WordPress vs static HTML ?
This is one of the most asked questions from the niche marketers. I’m going to share my thoughts on this ongoing question as best as I can. I’m not a tech person, so if you can add to my theory, please do so.
I believe the question is invalid.
WordPress IS static: Not in the sense of how it works dynamically with MySQL, but how it produces the end result. If you know a little bit about PHP programming language, you should know that all of the PHP scripts are executed BEFORE it is delivered to your browser. So what you will see on your browser is plain HTML code, just like other hand coded HTML. If you can’t believe me, take a look at the source code. Do you see any PHP code there? I don’t think so. That’s why it’s called a server-side programming.
Here are some of the questions I’ve received recently.
What are the pros and cons of using WordPress as your main frame?
Pros
- Easy to setup - takes less than 5 min.
- Easy to customize
- Easy to update the website content
- RSS integration - helps distribution of your content, and makes easy to promote your website
- Pinging - being able to ping your site is a big advantage. (at least for now) It can help you invite search engine crawlers and visitors from various blog directories.
- XHTML compatible - it automatically converts everything xhtml-compatible. Saves time.
- Free Plugins for just about everything
- It’s FREE :)
Cons
- Once your WordPress site gets thousands of simultaneous connection from visitors, your loading time can slow down, even crash the server.
- Usually, cheap hosting companies will ban you or warn you of using too much resources (such as CPU) - happens rarely, but stay away from cheap hosting companies
- Customizing can be little tricky if you don’t know basic PHP programming.
Can I just remove the date information from WordPress and make it a static site?
No, it as I’ve explained above, it WORKS dynamically, but produces a static page. Even hand-coded html sites will have date footprints, believe or not. That doesn’t make any differences between a WordPress Site and a HTML site.
I see many experts differenciating WordPress from HTML site, what are your thoughts?
I understand what they are saying because I see them everyday. I even said something like WordPress + Static HTML in my previous posts. But when I say it, I do that to emphasize how you can use WordPress in conjunction of your HTML sites. It’s going to be another full post if I want to explain this formula. When I use them together? I use them both on some of the big topics, such as a dog site. I use WordPress as my main hub, and I branch out with a series of HTML minisites.
I do this because it is MORE EFFICIENT to make HTML site with minisites. For example, let’s say I own a dog site called www.mydogsite.com. Then I would install WordPress for the main domain. My research shows that I should build a minisite on “dog breeds”. I decide that I will make only two page minisite on “dog breed”. Then I’d make a subdomain called “dogbreeds.mydogsite.com” and put together a two page HTML website on the topic. It would take me MORE time if I’d install WordPress just for two pages of information. Do you see the difference here?
Conclusion
I personally recommend using WordPress for medium and large niche sites. and If you are making a one page niche site, such as an Adword arbitragy site, then I recommend using HTML. Just be flexible and use what is suitable for each site.
I use two different types time to time NOT BECAUSE they produce different websites, but because of the efficiency. I hope this clarifies your questions.
November 15th, 2005
Written by Bo Bang
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I just wanted to share my thoughts on this static/dynamic thing (I don’t really know wordpress but php I do). You explained it clearly, php is a server-side scripting language (contrarily to javascript, which by the way shouldn’t be relied upon, since many people disable it for security reasons), but it doesn’t mean the web page is static.
Supposing we have a php page that prints the current date each time it is called, this will be dynamic because each time it is called it has to be recalculated.
On the other hand with an article submition script, the author submits his article once, and then if the script is configured to work statically, a static version of the page will be created for later use (or cached). If it is dynamic, for each call, the script will access the database, …
The user retrieving the page on the other side can never tell if the page was generated statically or not (or only if the loading time is too long).
I’ve just done a quick search and apparently there is a plugin to cache pages with wordpress.
Hope this was clear enough.
Posted on November 15th, 2005Hi Jules,
Thanks for your comment and clarifying some php issues. You are right on the issues regarding the database driven sites. But I’m talking about the niche content sites that will have a non-changing content. Even though the data is retrieved from MySQL, it will generate a HTML page under a same url, such as http://www.mydomain.com/mypost/ using permalink. And the search engines will list it no problem.
