wordpress vs. html software

[stevo75]

Can someone please explain the difference between Wordpress and page building software like Dream Weaver or some of the other free site builders out there?

Thanks!

[James81]

Wordpress is a lot more powerful, user friendly, and easy to manage. And it comes with a whole host of easy to install plugins, themes, and a great interface for creating new pages automatically. Essentially, it's a great way for someone who doesn't have a lot of programming experience to create quality webpages with little background in html, php, etc.

On the other hand, Frontpage and Dreamweaver require you to build pages from scratch. They are pretty easy to use, but managing your pages with them is kinda clunky because you have to physically upload any new pages using FTP. It also takes quite a bit of time to get good at building pages using these programs. When I first started my website, I used Frontpage to create my pages and it was a lot of fun playing with it, but it was also a lot of work.

Wordpress cuts your workload in half and you can create new content/pages at the click of a button.

[stevo75]

Can Wordpress do everything that dreamweaver/frontpage can do?

It sounds like wordpress combines both the page building with uploading to the server plus other tools.

I guess I'm wondering if there's a need to have both wordpress and a standard html editor.

Could I design and build a nice template in Wordpress?

[James81]

Originally Posted by stevo75

Can Wordpress do everything that dreamweaver/frontpage can do?

Hmmm, that's sort of like comparing apples to oranges. But yeah, if you have enough experience, you can do the same stuff in either program. Except wordpress simplifies the process exponentially.

Originally Posted by stevo75

It sounds like wordpress combines both the page building with uploading to the server plus other tools.

Yeah, pretty much. Once you install wordpress to your site, you very rarely need to fool with an FTP program or anything like that. You create all your pages and posts and stuff right inside the dashboard of wordpress. You even upload and change your themes within the dashboard now (which is really cool).

Originally Posted by stevo75

I guess I'm wondering if there's a need to have both wordpress and a standard html editor.

No, there's no need for both but you can use both if you want. You can build an entire website using wordpress alone once you get used to it and learn some of the tricks for doing so, though.

But you could also build your homepage in Dreamweaver/Frontpage and use wordpress for just blogging purposes. Like if you wanted to make a static homepage (one that doesn't change), you could include a link to your blog on that homepage and then use wordpress to blog with.

But you can also create a static homepage with wordpress.

Originally Posted by stevo75

Could I design and build a nice template in Wordpress?

You COULD, but you're going to have to know something about css, stylesheets, php, and html to do so.

The nice thing though, is that there are like thousands of free wordpress themes floating around. It's highly likely you'll find something you like without ever worrying about building a new template from scratch.

[JustinPopovic]

Wordpress can't really do everything Dreamweaver can do because Wordpress is a CMS (Content Management System) whereas Dreamweaver is a website design.

Having said that, everything you need to do on your website is likely available to you in Wordpress. Unless you are developing a very rich, high functioning web site, I would highly recommend Wordpress.

It doesn't hurt to have both Wordpress and a site editor because you can use Dreamweaver to design custom HTML for your Wordpress posts.

You can't really design a template in Wordpress per se but you can easily download free templates. If you want to really make your site look nice, I would recommend buying a theme from either Studiopress or WooThemes

[James81]

Originally Posted by JustinPopovic

If you want to really make your site look nice, I would recommend buying a theme from either Studiopress or WooThemes

Hmmm, looking at the themes on those sites, I can honestly say that I've seen better free themes out there.

I'd recommend browsing the free themes first before paying for a theme.

[JustinPopovic]

Originally Posted by James81

Hmmm, looking at the themes on those sites, I can honestly say that I've seen better free themes out there.

I'd recommend browsing the free themes first before paying for a theme.

Really??? If you could post some links to free themes that are nicer than WooThemes, that would be amazing. We have built tons of Wordpress sites for clients and we've almost always had to go with a paid theme.

Thanks for your help

[Martyn13]

Forgive me if my questions seem obvious, but I was also toying with the idea of starting a website, but have no knowledge.

Why do people pay for websites when Wordpress is available?

Can you really have a website up and running in a few minutes, as it seems to imply?

Does Wordpress give you unlimited space to write?

Can you use Wordpress for business purposes? Any limitations?

Thanks

[stevo75]

Originally Posted by Martyn13

Forgive me if my questions seem obvious, but I was also toying with the idea of starting a website, but have no knowledge.

Why do people pay for websites when Wordpress is available?

Can you really have a website up and running in a few minutes, as it seems to imply?

Does Wordpress give you unlimited space to write?

Can you use Wordpress for business purposes? Any limitations?

