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Static HTML or WordPress or Rails dilema - which one to use?

by salcar
7 replies
I recently bough a website that was built in the 90's with front page. All the pages have different themes, layouts, colors etc. However, the site is PR 5, 25K+ unique visitors per month and has been online for 16 years. The website has approximately 200 HTML pages of which 15 pages or so bring in 90% of the traffic.

I'm not a programer but I have some basic programming skills with HTML and with Rails. We are at a point that we want to make a small investment on the site so that we can start monetizing it.

The question is: should we keep it as static HTML or move it to Wordpress or to Rails on Ruby?:confused:

In the next 6 months we don't plan to add to much new content. We plan to mostly improve the current content and trying different strategies to make money out of it. In the future we do plan to add more content and potentially make it more interactive.

What should we do? Why?
#dilema #html #rails #static #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author CreateSoft
    I am a programmer and have built quite a few static HTMl sites and also dynamic web apps. I've considered moving to Ruby on Rails on occasion, but haven't yet, mostly due to time and learning curve.

    Then I discovered WordPress. I love it. It frees up my time and let's me do routine stuff easily. There are free and paid plugins if you need more than the engine offers, so it can cut down on how much time it takes to get things done.

    The best choice though is on what your purpose is. If you just want a few pages and there is very little going on with regards to dynamic functionality, then static pages work well.

    If your making a web app and want a fast, responsive, dynamic web site, then Ruby on Rails.

    If you want something easy to use and maintain and want to cut down on coding, then WordPress is a good choice. You can even extend WordPress by picking up some PHP to make it more dynamic if you can't find a theme or plugin that does what you want it to.
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  • Profile picture of the author oliviacis
    Originally Posted by salcar View Post

    I recently bough a website that was built in the 90's with front page. All the pages have different themes, layouts, colors etc. However, the site is PR 5, 25K+ unique visitors per month and has been online for 16 years. The website has approximately 200 HTML pages of which 15 pages or so bring in 90% of the traffic.

    I'm not a programer but I have some basic programming skills with HTML and with Rails. We are at a point that we want to make a small investment on the site so that we can start monetizing it.

    The question is: should we keep it as static HTML or move it to Wordpress or to Rails on Ruby?:confused:

    In the next 6 months we don't plan to add to much new content. We plan to mostly improve the current content and trying different strategies to make money out of it. In the future we do plan to add more content and potentially make it more interactive.

    What should we do? Why?
    If the site is going to grow and the content is updated fairly regularly, I think WP is the way to go. But as you said, you don't plan to add more content, I guess you should stick with HTML.
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    • Profile picture of the author freehugs
      Honestly, the 'right answer' depends on what level of interactivity you eventually want.

      You can paint yourself into a corner with WordPress if you need some really crazy requirements down the road...but if you're talking about a simple content management system with some interactive features like social sharing features / comments / even membership site...you should just stick with WordPress.

      The cool thing about Rails is that you could actually keep the EXACT old URL's (with the .html extension and everything) really easily with Rails routes, but you can always do that with .htaccess files on any apache server anyway.

      On the other hand...back in 2003 I managed a 1000+ page HTML site via dreamweaver and it actually was pretty darn easy to manage.... there should be nothing stopping you from testing the monitization in a little 'trial' way before you spend a large amount of time with it. Then you can worry about what platform to migrate to after you've ensured that you have a winner.
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      • Profile picture of the author salcar
        Originally Posted by CreateSoft View Post

        I am a programmer and have built quite a few static HTMl sites and also dynamic web apps. I've considered moving to Ruby on Rails on occasion, but haven't yet, mostly due to time and learning curve.

        Then I discovered WordPress. I love it. It frees up my time and let's me do routine stuff easily. There are free and paid plugins if you need more than the engine offers, so it can cut down on how much time it takes to get things done.

        The best choice though is on what your purpose is. If you just want a few pages and there is very little going on with regards to dynamic functionality, then static pages work well.

        If your making a web app and want a fast, responsive, dynamic web site, then Ruby on Rails.

        If you want something easy to use and maintain and want to cut down on coding, then WordPress is a good choice. You can even extend WordPress by picking up some PHP to make it more dynamic if you can't find a theme or plugin that does what you want it to.
        thank you very much for clearly outlining the pros and benefits of each platform! At this point in time we just want to clean up the site, make look professional and learn more about the visitors and what they want. So based on your feedback HTML might be want we need.

        Originally Posted by digitalquilluk View Post

        I would always go WordPress, I even use WordPress for single page sites/landing pages.

        Reason - It is simple and easy to maintain. Login -> Edit Page -> write/change content and you are away.

        In your situation the real question is how long will it take you to import the content into a new structure/platform what ever that will be. Is that longer than it will take you fiddling with the current structure to find and edit what you want.

        Matt
        I'm using wordpress for a couple of personal blogs and it is pretty easy to use and manage. The challenge is moving 200 HTML pages into it and making sure we don't mess up our SERP. Also, we are not clear how want to develop it further and as freehugs says we are afraid to be stuck into a corner in the future if we decide to go with WP.

        Originally Posted by oliviacis View Post

        If the site is going to grow and the content is updated fairly regularly, I think WP is the way to go. But as you said, you don't plan to add more content, I guess you should stick with HTML.
        thank you!

        Originally Posted by freehugs View Post

        Honestly, the 'right answer' depends on what level of interactivity you eventually want.

        You can paint yourself into a corner with WordPress if you need some really crazy requirements down the road...but if you're talking about a simple content management system with some interactive features like social sharing features / comments / even membership site...you should just stick with WordPress.

        The cool thing about Rails is that you could actually keep the EXACT old URL's (with the .html extension and everything) really easily with Rails routes, but you can always do that with .htaccess files on any apache server anyway.

        On the other hand...back in 2003 I managed a 1000+ page HTML site via dreamweaver and it actually was pretty darn easy to manage.... there should be nothing stopping you from testing the monitization in a little 'trial' way before you spend a large amount of time with it. Then you can worry about what platform to migrate to after you've ensured that you have a winner.
        Thank you for the feedback! I'm going to play with Refinery CMS on rail with a small pet project to see how easy/difficult it ease. I have not thought about using DreamWeaver to manage the site. I guess because I have never used the program but it might be worth trying it out so that we can keep the HTML site and as you said do some trials and errors before we move everything.
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  • Profile picture of the author ravijayagopal
    While the obvious answer is going to be "WordPress, of course!", there is also a "it depends" angle to it.

    If it's a very large site with tons of content, it would take you weeks or even a few months to transfer everything over to WordPress. So if you want to monetize your existing content without spending a whole lot of time on it, then you could use a membership plugin (like DAP) that also works with plain HTML sites.

    But if you decide to get your hands dirty and grind it out and move everything over to WordPress, a whole new world of opportunities open up. You have an incredible array of themes and plugins, for just about everything you can image. Functionality that would take you years to patch-through with PHP and HTML and JavaScript code, is available to you with just a few clicks.

    So for the long term, WP is the way to go. And forget Ruby. Just stick to PHP and WP - you'll have infinitely more options.

    - Ravi Jayagopal
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  • Profile picture of the author Yildiz
    If you want something very easy to use, efficient, less time consuming, and overall the one with the biggest community then go for WordPress. Even though I know how to code I prefer wordpress over the others for it's vast community.
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