Whilst I agree that wordpress is a fantastic piece of software I think it’s important to realise that it has it’s place and that place is not everywhere.
I used to think that I’d probably end up using wordpress for every site ever unless there was a really obvious reason not to use it. I’ve now realised that kind of philosophy is wrong.
Think, for example, about a mini niche site – I’m talking < 10 pages kind of site – would you really want to use wordpress for this? Sure there are benefits, like being able to create content really easily with the editor but I think for a mini site the cons outweigh the pros.
For wordpress to be really good you have to download, unzip, upload, and activate at least a few plugins. That’s not the end of the world I know but couple that with creating databases, modifying name servers and you begin to realise that wordpress isn’t quite as simple as you initially thought.
And then the major drawback security risks. Wordpress itself is not an inherently insecure piece of software. However, not keeping up to date with the updates and patches is very risky business. From experience it’s enough effort keeping one or two blogs up to date. Imagine trying to keep 100 wordpress sites up to date?
Right now I’m in the process of creating, well, as many mini niche sites as I can, and I am not using wordpress. One day I’d love to create myself a centralised dashboard for upgrading and managing all my wordpress installs but at the moment that is not an option.
Fortunately with the tiniest bit of PHP knowledge you can still have some relatively easy to create websites. Head on over to the OSWD and find a template you like. Then simply split it up into header / footer etc and with a simple <?php include('header.php') ?> you have a nice easy to use template and don’t have to worry about security (so much).
I might release the template I’ve been using at some point when I’m done making my sites but it’s not difficult, anyone can do it really.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with your point about the security dangers. Wordpress probably funds 90% of the Russian economy thanks to that.
But when it comes to small niche sites, quite frankly yeah, I want to use wordpress. Trackbacks and the like are useful, but beyond that, each tag/category creates a new page for Google to crawl over. Google seems to HATE single page sites. Not sure why. MSN devoured my last one whole(ranking it at #4), but Google? Never broke top 600. For right now, I’m chocking that up to the single page problem.
+1 Point for the OSWD link btw, a good friend of mine used to be in frequent contact with the owner, and the whole site is run awesome.
Interesting point. Do you not think you’ll get tripped for duplicate content issues if your posts are in multiple tags/categories?
Oh I’ll get tripped; I’m not saying your whole post is wrong. But some niches are so effin easy to rank for that it’s possible to rank up even w/ dupe content. Also, there’s a few ways to modify the content so you don’t get nailed
Drop me an e-mail and we’ll chat if you’d like.
*an e-mail with instant messenger info. I don’t do the whole e-mail thing too much. heh.
Very interesting info! I appreciate all the input from everyone
I am starting a forum and a blog and need to make sure I pick the best one. I plan to have a file on my server to keep the search robots off of it though. I appreciate the info!
Thanks,
I wouldn’t block the googlebots you’ll just be turning down free traffic!