Thanks

It sounds like Wordpress will allow you to build a website no problem. But if you want to build an online business, I would encourage you to check out Site Build It

I'm new to SBI and so I started this thread to try to figure out if I can do everything I'm learning in SBI for free using Wordpress or something else. It sounds like I could. However, I without SBI I would never have known what I didn't know. They provide a ton of information and tools that help you build a profitable website. You can do this using free ware, but it sound like you have to know what you're doing. I didn't, but at least I'm learning now.

If you just want to build a blog as a hobby, I'm sure you could figure it out easily with Wordpress...

[James81]

Originally Posted by JustinPopovic

Really??? If you could post some links to free themes that are nicer than WooThemes, that would be amazing. We have built tons of Wordpress sites for clients and we've almost always had to go with a paid theme.

Thanks for your help

Check out some of these themes:

Best Free Magazine WordPress Themes

A lot of those themes are very much on par with the themes I saw on Woo Themes. "Better" or "Worse" are relative concepts, but I can tell you that the quality of some of these free themes is absolutely amazing.

Plus, if you google "free wordpress themes" you'll find a lot more (not just magazine style themes like in the link above). Sure, there's a lot of junk out there, but there are still quite a few nice themes for free. It's just a matter of sifting through them to find what you are looking for.

Originally Posted by Martyn13

Why do people pay for websites when Wordpress is available?

People pay for sites like SBI because there is more to building a website than just installing the right components. The knowledge gained from places like SBI is why people pay for them.

Originally Posted by Martyn13

Can you really have a website up and running in a few minutes, as it seems to imply?

Yeah, from buying hosting/domain to installing wordpress it can literally be a matter of minutes.

Building the actual website and the content takes a lot of time and work though. Wordpress just gives you the tools to speed up the "grunt work" part of building a website (designing pages) so that you can focus on content.

Originally Posted by Martyn13

Does Wordpress give you unlimited space to write?

As far as I know. Steve's site is a wordpress site and some of his blog posts are 7000 words long. I've never heard of anybody maxing out in a single post.

Originally Posted by Martyn13

Can you use Wordpress for business purposes? Any limitations?

Thanks

Sure you can use it for business purposes. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think Yahoo uses wordpress (or something like it).

Limitations involve things like Justin was saying. You couldn't build a high functionality site with it (think of sites like myspace/facebook).

[JustinPopovic]

Thanks James.

There are definitely some nice templates there for free and probably more than enough for people who are just starting out.

I still like WooThemes and Studiopress for the added support but we are building sites for high fees and the business can afford to sustain these costs.

For individuals starting out, free themes are probably the way to go.

As a side note, I build the first version of my website 2 years ago using straight HTML and Dreamweaver. Maintenance was a nightmare.

I switched over to the Metro Theme from Studiopress in the spring and it has been night and day improvement. My search engine rankings have shot through the charts and all of my articles seem to get indexed a lot more quickly. It is also way easier to publish new content.

Conclusion: Go with Wordpress

[JustinPopovic]

Originally Posted by Martyn13

Can you use Wordpress for business purposes? Any limitations?

Thanks

ABSOLUTELY! In fact it is encouraged to use Wordpress for your business.

Any doubt, check out Gary Vaynerchuk's site Wine Library TV: Gary Vaynerchuk's daily wine video blog

He is one of the biggest online success stories and his content is all hosted on Wordpress.

[ragtag]

Just, since nobody was pointing it out. Wordpress is a program that runs on the webserver, while Dreamweaver runs on your home computer.

So to quickly, and a bit simplified sum it up.

You make a page in Dreamweaver and upload it to your site. Any changes you make to your page, you also need to upload. The pages that are uploaded are mostly static.

With Wordpress, you install it on your server and configure it (select theme, enable and disable different features and so on). You can then add content to your page through a web interface, including writing articles, uploading pictures and more. You can do this from any computer, as long as it has web access. Just log in and change stuff.

But this also means that others can interact with your page, by doing things like adding comments to your article, and these will show up instantly (unless you set Wordpress to let your review all comments). So you get a more interactive website.

If I were you, I would go with Wordpress, or maybe another CMS such as Joomla.

[Martyn13]

Thanks everyone, and stevo75 for starting the thread!

Is it advised to have a minimum of knowledge to use Wordpress effectively, or could you just create an effective website straight away, with absolutely no experience?, or maybe just find things out as you go along?

[jorgeblanco]

The thing about wordpress is that you have to work from within wordpress, which can have some limitations (like limited e-store functionality, etc)

Fortunately, it is flexible enough to let you do plenty without going out of the system.

Here's what I do. I build blog like content websites with Wordpress and integrate as much of the business side to it. When I find something that I cannot handle with Wordpress alone, I use a different solution (like dreamweaver) to build that part of the site and link to it from within the Wordpress blog/page.

