Comments on: Are Theme-Based Content Websites Better Than Blogs?

By: Bret

Bret — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:45:11 +0000

Great post and some excellent food for thought. I’ve been blogging for over a year and still struggle, to a certain extent, with my niche and overall blog format. This post gave me some more things to consider as I continue to ponder what makes sense for my blog.

By: Ken Evoy\'s SBI (Site Build It) versus Wordpress and other weblogs/blogging software: How to Structure a Website Right

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:47:40 +0000

[...] Are theme based site better than blogs? [...]

By: Eren

Eren — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:47:47 +0000

Hi Monika:-)
I know that joomla might be considered better but there are a few thing to consider:
Joomla doesn’t have the support and amount of plugins and free themes to choose from and massive amounts of users that wordpress does though.
So if I have questions with wordpress or if I want to add a functionality to it - someone out there will have a solution for me.
The reason for my thorough explanation is because this other post of wordpress versus SBI there was choice to be made of whether staic or blog. I can do both static and blog for the maximium amount of benefits that both can give me.
I was trying to show that you can choose to have a static site as your main and to put a wordprress blog up in a folder.
This wordpress blog is very powerful for helping your static pages be found by the spiders and by other people.
Since you can blog aroud the topic of your static page and anchor text link to it bringing in the spiders almost right away. All you neeed to to is put the ping list in a certain folder in wordpress and boom -it will automatically ping.
Now let’s say I’m a small buinses owner. And I want to get more directed traffic to my static site- if I can add wordpress to the folder- use the tagging and pinging system and then even do trackbacks to other popular and relevent blogs- why wouldn’t I do this?
Wordpress will bring in the spiders to get that page indexed faster plus it will bring in the traffic.
If I took the extra time to figure out what my keyword phrases are then it will even bring in search engine traffic and from blog search engines too.:-)
I am going to build an authority site and have been researching the best way to do so.
After lots of research i believe that using xsite pro and wordpress will be the best seo and traffic benefits for me (other than freedom to do what I want.)
Of course you can use this technique with Dreamweaver + Wordpress but I prefer Xsite pro for seo puposes and the ease of use and ease of learning.
I hope other people that read this also make the best decision for their business.
This to me is a very important decision since I will be spending massive amounts of time and energy on my site- I want it to have the flexibility and the best technology possible.
all the best,
Eren

By: Monika Mundell

Monika Mundell — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:19:16 +0000

@ Eren: My apologies. It took a while longer as I took two necessary days off.
I gather that you are a huge WordPress fan. While I agree with most of what you are saying, I don’t think that you can say WordPress is becoming a necessity in today’s Internet world.

There are other content management systems of which some actually say they are better than WordPress (like Joomla for example). In the end, I think this all comes down to personal preference, like a meal at a particular restaurant.

We will never agree on either, which is great since it gives us food for thought and helps us to look for ways to better whatever system we use.

By: Eren

Eren — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:20:05 +0000

hey Monika,
I posted a rather long comment and it hasn’t appeared- did you receive it- or was there a technical problem?
all the best,
Eren

By: Eren

Eren — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:56:36 +0000

You can have a site in the main url of the domain and a wordpress blog in a subfolder.
Incorporate the best of both worlds- it’s not an either or- it’s : do the best of the two.
Also wordpress blogs ping to various places on the web automatically when you publish (not able to do with exclusively static sites).
You can use the tagging,trackbacks and all kinds of web 2.0 properties.
You can even do utility posts which don’t take up time at all.
Just watch this video about utility posts that Jack Humphrey made today:
utility posts
Google looves fresh content too.
The best revamped content managemnt system for your authority site?
Xsitepro + wordpress and you can even add a forum too if you really want to go web 2.0.
Really depends on your particular needs. The fact remains that wordpress is becoming a total necessity in the online world.
If you don’t want to buy anything then also make wordpress a static site through static blogging and then just use it as a regular blog in a folder.
Wordpress has awesome seo plugins you can add and thousands of plugins that help you do whatever you want with it basically.
Wordpress rocks and it’s here to stay.
Any business can profit from wordpress.
If you have the best of both world you can ark high in regular serps for static and rank high in blog search engines for blog- and sometimes rank high in regular serps as your blog. In any case a blog will help bring more traffic in various ways so it can only add to your business not detract from it.
You just have to use the right marketing strategies. But that is true with any content management system. You have to think- how will this help my ebiz? How ill this be relevant to what I am trying to achieve?
all the best:-)
Eren

By: Monika Mundell

Monika Mundell — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:50:54 +0000

@ Stephen: you touched on a very important point here and that is the date issue.

I do a lot of online research while writing for my clients and one of my pet peeves is the fact that many static websites don’t offer a clue on how old the information actually is. This is rather annoying and could potentially be very misleading to those who look for updated info.

At least with blogs we normally have the dates put into place (unless of course the code has been removed by the owner).

By: Monika Mundell

Monika Mundell — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:47:35 +0000

@ Walt: I actually made the same experience. A post I wrote in September last year has ranked in the first 5 positions ever since and I never updated the post.

While I see that SiteBuildIt might be a great tool, I never used them but admit that I feel tempted to try and do a comparison just to see whether the talk actually walks too.

I’m a WordPress girl and still love it, always have but having said that, I’m also not against trying other things along the way.

By: OnLine Marketing Fundamentals

OnLine Marketing Fundamentals — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:43:07 +0000

Ken Evoy has to address this issue if his product is to survive in the battle against free Content Management Systems. And naturally… he has come up with a great case why his “system” is “better”.

And while the tools now used will help you get picked up by search engines faster than in the good ole days, and make life easier to manage your content…

In the end, the success of any site depends on so many things OTHER THAN the method/tools used to build it, but mainly the VALUE of the content published on the site - static or otherwise - and the expertise and persistence of the publisher to present that content in the best possible light (i.e. site structure, navigation, graphics etc).

Whether you use static or dynamic methods to do it is basically irrelevant in the final wash-up!

I’m 100% positive there have been plenty of failed sites using the SBI system too… or WordPress… or plain old HTML!

On another note - I LOVE the idea of having a date of publication on each page (but not necessarily in the URL). Just like a good book or newspaper in the offline world, the date of publication helps me determine how “useful” the information might be.

And in the online world with so many failed “ghost” sites still visible, a publication date also demonstrates the site owner is still very “active” in that niche.

Stephen Spry

By: Debbi Bressler

Debbi Bressler — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:12:45 +0000

Had a discussion about this with some friends of mine with PR 6 & 7 blogs, with a huge subscriber base.

They’d all gotten Ken’s letter and said they were not going to mention it at all. The email was meant to incite and create a LOT of buzz about SBI vs. Wordpress, bringing tons of traffic (and new eyeballs) to Ken.

Smart marketing. And you can bet that Gobala included his affiliate links relative to the SBI part of his discussion. I’d just bet he’s no dummy either!
Debbi Bressler