Merging Static HTML sites with Wordpress

[Sebastien]

Hey Folks,

So I was reading the *awesome* thread in the web design section where Randy recommended to code an entire website in notepad to gain html experience.

After 6 months of affiliating I've come to the conclusion that clean code is one of the most important aspects of SEO. As an affiliate newby I purchased some really cool looking Wordpress themes; the revolution themes. These are great but I feel that the hugely bloated code hinders my ability to dominate certain keywords.

So I like Randy's idea of starting off a new website from scratch.

What I want to do is create some clean html pages and then integrate them into my own stripped down version of Wordpress. I think there is a lot to be said about the advantage of combining a simple static site with Wordpress (the money pages are static, the rest dynamic)

Is this hard to do ? I am looking for a forum where I can find support for this project. Somewhere where people discuss basic html design and basic wordpress customization. Any recommendations ?

Alternatively, if anyone wants to start this project with me please PM me. We would be working on our individual sites each but helping each other along the way. We would start by targeting a keyword combination. The end goal would be to get our pimped up wordpress blogs ranking #1 for their respective keywords.

[Trikkur]

It sounds like you just want to do some html pages for certain things, but use wordpress for most of your site. If this is the case, I'm 99% sure you could just upload the html files to your server and link to them normally.

So if your wordpress site is MyPokerSite.com and you have all these cool features throughout, but you want MyPokerSite.com/pokerstars-review.html to be pure html, then just upload that to your server and link to it through your wordpress site. I can't think of a reason that wouldn't work.

If this isn't what you mean, sorry.

[Sebastien]

It would certainly work.

I want to make sure Google sees my site as a blog from the from the publishing system it uses.

Maybe I can code individual Wordpress pages to be static and keep the posts dynamic?

How about the homepage? Can I make it static ?

[WassPokerSandy]

Google sees your site as blog not because it is made with wordpess, but because it uses pinging and notifies engines about new posts. There is nothing wrong to have your main pages static (non blog) and keep a wordpress blog as well.

This said - you could have 30 page review site sitting on
pokerdeals.com
and then you would have
pokerdeals.com/blog/
sitting there as well.

Key thing would be to make sure your static pages links to the blog and the blog links back to your static pages. Ideally you can make a post and include 2-5 links to your other pages and blog posts - this way will give you more even PageRank distribution and will let optimize pages thanks to internal linking. As well, include some of main pages, like review pages on your blogs blogroll or edit code in theme editor to include simple links to most desirable pages with most appropriate keywords.

[kaus]

Its really really simple. I never have any main pages on a blog anymore and no matter how much the wordpress has been stripped down, if its running on wordpress the code still has added features to it for those handy little plugins that add to your code. While some may say that there is nothing wrong with it, that may be true but if I can do the same thing using another method then why not

So anytime I set up a wordpress site, all my main pages and money pages are stripped right down to the bare minimal while keeping the overall design then I try to make sure its validated.

The revolution themes are really easy to accomplish this with and if you need help on what should and shouldnt be removed you can hit me up on MSN I dont mind taking a look for you.

If you want to blog on the index page but have your internal pages just create the folders on our server for Full tilt etc and leave the wordpress files in the root. Its not that hard to do. Have a look at Fuzion Poker and you can see that its seperated. I dont think I validated though but anyway its not that hard to do

With wordpress every plugin you add creates extra code which is not needed. On that site I removed over 350 lines of code simply by stripping it down and moving it over to an html page and because wordpress creates your files in the folders you wont need to do any redirects either unless you have linked to the file.php

As for creating the homepage static yes you can. When I did topfivepokerrooms.com everything was static on that site except for the news section. However I kept the same design theme through the entire process. Unless you compared the source between the news section adn the rest of the site you wouldnt have known that I was doing two seperate things and that particular gardner theme was very easy to validate after. Slotsgeek is also part static and part wordpress. We have everything on that site using php and a news section which is wordpress. Using the php insted of html will allow us to insert a small peice of code to some of the static pages to call for posts from the news. so as an example say any promotions we blog about will also show links on the casino page.

