Strategy question for a network of websites

[Cromulent]

I have 3 blogs (soon to be 4) on different subjects. One is a games blog, one is a politics blog, one is a vaping blog and the new one is going to be a tech / programming blog.

I'm currently using self hosted Wordpress with a couple of plugins running on a VPS but have been thinking about writing my own blogging software to handle the needs of my websites. Not because I think Wordpress is bad (I actually quite like it) but because I am not a PHP / MySQL programmer (I generally use Python / Django / PostgreSQL) and if I ever want to make changes to my website for SEO, adding features or optimisation reasons I won't be able to do that with Wordpress.

My plan is to make my new blogging software extremely simple in terms of features but with the understanding that as I learn more about SEO and my requirements as a network of blogs that I can add features on to it as my needs grow and change. I was also going to release my software as open source code with the hope that other people might get interested and either use it or add new features to it.

The obvious problem is though that I need to spend the time writing the blogging software. I can get a basic template done in a couple of weeks because Django is such a good web framework and allows really rapid development.

What would you do? Stick with Wordpress even though you'd be unable to modify it or write your own simple software that can grow as your website grows? I mean after all a blog is really simple software. You just need a text editor which saves HTML to the database and a page which pulls that data from a database and displays it. Everything else is pretty much optional. It is all about the content not about the software.

I've got some SEO books which I am told are well regarded so I'll be reading them about best practices but I really just want to get my websites up and running so I can start adding content to them.

Interested to hear any thoughts from other website owners / programmers.

 

[fisicx]

Adding features to workdpress isn't that difficult. The code you want has probably already been written so it's often just a case of dropping it into your functions.php.

SEO is a doddle - I created my own customisations simply by following a couple of tutorials.

You will find it a lot simpler to stick with WP and learn a bit of PHP than trying to create your own blogging platform

 

[Cromulent]

Adding features to workdpress isn't that difficult. The code you want has probably already been written so it's often just a case of dropping it into your functions.php.

SEO is a doddle - I created my own customisations simply by following a couple of tutorials.

You will find it a lot simpler to stick with WP and learn a bit of PHP than trying to create your own blogging platform

Thing is I've already built a few websites with Django and while in the short term it will certainly be much harder to build my own blog software in the longer term it will be easier to tweak based on changing needs.

Plus I can strip out all the features of Wordpress I have no need for in my software (and there are quite a few features I don't need). Oh and I can put it on my CV as well if it works out which is another win.

 

[menetworkjadaltd]

isn't that what Ghost is?

 

[Alan]

Interesting , though SEO (apart from raw performance) is all about what code ( in the main HTML markup ) is delivered at the font end, in other words it makes no difference if your back end is python or PHP. To that end, in reality you need to know next to nothing about PHP to SEO a wordpress website.

 

[Page]

Sounds to me as if you want to do it and just want reassurance

So ...

Go ahead and do it

 

[Paul @ Outsprung]

Stick with wordpress, millions of blogs use it and pretty much most of the niche sites ranking in the top 10 will be using wordpress.

If you cant rank with a wordpress blogs its probably some other reason as to why you are not ranking, not because you are using wordpress.

 

[Cromulent]

Adding features to workdpress isn't that difficult. The code you want has probably already been written so it's often just a case of dropping it into your functions.php.

SEO is a doddle - I created my own customisations simply by following a couple of tutorials.

You will find it a lot simpler to stick with WP and learn a bit of PHP than trying to create your own blogging platform

Stick with wordpress, millions of blogs use it and pretty much most of the niche sites ranking in the top 10 will be using wordpress.

If you cant rank with a wordpress blogs its probably some other reason as to why you are not ranking, not because you are using wordpress.

OK. After thinking about this for a couple of days. I'm going to stick with Wordpress and actually learn how to modify it for my own requirements.

I'll spend time actually practicing how to rank the content that I put on Wordpress rather than worrying about the platform that I am using.

I've never really read anything about SEO in the past so have no idea what I am doing so I am going to change that and actually learn what I should be doing from some white hat sources. Combine that with a posting strategy that should keep the blogs active I think it should work out well.

Thanks for all the advice .

 

[Paul @ Outsprung]

OK. After thinking about this for a couple of days. I'm going to stick with Wordpress and actually learn how to modify it for my own requirements.

I'll spend time actually practicing how to rank the content that I put on Wordpress rather than worrying about the platform that I am using.

I've never really read anything about SEO in the past so have no idea what I am doing so I am going to change that and actually learn what I should be doing from some white hat sources. Combine that with a posting strategy that should keep the blogs active I think it should work out well.

Thanks for all the advice .

Moz, Backlinko & Ahrefs blogs will be the best places to start if you want to learn about beginner SEO. I would really worry about keeping the blog active. Just worry about creating the right content that will bring visitors into your sales funnel. Once you have the right content promote the hell out of it.

People often fall into the trap of thinking they need to constantly create content but forget to actually promote the content they already have and build links to it.

 

[fisicx]

People often fall into the trap of thinking they need to constantly create content but forget to actually promote the content they already have and build links to it.

If the blog content is good you don't need to do any promotion. Google will index and rank and it can generate traffic within hours of posting.

I stopped trusting Moz a few years back, they have been proved wrong on a number of occasions.

 

[Paul @ Outsprung]

If the blog content is good you don't need to do any promotion. Google will index and rank and it can generate traffic within hours of posting.

I stopped trusting Moz a few years back, they have been proved wrong on a number of occasions.

Might be the case for low volume, long tail keywords but for anything remotely competitive ranking just isn't going to happen without promotion/outreach.

 

[fisicx]

Indeed, but many UKBF members aren't aiming for competitive keywords so can get away without blogging or doing any link building.

And even competitive keywords can be ranked without doing any linkbuilding if you do it right.