Website on Wordpress

[Dev]

Are there any forum members who are successfully running their website/blogging using WordPress? Are there anyone who have migrated from WordPress to SBI or vice-versa? How has been the experience? I would like to know more.

[Angela Leeds]

I started out with SBI. Wasn't right for me, so I skipped over to Joomla. That became a gigantic time-waster.

I had Joomla wiped off my domain and I installed Wordpress on it. I *love* it. I created everything from scratch, I didn't bother trying to "transfer" the site intact. But I could not be happier. And I can *whale* on Wordpress.

I've put up three Wordpress blogs since last Friday, I kid you not! I had my 3rd idea last night at 11pm and I stayed up all night and launched it today, with several blog posts and numerous affiliate links. The site looks great, has all the necessary plugins and SEO optimization, and is ready for me to just add content like the bejeezuz.

I love Wordpress. I'll be asking for an SBI refund.

[Dev]

Originally Posted by Angela Leeds

I started out with SBI. Wasn't right for me, so I skipped over to Joomla. That became a gigantic time-waster.

I had Joomla wiped off my domain and I installed Wordpress on it. I *love* it. I created everything from scratch, I didn't bother trying to "transfer" the site intact. But I could not be happier. And I can *whale* on Wordpress.

I've put up three Wordpress blogs since last Friday, I kid you not! I had my 3rd idea last night at 11pm and I stayed up all night and launched it today, with several blog posts and numerous affiliate links. The site looks great, has all the necessary plugins and SEO optimization, and is ready for me to just add content like the bejeezuz.

I love Wordpress. I'll be asking for an SBI refund.

Hi Angela-
May I ask what exactly did you find wrong with SBI (if possible, pls list briefly, since I am thinking of ordering one).
How exactly was Joomla a time-waster?
Can you put any no. of blogs(with different domain names-apart from registration charges) on Wordpress for free? I believe SBI will charge their std fees of $299 for every new domain added.
Finally how easy was it to get your site migrated from SBI to Joomla (I am assuming you did this before hoping on to WP)?
Lastly can I see the links to your 3 blogs? I would love to see it.
Thanks.

[Angela Leeds]

Originally Posted by Dev

Hi Angela-
May I ask what exactly did you find wrong with SBI (if possible, pls list briefly, since I am thinking of ordering one).
How exactly was Joomla a time-waster?
Can you put any no. of blogs(with different domain names-apart from registration charges) on Wordpress for free? I believe SBI will charge their std fees of $299 for every new domain added.
Finally how easy was it to get your site migrated from SBI to Joomla (I am assuming you did this before hoping on to WP)?
Lastly can I see the links to your 3 blogs? I would love to see it.
Thanks.

SBI was just too confining for me as far as site-building -- no flexibility, and not contemporary, and the interface was awkward and did not update immediately. As far as that goes, there is simply no comparison -- Wordpress is light-years better for my purposes. Faster, easier, more polished, more flexible.

Joomla *looked* nice (but not as nice as Wordpress, IMO), but it was *crazy* to design -- not intuitive for site-building at *all*. I ran into many show-stopping moments, and often just the simplest things, such as adding a link to text, entails a very complex sequence of steps. It is a *very complexly designed system*. I don't need something that takes up 95% of my time trying to deal with technical issues. I want to *blog*, connect with people, build my business, write content. Am so glad I left Joomla.

I use Siteground.com as my domain host. They handle registration for each domain that I've put up, and getting going is *very fast*. I could be up and running building my site in minutes at this point -- they are instantaneous, operate 24/7, and everything you need is at hand all the time. They'll even do the installation for you if you want, at no extra cost, although that may take a bit longer.

I did not transfer my domain over from SBI -- I switched to a slightly different name that I liked better, but I don't believe it is hard to make the switch. Siteground has *excellent* customer service. Night or day, I've gotten rapid response, every single time, no matter what. I could not be more impressed with them.

I purchased three separate domain hosting services, one at a time, one for each site that I put up. You can choose from a variety of site-building applications with Siteground to install. As I said, I initially went with Joomla for two of the sites, then chose to bag what I'd done and rework from scratch with Wordpress. The switch cost me nothing and was not hard to do. Siteground has many tutorials to guide you thru what you want to do.

Yes, SBI would charge you $299 for each domain site you want to put up. I'm not knocking SBI or that price -- it's a very good product & deal, for the right person. That person just isn't me.

The links to my two main sites are below. The third one has a sidebar link on each of the those sites.

I'm happy to answer any further questions you might have! I dealt with a tremendous amount of frustration over technical difficulties to get to where I am now -- if I can pass some of my lessons learned on to someone else who might avoid them, I'd be pleased.