It has worked wonders for me and frees me up from the website design part so I can focus on the content side. To me is not a question of using wordpress or not, but when and why to use it

[rocksupreme]

Originally Posted by jorgeblanco

The thing about wordpress is that you have to work from within wordpress, which can have some limitations (like limited e-store functionality, etc)

If you can build a store or other type of content page, you can integrate it with wordpress on the same domain.

[James81]

Originally Posted by Martyn13

Thanks everyone, and stevo75 for starting the thread!

Is it advised to have a minimum of knowledge to use Wordpress effectively, or could you just create an effective website straight away, with absolutely no experience?, or maybe just find things out as you go along?

You can definately just jump right in with no experience and fairly quickly have a page up if you wanted. Essentially, if you're able to use message boards with ease, you can use wordpress with ease as well. The only trouble you'll have with wordpress is learning what each of the links in your dashboard is for, and the more you use it, the more you'll see that.

And honestly, you could set up a free blog at wordpress.com (before you go buy webhosting) and play around with a blog first to get acquainted with it if you wanted.

[jamestl2]

As was mentioned by James in Post #4, it really is comparing Apples to Oranges, the tools are used for completely separate things.

Wordpress is a blog publishing application software and Content Management System, whereas Dreamweaver is a web page editing tool.

Every website on the 'net is presented using HTML, it's just how Wordpress creates and delivers the HTML to the end user is what makes it unique.

One of the key features to point out here is that Wordpress is Database Driven. This means that all the web pages are dynamically generated from the data stored within a MySQL DB using PHP. This means that you don't have to manually FTP every single new page you want to create for your site, everything is written and configured in an administration panel provided by Wordpress.

It's all about how the data is delivered to the end user, and what exactly you want to create...

[JustinPopovic]

Originally Posted by jamestl2

One of the key features to point out here is that Wordpress is Database Driven. This means that all the web pages are dynamically generated from the data stored within a MySQL DB using PHP. This means that you don't have to manually FTP every single new page you want to create for your site, everything is written and configured in an administration panel provided by Wordpress.

It's all about how the data is delivered to the end user, and what exactly you want to create...

Great point. This is HUGE when you want to start modifying content on a regular basis. I can't tell you how many hours per week I saved when I switched from HTML to Wordpress.

It is like night and day when it comes to dynamically changing content

Plus, google loves wordpress sites

[Brutha]

Can Wordpress do everything that dreamweaver/frontpage can do?

It sounds like wordpress combines both the page building with uploading to the server plus other tools.

You can probably use dreamweaver to create a wordpress template.

If you make a dynamic website, you should do it by using more than just using html/css/javascript. That makes your life easier and allows for features such as users leaving comments and RSS feeds.

Is it advised to have a minimum of knowledge to use Wordpress effectively, or could you just create an effective website straight away, with absolutely no experience?, or maybe just find things out as you go along?

If you use a prebuild template and are computer literate you should be able to pick up wordpress and find things out as you go along.

[Martyn13]

Originally Posted by James81

And honestly, you could set up a free blog at wordpress.com (before you go buy webhosting) and play around with a blog first to get acquainted with it if you wanted.

Please excuse another inane beginner's question!

I had assumed that you could just use wordpress to create the site/blog -
So what's this about having to buy webhosting?

It's also mentioned in another thread, along with buying a domain.

What is the purpose of this, and is it necessary?

[Gene]

Originally Posted by Martyn13

Please excuse another inane beginner's question!

I had assumed that you could just use wordpress to create the site/blog -
So what's this about having to buy webhosting?

It's also mentioned in another thread, along with buying a domain.

What is the purpose of this, and is it necessary?

Yes, it is necessary.

Buying the domain that your users type into the browser or by clicking a link is necessary. There are numerous domain registrars. I use godaddy.com and the cost is around ten dollars.

Hosting is necessary because you must have some place accessible from the net to store your published work and make it accessible to your target audience. I recommend Web hosting provider - Bluehost.com - domain hosting - PHP Hosting - cheap web hosting - Frontpage Hosting E-Commerce Web Hosting Bluehost for people who are just beginning to work with publishing on the internet. There are many other good hosting companies and many hosting companies who do not provide good service. About ten dollars per month should get you a good hosting package at a good hosting company.

[James81]

Originally Posted by Martyn13

Please excuse another inane beginner's question!

I had assumed that you could just use wordpress to create the site/blog -
So what's this about having to buy webhosting?

It's also mentioned in another thread, along with buying a domain.

What is the purpose of this, and is it necessary?

You can create a "___.wordpress.com" website through wordpress, but the features are a bit more limited and you are bound by their terms of service. In essence you are not as free to do things when you sign up a free account as you are if you create your own site.

Also, if you are looking to start your own online business, having your own domain and your own hosting is way more professional than running it through a free site.