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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Reference and Update to
Trying the wordpress affiliate plugin

At the start of January I installed the WordPress Affiliate Plugin. I just wanted to update you on how it went for me.

I installed it on this blog but this is not a high traffic blog and it is a very busy blog with a lot of competing links  and I honestly didn’t expect it to perform well here. I was right. In the last month I have had only two click throughs to product pages.

I also installed it on two other blogs with a more specific niche focus, higher traffic and smaller post lengths. The results were only marginally above disappointing. In the month I received 6 click throughs from one blog and 22 from the other. No sales.

I also found that odd results occasionally appeared, (but not often I must stress, overall it is very well targeted). A completely unrelated product occurring for keywords which should have confined the results to a specific niche topic. The example that stood out was for a World of Warcraft site where it unexpectedly displayed a product on prostate health.  Maybe the plugin thought it wasn’t good for gamers to sit too long in front of their computers!

So with a total of 30 clicks in a month it might take over 3 months to get one sale. On the other hand – it is a completely “set and forget” plugin and with other niches perhaps it will have better results.

The truth is that any simple advertising like this is not going to make big sales for you. I truly believe that only a passionate advocate will do that.

Conviction leads to Conversion

If you don’t know what I mean by that then read the post  at the link above.

It is not that we don’t know this, it’s just that we get tired and lazy and sometimes we don’t have any enthusiasm left to spare.

If I have learned one thing over the last few years, even though I still struggle to get this right, it is that one well written page that is promoted well about a product that you believe in and speak honestly and enthusiastically about will do more for your sales than 2 years worth of pasted PLR blog posts, or automatically generated content, advertising links and banners.

If you have a blog you want to make money with, concentrate on those pillar posts Starek talks of, that you haven’t got around to yet. Concentrate on getting lots of links to those. Promote a product that you believe in and have a passion for. Help people to understand why its so good that you use it.

The rest of your blog is filler. Of interest to some people, benefits by keeping the blog fresh, offers personality and background and may inspire trust and build your relationship with readers, but please, think again about that phrase.

Conviction leads to Conversion

If you are not convinced that a product is truly excellent, if you wont stand out on a limb and say its so fantastic you can’t live without it, then can you honestly wonder why people think “whatever” and click away.

As to the wordpress affiliate plugin, its a simple automated advertising solution which may bring you in a few sales a year just like Adsense ads can add to your income on a small scale.

Do I think its worth buying? For me I think it was, because I have a lot of blogs I can use it on and it does direct that “click away” to a potential income source. For “one blog” owners or bloggers with low traffic I don’t think it would be worth it.

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A “real” book on how to customize WordPress. Watch, Read, and Learn How to Create and Customize WordPress Sites. A Book & DVD lesson plan from George Plumley available from Amazon.

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Affiliate sales are attributed because the affiliate link drops a cookie into the browser of the person who clicks the link. Most affiliate programs offer a transparent link that for people who are affiliate savvy can be “got around”.

When you spend hours carefully working on a review this can be disappointing.

How often it happens is debated, probably rarely in non marketing niches but in the marketing niche it may be very high.

The cookie that earns you a commission is in the link. Some people who find your article may remove the cookie before clicking it and go to the site without it, and others may even change the cookie to their own cookie so they make a commission.

Also some urls are overlong and others are obviously affiliate links and this can also cause problems.

Plugin Link Cloaks Using A Redirect

The solution to this is to “cloak” the link with a redirect. This is easy enough to do for a normal site but for a CMS such as WordPress in php, the normal solution creates conflicts and this is better handled using a plugin.

The Go code plugin is a link cloak plugin for WordPress that is both basic and easy to use. It simply exchanges an affiliate url for an url that displays your domain name, the word /go/ and a chosen word to describe the product. It can also be used for overlong “normal” url redirects where you want your urls “branded” with your own site name.

For example my normal affiliate url for the WordPress affiliate plugin is transformed by the WordPress link cloak plugin and becomes

http://www.richnicheblogging.com/monetize/go/wp-cb-plugin/

As you can see, my site name is long and my site blog is in a subfolder (monetize) , so this doesn’t gain me much benefit for shortening an url!

But if your blog is in the site root it will.

The wordpress link cloak plugin has hidden the destination site url so people must click it to discover the site it goes to and at no time is my “cookie” visible so people can change it.

Simple and effective link cloaking for WordPress blogs.

The link cloak plugin is free and you can get it from the WordPress Plugin Directory, with installation and troubleshooting info,  at

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gocodes/

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