Which software, editor or system is best for creating a minisite?

I was asked a question about the best software, webpage editor or “way to go about” creating a minisite.

I am currently concentrating on Wordpress, but I have used Joomla and XSitePro2 as well. Other editors such as dreamweaver or the free editors such as NVU and komposer are also options I have tried. The differences for use seem to depend on the primary objectives of the user. These may be ease of use, cost and time investment, type of site, seo, hosting, etc…

Joomla -

is open source (free)  content management system software

Joomla is good for e-commerce sites selling multiple products. Using the virtuemart addon you have the functionality to sell digital (or physical) products send purchaser to paypal (or other payment processors) and securely deliver the digital download.

Against this, it’s a steep learning curve at first with much trolling of forums to fix issues that do arise. It’s not simple to seo but achievable and sites can be a little heavy to load. For a minisite it has too much time investment needed to be useful for this purpose.

XSitepro2 – a commercial (pay for this) website editor designed for extra functionality

XSitePro is fantastic html website editing software with lots of functionality options that are easy to add to your sites. It’s a one time payment for the software, that is well worth it. If it’s simply to create a minisite and then promote it, it’s really good.

Adding further content is easy enough and you set up ftp in the software and it overwrites what’s new automatically adjusting all menus.

It has some glitches but what doesn’t? (…and they are minor). Against it, is that some experts say that Google favours Wordpress over html sites and it is psychologically easier to make a post in Wordpress than to open XSitePro and create a new page and ftp it.

The fastest, cheapest way to create a minisite

The fastest and simplest system is to take an example of a resellers ministe and completely replace images and paragraphs of text using notepad. If you don’t understand basic html this is not always possible as some minisites that are provided with resale products can be complex. But if you find one minisite that is simple, use this as your template and just replace images and text in it for other products.

Use NVU or komposer to edit html using their WYSIWYG interface to add html elements. The most difficult part of this is the private thankyou page which almost all editors want to include in navigation. Simplest to just use one template for the thankyou but replace header and footer elements and of course specific text and images.

Wordpress -

Open source blog and CMS software with extended functionality via numerous free plugins.

Wordpress is both great and so time consuming it’s frustrating. The key to using Wordpress for a minisite is to make a plan and templates for new installs. Get an excel sheet together and list the essential plugins you need for a minisite and then put the plugins, stripped of extra folders, into a dedicated “use these plugins’ folder for easy initial install via ftp. Keep page templates in the same folder.

Updating Wordpress

Some people may argue that updating Wordpress is annoying. This is valid because for security you need to keep it up to date, it’s not fun to have  a blog hacked. Old versions can be and you could unknowingly be spreading a virus.

Use the wp-automatic-update plugin, rather than the link in Wordpress. This plugin leads you through the steps correctly so no errors occur, and creates a backup before in case they do. Most problems occur because people don’t deactivate plugins before updating. (Been there – done that- spent hours fixing it) Also don’t update immediately, give it a week or two – by then all those who may encounter errors have posted on the forums and had the issue resolved so you can read and apply if it happens to you!

Seo for Wordpress

Wordpress is easy to seo with the wp-all-in-one-seo plugin.  Search engines like Wordpress, its easy to update, has automation tools and extensive other plugin functionality.

Some experts say a static html site is more favoured by search engines for serious sites, or that the default Kubrik theme is better received by customers because it appears to be more amateur and therefore more trustworthy than a marketing or sales site.

Against Wordpress, for a minisite, it’s easy to spend hours on non productive tweaking. So pick an easy to customize free theme and stay focused. If you can learn how to use page templates, do so and use the same one, with different images and text. Being organized with everything all in one folder will help you set up a new blog quickly.

Last option is the ability of Wordpress as a CMS to be similar to a html site using pages. This is where page templates come in. Some experts  say that this is the best option but like Joomla it’s a big learning curve. To do this the right way takes a lot of delving into Wordpress code and some little known plugins and a lot of time.

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Tags: Content management system, Joomla, minisite, Open source, seo, Templates, Website, wordpress, wysiwyg

You can submit the same article to multiple ezines and article databases but either you write lots of articles or submit the same one. Duplicate content is very easy for a search engine to read and there are doubts that in time that articles with the exact same text will continue to benefit you.

If you do submit the same article, the first one that is indexed is the one that will most likely show. If you submit it to one,  or have the article on your site already, other article directories may refuse to publish the article.

The answer to this is to spin your articles. You take one article and use a thesaurus to alter the actual wording of each sentence enough to make the article unique. Its suggested that 30% unique is considered enough.

This is the best Article Spinner I have ever used.

