to the server and handled by a server side script, PHP in this case, PHP can then store the information in a database or some storage of choice to use the information when sending out newsletters or something else. Most probably it will send back a web page where it confirms your subscription of the newsletter and shows your email and name in the page.

If you are going to build a website today, you will almost certainly at some point want to have functionality that is beyond the capabilities of just HTML and CSS. If you are a non technical person I would suggest going with some widely used CMS like wordpress, where you can install plugins very easily for just about anything you can think of.

If you are a "non techie" person, building your own website can be quite challenging if you want custom functionality. Then you will have to hire someone to write the code or learn to do it yourself.

I have been developing applications for 12 years and I have my custom systems that I use, it is sure a huge advantage to be able to write custom software specifically made for my needs.

I hope that this helps you a little bit on the road :-)

/Daniel

Google 'SQL Injection'. The problem is that many CMS applications take input from users and don't scrub it properly, and then execute SQL code with that input embedded. So then the SQL code does something totally different from what the programmer intended, usually something nefarious.

The issue is not so much with PHP as it is with SQL (not MySQL in particular, I just mentioned that because MySQL seems to be the most common DB used by CMS programs).

Add to that unintended (or intended!) security holes introduced via plugins and themes for Wordpress, and you've got a real hornet's nest on your hands. There's currently a nasty attack making the rounds where someone injects HTML and Javascript code into the Wordpress output. That code then gets executed on the visitor's machine, which causes all kinds of other exploits to become possible. The relevant thread is here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...take-care.html

I think I saw somewhere where someone modified Wordpress to use flat files instead of a MySQL database. The result is probably orders of magnitude safer.

This is probably more info than you asked for

So I'll stop now.

You're looking at different tools to do the same job.

With just a little bit of knowledge and/or a good tool like XSitePro, you can make html/css pages that do very well.

Setting up the whole WordPress system to put up a one page site, like a squeeze page or review page seems like overkill.

On the other hand, trying to build a complex inter-linked site without a CMS seems like insanity now.

If you're familiar with woodworking, you might be familiar with dovetail joints. You can make dovetails with a pocket knife, a hand saw & chisel, or a power router with a specialized bit and jig attached. High quality joints are possible with each tool. But if I was making cabinets for a living, I'd want the router/bit/jig setup so I could do hundreds of joints per day rather than whittling each dovetail one at a time.

Carving the joints with a pocket knife is like hand-coding html/css using something like Notepad.

Using a saw/chisel with a template is like using a good page editor like XSP.

Using the specialized, high volume tool is like using a CMS like WP.

If you only need one joint, and you know how to carve one, it's often quicker to simply carve it than to set up the machine...

John,

You are quite right.

santoshr25 doesn't know what he or she is talking about. Complete nonesense.

Sam

In playing with different themes, the problems usually crop up with older (usually free) themes that were released and never maintained. Correct me if I misremember, but didn't WP change the way a bunch of the hooks worked with themes? Somewhere around the introduction of the 2.x transition?

A lot of those themes can cause problems, similar to incompatible plugins.

I do have to agree that up-to-date themes rarely cause problems.

I understand what you are saying John, and yes, you are right, a simple squeeze page is so simple to create with a html editor. But this is how I look at it: I am a big fan of Wordpress because once it is set up, it is so easy to make the content changes (text and images) without having to log in you hosting account, re-upload a page, etc, and for most non tech people, this kind of stuff just stop them from taking action.

That's my opinion. I am a fan, not a fanatic of Wordpress

There's a lot of misconception about wordpress, blogs and static pages. No CMS or static page makes any difference to what google interprets. Google doesn't love blogs, it loves regularly updated content and well formatted pages with the tags in the right places etc. Wordpress is just another method of delivering content. Anything that's coded well will be better whether it's a static page or delivered by php. A blog is just a term used to describe a web journal, to google it's all just web pages. "Blog" is just a term, it's not a particular kind of website that's formatted any differently.

The reason people think it's great for SEO is because it usually gets better serp results than the average static site. I've tested static html pages against wordpress and wordpress wins hands down for serps (not seo necessarilly) and the reason is as far as I can tell because of the fact it creates more internal linking due to the fact it creates a lot of duplicate content. When you create the same amount of internal linking and extra pages with the html static site, it shoots up in the serps and catches up with the wordpress site.

Just my two sheckles!