Newbie Question. Is WordPress the right solution?

Well, wordpress, and other blogs, use php not html.

If you want just static pages, then a blog isn’t for you.

But frankly, I have a domain and several sub-domains of wide interests.

As an example: I found my dice collection site much easier to update with it being a blog than with static html pages. My other 2 sites mention in various places here are, again, much easier to update in ablog than by static pages.

Blogs let you link things together by category or tags.

Static html you have to keep editing the menus you setup to be used for site nav.

Which is why I found blogs much easier to update.

Your milage, or kilometers, may vary.

Hey Samgreen,

Thanks for the feedback. Can you send me the links to your sites so I can get a better idea of what WordPress can do? I’m really technology agnostic, so using PHP vs. HTML isn’t a big deal.

– Fibnok

The only one at wp 2.3 is in my profile.

Under ‘your wordpress strut your stuff’ you will see one for ‘AD&D first edition rpg site, maps, detail’

My dice one is at: https://dice.drivein-jim.net/

I have others but my other sub-domains vary in how long I keep them up.

edit: by that I mean, I put up a sub-domain, keep it going for a few months, then decide I am not interested in that subject any more and delete it.

another thing you might want to look into is Joomla… Ive built a few sites with it, and its pretty easy to learn, and build nice looking websites with… https://joomla.org

Not sure why we’re steering the OP away from WordPress though.

WordPress easily handles static Pages — and adding and maintaining them can be a breeze.

In other words, WP can be used for more than “just” blogs.

WordPress can handle most static looking sites easily.

Take a look at my own sites at The os42 Collective as an example and the new Ubiquitous theme too, which is moving away from the coventional blog look and structure.

shadow has given a fabulous example of how WP can be used. He might be too modest to mention that there is a lot of hackery going on:) If the OP is not planning on blogging then why use WP? Textpattern might be a better choice.

In the blog arena for newbies, WordPress probably provides the best support resources. The big decision is whether you want a static html site – something like reading a brochure on the web. or one that is dynamic which WordPress provides – owner and visitors can easily add content.

A big advantage with blogs too is RSS – interested readers are easily notified of the content changes that are made on your site.

When I decided to blog my crestar site, over 2,000 html pages I wanted to convert to a blog or cms, I looked at all of the cms and blogs available via cpanel at my web host.

Many of them, not WP, had the lousiest documentation I’ve ever read. And I’m acomputer tech for the past 20 years, albeit with no php experience.

Some of them I looked at, not WP, had the exact add-ons, etc. I felt I needed. Then I saw they wanted 50 dollars or more for those add-ons. Or the add-ons, not for WP, didn’t work with any version available.

So I went with WordPress.

A decision made easy by the other blogs and cms out there.

edit: well, I don’t think all of those static pages on my site will fit into the blog format.

But that still leaves, as I find time to work on it, adding around 500 pages to be done.

It would be great if wp-dtree categories listing worked with wp2.3. That would certainly help me with certain headaches.

As a music writer, I started out in the good old days of rock magazines with three-month lead times. When the Internet came along, it was the end of an era for most of my colleagues, but I went about learning how to publish online and began a static page website that I updated weekly. When it became clear that blogging was here to stay, it became equally clear that updating my site even four times a week wasn’t good enough anymore.

But I had no intention of turning my web site into a “blog!” Sure, being able to publish music news the second it broke, archive my stories instantly and include audio and video certainly wouldn’t be BAD for business. But I was a webmaster, darn it–blogging was something that, well, ANYBODY could do!

Fortunately, I saw through my inherent snobbery and began researching how to “bloggify” my site. I wasn’t interested in something like WordPress.com because I already owned a web server and wanted to maintain creative control. But www.ads-software.com–well! Since I knew just enough HTML, javascript and CSS to be dangerous, I took a crack at turning my home page into a theme, and the rest is history!

Choose a WordPress theme, and it does the coding for you. You can instruct it NOT to take online comments if you don’t want to. You say you’ll be adding content “over time.” But once you’re set up, I think you’ll enjoy being able to update at any time easily–especially if it would give you a competitive edge.