[leaderspd]

I actually do both. I have my content site on SBI, and my blog (of the same name) on Wordpress. I set up the SBI site first - and learned alot about HTML and SEO. Articles on my site get optimized with SBI's software and take some work to get them just right. I set up the Wordpress Blog for those times when I need to just throw out a "quickee" post that comes to mind. Each has their place and I like working with both...

[aaronsalls]

I use Wordpress for all my sites right now because it is pretty flexible as a CMS. I'm still learning right now, but building the site doesn't take too long, and there is a lot of customizability once you start using custom fields and unique page templates.

Plus with all the plugins out there, it's pretty easy to get a quick site up.

[Halffull]

I literally started using wordpress these last couple of weeks. From a newbies perspective, Wordpress is an excellent CMS system, but the farther you get from it's blogging purpose, the less powerful it becomes.

For instance, I wanted to be able to run two blogs on my website... I had to install wordpress twice.

[vMike]

Wordpress is 100% free - only need topay for hosting some $5/month
It's quite simple to use, I'd recommend it.

Agreed with Angela, joomla is too techy, I tried it once and never used it again.

[aaronsalls]

Originally Posted by Halffull

I literally started using wordpress these last couple of weeks. From a newbies perspective, Wordpress is an excellent CMS system, but the farther you get from it's blogging purpose, the less powerful it becomes.

For instance, I wanted to be able to run two blogs on my website... I had to install wordpress twice.

Couldn't you just tag different categories to appear in different blogs?

[Halffull]

Originally Posted by aaronsalls

Couldn't you just tag different categories to appear in different blogs?

I could as a workaround, but I'd lose a lot of functionality to finetune individual rss feeds, aesthetics, and stats.

[vMike]

Installing wordpress is just one click in fantastico

[Angela Leeds]

Originally Posted by Halffull

For instance, I wanted to be able to run two blogs on my website... I had to install wordpress twice.

I want to run a 2nd blog on one of my sites... was gonna do research on that tonight, how to set that up with Wordpress.

[CubicleBailout]

If you want to run 2 Wordpress installs on the same site you should just need to unzip Wordpress into a new directory (or use your hosting providers installer) Then make sure you setup a new MySQL database for it - so it doesn't reside with the other blog's MySQL database.

SBI looks like it is mostly geared to people that are just starting out and have one site. If you are going to host multiple blogs of different areas of interest, then having your own hosting provider makes sense since you can add domain names (URL's) to your site without increasing monthly costs.

At least that is the way Dreamhost works, to my knowledge.

[Angela Leeds]

Actually, I learned today that you can easily run multiple instances of Wordpress on a single database. Between two domains, I added three additional blogs & Wordpress installations, with a total of 5 on 2 databases! I copied all files from the first blog into a new blog folder in the same root, and then I only needed to make one tiny change in the new blog's wp-config file to rename the blog table, and I was good to go!

Easy-peezy. Very cool.

[UIS4821]

SBI is great for someone who is starting from 0 knowledge. Wordpress is by far the best blogging platform there is. If you want to be a serious blogger I suggest you use it.

[David Cain]

Originally Posted by UIS4821

SBI is great for someone who is starting from 0 knowledge. Wordpress is by far the best blogging platform there is. If you want to be a serious blogger I suggest you use it.

I agree.

WordPress is THE standard, and I've never heard a good reason for not using it. 90% of the plugins and discussions and support on the web are for WordPress. It is worth the time it takes to learn.

I didn't even know what WordPress was 7 weeks ago, and in that time I learned how to use WordPress and created a blog from scratch that I am quite proud of.

I don't know much about SBI but it seems to me that it is geared towards people who are intimidated by WordPress. I say sit down and ask some questions and get WordPress figured out. There are a million places to ask questions, start at the WordPress support forum.

[Angela Leeds]

Wordpress has been easier for me than SBI... There's just more to it, so there's more to attend to. But there's tons of help on the web for it, and it works well.

SBI doesn't update in real time, either, whereas I see all my changes immediately with my Wordpress host.

[Angela Leeds]

One thing I will say about my SBI site is that for some reason, even tho it has no content and only points to my Wordpress site, it is now coming up 6th on page 1 for my niche. LOL

Go SBI!

It had a head-start with Google, but my Wordpress site has so much more info.

[Matt Willard]

I've recently begun the switch to WordPress myself. I'm setting up my own blog to use for a wider variety of subjects and to gain more employment.

[rocksupreme]

WordPress is awesome. I use it to manage several blogs, and it's super easy. I started using it four years ago with no programming experience - everything most people need to do is plug and play. When you get used to things, you can tinker more and learn how the guts work.