It helps you to rewrite from any seed article, or by typing in directly,  an article that can be spun with tags. You can then use this with submission software to submit unique articles to article directories, websites and blogs. Or you can spin any number of unique articles out using the software, and save them to paste in or submit the articles to sites manually.

It is a time consuming process to create a spinnable article. The spinners I have tried before were weighty. They took half an hour to scan a document, then there was no fast way to keep track of choices for one word or phrase. It was quicker to not use one at all. One free article spinner that I installed stuffed up my computer so bad when I uninstalled it, that I had to get a technician in to fix up Internet Explorer.

This is because the spinner uses an online thesaurus to offer word substitutions and therefore messes with your browser.

But now I have found a spinner I use daily, that gives a great range of choices for substitutions, is fast and reliable and can be used with the SE Nuke SEO marketing software I use and the Free Traffic System.

Installation is a bit tricky, it needs a specific version of the net framework and I have to use the article spinner on a second computer, as my main computer needs a different version of this for the  XSitePro web editor software . Even with this headache it was worth the time and effort spent installing it to be able to use such a valuable tool. It’s – no reservations whatever – THE best article spinner. I don’t get really enthusiastic about many things but this is a tool worth having that will save you so much time if you do this type of marketing.

This article spinner has  a database of word substitutions that is so much better than a thesaurus. It still has a few limitations  – like generally not giving options when words are plurals, but the database can be added to by yourself as you work and the writer provides database updates that are being improved all the time which is – simply awesome. And its so fast, I can’t believe how fast it is!

If you want to maximise the number of links you can get with anchor text then you need unique articles. Go read a bit more about article spinning software and see what you think .

If you do decide this is a tactic you want to use for your article marketing campaigns, you can also download this short report for more information. (No optin just download the pdf)

There are paid submission programs to use spun articles with, including SENuke which is very powerful SEO software, that not only submits a spinnable article but also bookmarks and submits videos,  but until you get more experience learning how to write and submit  spinnable articles, you don’t want to be paying monthly while you learn. SENuke has a high learning curve don’t sign up until you have products set up to promote and time to learn how to use it.

Why not just sign up for the Free Traffic System and use their spinner and submission service. When you are better and faster at spinning articles, go pro with them (or any other tool) that you have to pay for monthly.

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Tags: articles, backlinks, FTS, SENuke, seo, spinner

The All in One Seo Plugin

All in One Seo Pack

Seo is a core principle of RNB training so that you can get free search traffic and there’s not much point in doing the keyword research if you can’t place the results in the right spots on your blog. So this plugin is considered to be an important addition and we recommend it’s use.The advice from the plugins page is quoted below.

Meta Titles
The text that you see in your browser’s window bar (at the top of internet explorer or firefox) is the most important thing that doesn’t appear to be on your page! You may not have realized it was even there at all.

Make sure these titles are getting rewritten and relate to your post titles which always come next, before anything else. You can leave a few words in here from your blog title if you want to do some branding but don’t overstuff the title.

If your post titles don’t contain your most precious phrases you want to rank for then tweak them. Leave the post titles as it is (for the people) but change this meta title.

Meta Descriptions
Once your pages rank in search engines your description makes a potential visitor want to click through, or not.

It is these meta descriptions, that some people have mourned for dead and moved on from, that can decide your site’s fate. If you don’t want to invest the time and write a description for every post at least let them be auto-generated. The preferred source for your post description is your post excerpt. Especially use this when you want to tweak your description.You can find this under the input box for the post on the write page.

Meta Keywords
All in One SEO Pack can generate keywords in three ways.

It can use your categories ( the original way of tagging posts in wordpress). It can use Ultimate Tag Warrior if you have been using this excellent plugin. Or, starting with Wordpress 2.3, it can use it’s built-in tagging system.

Using your categories is optional (meaning you have to tell it to), the rest is auto-detected and, if it’s there – it’s used, so be careful what you are tagging with! WP 2.3.x tags are now the preferred keyword source. If you have updated, the new tagging system can import in old Ultimate Tag Warrior Data.

Duplicate Content
Shout Hallelulyah and do the chicken dance! You can have “noindex” and the like generated for archive-, category- and tag pages if you seem to have trouble with duplicate content ( or can’t get your head around “noindex”, “nofollow” etc and where to put it)

I particularly liked the following quote from the plugin page.

“That was about the 20% of effort needed by you to achieve 80% of results with on-page factors. Of course you also need incoming links, no plugin can do this for you in a safe manner”"

Note: Quote marked “descriptions” are taken from the page at the link under the title.

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Tags: plugin, seo