Another benefit is your pages will load a hell of alot faster by moving them over to html then keeping them on wordpress which is always a plus.

Here are two examples for you to show you what it should look like on your server depending on how you do it

Wordpress as a blog source and static index and internal pages. This is how slotsgeek is set up using the casino news as the blog and the rest is static

Root of site /
/full-tilt-poker/
/pokerstars/
/blog-news/wp-content/ <--- this is where your blog goes
/blog-news/wp-admin/
/blog-news/wp-includes/
/blog-news/additional wp files
index.html

If you were to set it up where your index page would be the blog but you kept the money pages as html you would just remove the /blog-news/ folder and place the wordpress database within the root of the site then create additional files for your reviews. This is how Fuzion Poker is set up.

Root of site /
/full-tilt-poker/
/pokerstars/
/wp-admin/
/wp-content/
/wp-includes/
/additional wp files

Hopefully that didnt confuse ya

[Sebastien]

Thanks Kaus. Your timing is perfect...

I'm just starting a new site: Jackofheartspoker dot com. The domain is 4 years old + (slightly more than me) and I just installed wordpress. I know... I' m a pro.

My strategy is going to be following:
1/ The homepage will stay the blog (the domain has little SEO value)
2/ I will use blog categories to rank for longtails.

So the money pages will be something like:

jackofheartspoker.com/raccoon-poker-bonus/mypostrules. Only these pages should be static.

Currently, looking at my FTP my files are set up like this:

php_uploads
wp-admin
wp-content
wp-includes

And here is what it looks like when you open them up (lol)

wp-admin
css
images
import
includes
js

wp-content
plugins
themes

wp-includes
Text
images
js

Currently I have the default wordpress theme and no posts. Let me know if you have any themes that you recommend.

So...what should I do get from where I am to where I want to be ?

Thanks

-- Sebastien

PS: My mama voted for obama

[kaus]

Hey

Theme wise i do prefer Brian Gardner over anyone else simply because his stuff is soo easy to work with, although he has taken a new approach lately by offering certain themes on a limited time basis so they arent as widely used..

As for your files if the blog is in the root you do not need to open any files within the wp unless you are installing a theme/plugins or updating your wordpress.

If for example you wanted to create a pokerstars review in a review folder you will create a file named review located in the root section of your domain and another file inside of it called pokerstars, then place your static page inside the pokerstars file.

It would look like this

Root /

/poker-review/pokerstars/

[Sebastien]

OK, I can load the rev theme if it's easier. I don't think it validates very well though. If you check out pokerfornia.com there are 80 + validation errors. Jim is cleaning it up for me though.

Anyways, to come back to your post:

Root/poker-review/pokerstars/ => Got it.

I now have 2 probably *very* retarded questions;

1. How do I create this external file ?
2. What is the extension *. html ?

--Sebastien

[kaus]

Hey Seb

The errors on all rev themes come from the videos inserted and the flash scripts. Those fancy scripts that call for either function wont validate and thats par for the course of using them. I even contacted Brian on the second theme I used because it said it was xhtml valid and yet there were all these errors. He said its the videos and there is nothing you can do about it, unless you want to remove them entirely. Other then that if you set it up and edited it properly the rev themes validate

Those folders can use either php or html as long as they have not been indexed with the php. What I mean is that the wordpress creates each of your posts and pages using .php, however because each file has its own folder(although you cant see it on your server), the file can be switched to .htm, .html and .php without having to do any redirects as long as the ext has not been indexed.

Personally we are now using php on one site so we can call for related news articles to have links on our review pages.

The external file can be created in frontpage/dreamweaver or any other editing program including notepad. Its really no different than making a site with an html template and thats all your really doing. Once you start removing all that code for those plugins and features that are there and anything else thats not necessary your left with an html template. Then simply add the content or whatever you plan on doing using your editing program and upload like you would a static site.

Once that is done go back into the wordpress part of your site and make sure your navigation is the same throuhgout.