Website or Blog?
- Thread starter wildfan
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IMHO Blogs can look professional too, so don't worry about that.
You can still ping/trackback with sites that aren't blogs, but you will need to work out how to get that going.
I think your decision needs to be made based on the context of your site. There are times where either could make sense.
Without knowing more details, I would recommend a website. You can always add a blog later if you like. Blogs are inherently better suited to something chronologically ordered. E.g. Body building product of the week, Discount of the day, etc.
If you post more detail about what you're up too then I can make further suggestions.
You can still ping/trackback with sites that aren't blogs, but you will need to work out how to get that going.
I think your decision needs to be made based on the context of your site. There are times where either could make sense.
Without knowing more details, I would recommend a website. You can always add a blog later if you like. Blogs are inherently better suited to something chronologically ordered. E.g. Body building product of the week, Discount of the day, etc.
If you post more detail about what you're up too then I can make further suggestions.
You could always give Drupal a try, and make it a hybrid site. From a programming perspective, I find Drupal's codebase to be well designed and efficient. From a usage perspective, the thing is highly customizeable, has all the plugins you'll need for SEO, and I'm guessing there is a pinging plugin floating around somewhere too (haven't looked).
Basically with Drupal you can do everything WordPress does, but its designed with the ability to behave like more of a 'website'... capabilities to have static 'info' pages, custom front page, hierarchial categories, and blog-like post pages with post listing pages as well.
It might have a slightly higher learning curve than WordPress, but IMO its a great solution for niche sites. They have some good documentation on writing modules and 'blocks' as well, for all you programmers. It even allows you to install ONE drupal copy (ie. latest version) and run all your sites through that one copy (very useful when updating, only one quick copy-over
).
Best of luck,
iNFiNiX
Basically with Drupal you can do everything WordPress does, but its designed with the ability to behave like more of a 'website'... capabilities to have static 'info' pages, custom front page, hierarchial categories, and blog-like post pages with post listing pages as well.
It might have a slightly higher learning curve than WordPress, but IMO its a great solution for niche sites. They have some good documentation on writing modules and 'blocks' as well, for all you programmers. It even allows you to install ONE drupal copy (ie. latest version) and run all your sites through that one copy (very useful when updating, only one quick copy-over
).Best of luck,
iNFiNiX
I'm actually testing with Wordpress and one of the features is now that you can customize your frontpage being a static page and another page your blog post page. Just modify in Options - Reading options the settings there and you are set.
See the attached image.:rasta:
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I don't typically like the way blogs look when used for an affiliate site. Unless it's a review site then it may be okay. Of course that’s JMO. I've tried Joomla, Dupral, etc. but I find them to be a big PITA. After searching endlessly for a decent wordpress theme and not being able to find one I finally made my own. I'm by no means a php or css expert so it was quite an adventure but after a lot of googling and trial and error I finally, eventually got it to do what I wanted.
I use the "Optional Post Excerpts" for the product display and then the body of the post is the full description. Just getting the excerpts to show up inline was my biggest challenge but like I said, no expert. You can use the static front page as mentioned above and use a specific category page to display you posts if you still want to do regular blog posts.
Anyway, the content is not 100% done, I'm waiting for my data feed to be set up and I’m still on the fence about some of the graphics and colors but take a look… dogsrule.us I can't post links so...
Specifically if you look in the grooming category it will give you a better idea of what it will look like with more products listed.
I use the "Optional Post Excerpts" for the product display and then the body of the post is the full description. Just getting the excerpts to show up inline was my biggest challenge but like I said, no expert. You can use the static front page as mentioned above and use a specific category page to display you posts if you still want to do regular blog posts.
Anyway, the content is not 100% done, I'm waiting for my data feed to be set up and I’m still on the fence about some of the graphics and colors but take a look… dogsrule.us I can't post links so...
Specifically if you look in the grooming category it will give you a better idea of what it will look like with more products listed.
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