That was my point of this post.
Posted on November 15th, 2005Sorry,
I just wanted to clarify static vs dynamic, I’ve been carried away. And if I had taken a look at your urls, I wouldn’t have written those stupid two lines at the end, wordpress cannot be any more static, no need for a plugin.
I’ll have to test it now, it does seem a good way to improve efficiency.
Jules
Posted on November 15th, 2005Jules,
You stated a perfectly valid point, and I appreciate it since I know just a little bit about PHP.
No need for an apology for your opinion Jules :)
Posted on November 15th, 2005Hey All,
I am experimenting with making Word static
http://conferencecall.erollins.net/
When I get all figured out I will convert
http://www.sumppumptips.com
Thanks for the tips
Posted on November 15th, 2005Tim
First, I love the redesign!
Second, I want to recommends WP-Cache 2.0.17 Ricardo Galli Granada - http://mnm.uib.es/gallir/wp-cache-2/
I am using it on my own blog with good success. The plug-in cache your Wordpress pages as static HTML and reduce your PHP process and MySQL load.
The only thing I have to do is occasionally delete the cache when I am doing upgrade or modification that I want to see immediately.
Posted on November 16th, 2005I built a static site (actually it uses server-side includes for the repetative content) and set up a Wordpress site at roughly the same time.
My blog, http://www.andrewseltz.com, is a bit of a catch all place for all of my various interests. I used Wordpress and was very happy with the ease of setup and maintenance.
My niche site, http://www.ColossalTV.com, uses static pages. I didn’t think I’d be updating this site much, but found myself tweaking it a lot. It’s much harder to visualize the impact of changes as I have to use a text editor with the SSI pages. Plus I have to use 2 or 3 programs to get the job done. I’m seriously thinking of converting it and using Wordpress on all my future niche sites.
Posted on February 14th, 2006Ihave just swiched to another hosting company due to the continues warning of my hosting comapny about the “excessive resources” my site is using.
Posted on April 30th, 2006You are very right in this point wordpress makes website very slow if there is many access.
I too have experienced slow display of my pages due to wordpress. Please
Posted on March 8th, 2007check it out at
http://www.buyonlineindia.com
It may also due to server processing speed. But I feel static pages could be
more faster than dynamic. Only problem is to have an interactive site will be a
difficult process.
Word press is good but i m still confused between own html site or wordpress blog
Posted on April 20th, 2007I’ll put in my 2 cents.
I used to use wordpress but began to see the longer term issues of it.
Firstly, if you want to use some of the new features of wordpress down the road you need to upgrade all your blogs/sites to the new version of wordpress. That takes time. Sure you can leave it alone, but you can’t use many new plugins that only work with the new versions.
Secondly, I have noticed some security issues in wordpress. I have been hacked multiple times especially after updating to the newer versions of wordpress because of security threats. There is nothing worse that going to your site and seeing it hacked. Uploading wordpress again, all your plugins, and all the content (from it’s backup) is a huge waste of time. On my html sites I just reupload the content from my backups and it’s all ready to go. No settings or anything have to be messed with.
I do love the idea of wordpress being something you can use for anything but I just don’t like the security issues their software has. I have been hacked with a ‘clean’ non-plugin version of wordpress which is entirely the wordpress code’s fault.
Posted on May 10th, 2007I also have to agree with you in the sense that wordpress is awesome for building a niche site.
Posted on April 23rd, 2008The whole thing is that I think a static page as a home page is better.
Chris Lang showed me this through his squidoo lense on how google ranks blogs differently than static html pages.
So this is important to take into consideration.
In all my research I believe that the best option for certain niches is doing a static site as the main and adding a wordpress blog to it in the subfolder blog.
Of course one can always turn wordpress into a static site by making the front page static.
all the best,
Eren
I’m also installing wordpress on a subfolder and put a static entrance page on the root.
Don’t know if this is good or not. Some people say that it’s bad in terms of SEO
Posted on May 8th, 2008Micheal,
Posted on May 8th, 2008No reason to worry. I don’t see a point why it’s bad for SEO. I’d challenge them for a solid evidence.