Uptimebot

What editors have you used when just started making first sites? Personally I have started with Macromedia Dreamweaver, but very soon I made sure that it ads a lot of bugs in HTML and started learning the language itslef. Since then I’m using Allaire Homesite and PsPad editors (Now there is Home Site 5 released by Macromedia after they’ve bought Allaire, but I don’t like it too). I”m telling this not just to discuss editors we use, but to stress your attention on importance of clean HTML. because the more bugs you make in code, the more corrupted it appears in serps and title “$#ajgd^&87″ or url “..php?gophp127jags7a…” don’t looks attractive, huh? However, after several years of practice, those webmasters, who work with lots of content and have less time to edit HTML are moving to various content management systems. So do I.

I have tried a lot of them. One I was using up to last year is PhpNuke available at http://www.phpnuke.org. It is convenient, includes a lot of useful tools for site management. However, it contains a couple of bugs that are unwanted for SEO. For instance it always builds ugly-looking urls and has problems with putting correct titles. When I have worked on PhpNuke I spent a lot of time by tuning and adjusting it to fit my needs. I found plugins that replace page title with title of first article on this page, modules that made permanent urls and so on, but it took a lot of time to make it rolling for each new site I’ve made and I started looking for something more easy and covenient. That is how blogs became platforms for the majority of my sites.

After trying several blog scripts I have finally chosen two of them, which, I think are useful for building good sites. The first one I have tried is MT, which is available from http://www.movabletype.org/. Powerfull platform for creating site. Rather easy installation and management. Good layout. Try it yourself to have your own opinion of convenience.

My second choice, which I consider to be the best choice for today is WordPress. Uptimebot is currently working on this platform and I am completely satisfied with it’s functional abilities. Of course it has lesser functions that MT and much less functions than PhpNuke, but ease of five minutes installation, attractive layout and amazingly clean code make WordPress to be the best script for building text sites, which I’d recommend for everybody, moreover that google loves blogs and this additionaly attracts me. Besides, there is a WordPress plugin that allows visitors to see when GoogleBot came for the last time - you can see it in footer of our page.

The only thing I’d like to be developed by WordPress is multi-site WordPress that would allow to build several blogs using one cpy of script (as it is possible with MT). They currently have only beta of multi-site script, but it is yet half-done and I wouldn’t recommend to use it.

Wordpress is available for download from http://www.wordpress.org/. Enjoy it!

I’d also want you to share your thoughts about site platforms you are using, their advantages and disadvantages and so on. Thanks!

Sincerely yours, Max.

Filed under: HTML and Page Coding