Using WordPress As main reseller site?

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Posted by EssexMedia, 06-13-2011, 10:43 AM
Hi all, I was just wondering what people's thoughts were on using WordPress as the platform for the main reseller hosting site? I've already invested a lot of time integrating the WP theme into WHMCS and it looks & works fine but I've been reading a lot of articles lately that suggest WordPress can be very slow with lots of users ...and being an optimistic sort of guy I'm expecting lots of users The other option I suppose, is to apply the WP theme to a standard PHP/html site on the main domain for my main hosting site and install WordPress, (for the blogging functions) & WHMCS on subdomains , (domain/blog, domain/clients) - which would effectively give me 3 different sites with seamless integration ...but would this be more efficient than just using WP & WHMCS? -anyone have any thoughts/opinions on this? Mark.
Posted by tiger_host, 06-13-2011, 11:37 AM
People will know it's a CMS and wont respect your company very much.It would be the best to built your own custom site or hire professionals to do it for you.
Posted by Yujin, 06-13-2011, 11:39 AM
Are you serious man with the highlighted item? Care to explain further?
Posted by hclloveh, 06-13-2011, 11:40 AM
I recommened a CSS/XHTML template, so you can be index on Google, search indexed and many SEO machine found so easy. Also, you can easy intergration it to WHMCS without pay for a company to do that. Check my site (see signature) to understand. My WHMCS was intergrated complete by me (http://manage.uphost.info)
Posted by Yujin, 06-13-2011, 11:41 AM
There's absolutely nothing wrong if you use WP...(who cares care bears). You are providing web hosting services not web design and development. Make your service reliable and I don't care even you have .html
Posted by tiger_host, 06-13-2011, 11:49 AM
All I'm saying is would people rather sign up with a company who's site content is managed by CMS or a custom website? CMS has it's advantages and disadvantages as well.For example:When a client wants to sign up with a company,the first he/she will look is at the website,is it professionally done or not? A website talks a lot when it comes to company's reputation.I am not saying it will totally ruin the reputation of the company,but it will decrease it.Thats just my thought.There are a couple of very nice sites I've seen,and if i were a client i would definitely sign up,upon reviewing the company first of course.
Posted by Hsunami, 06-13-2011, 11:50 AM
I think tiger_host is confusing CMS with pre-made templates. Absolutely nothing wrong with running WP as the backend to your website. @tiger_host, you can still have a custom designed site powered by Wordpress.
Posted by ZackaryP, 06-13-2011, 11:57 AM
I use Joomla and I think my site looks great for that. The up side to a CMS as it is easy to update your content and to add new content. Also with Joomla there is a tool called JWHMCS that keeps your WHMCS design up to date with joomla. So I do not have to edit the WHMCS when I make changes. Also Joomla is very flexible with over 1,000 plugins. Hope this helps you! - Zack
Posted by hclloveh, 06-13-2011, 12:15 PM
Make a beautiful and clean, profesional design 'll help you catch many clients easy to understand, so I vote for a custom design.
Posted by netcraftindia, 06-13-2011, 12:24 PM
Yes you are right with lots of visitors wordpress sites gets a slow and many of your user may have low internet speed. It will be better to use div and less images to load your website faster and more user friendly for better Return on Investment.
Posted by EssexMedia, 06-13-2011, 04:38 PM
Thanks for all the replies guys, I do understand what you're saying about the importance of having a well designed site, I forgot to add that I'm using a really nice premium WP theme, not one of the free ones that have had thousands of downloads - I know that other sites may be using the same template eventually but I think that it's the content that really makes a site stand out as much as the design, and the top-end themes are so configurable that no two versions of the same template would look exactly alike anyway. I also don't think customers would be put off by a company using a cms as a site platform, many large companies use a cms of some sort whether it be wordpress, Prestashop, SilverStripe etc but they have vast arrays of dedicated servers to cope with many users where as I am just a reseller on a shared server so I was/am a bit concerned about how much WordPress would slow things down. Even if I did have a standard html site for the main site, I would still want WordPress on the blog domain simply for the ease of use for adding posts & extra functionality etc, I know I could easily write a DB driven bit for a blog on an html site, I've done this before for client sites but then later on they may want e-commerce functionality or a customer testimonial module and I would effectively be re-inventing the wheel each time spending weeks coding php modules that are already available as easy plugins for WordPress - I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this? -maybe this conversation has now gone beyond the scope of my original post - it's just that I'm seeing more & more sites being driven by WordPress so surly all of these people can't be wrong, can they? As for my original post - I guess I just need to decide if I want to maintain 3 sites instead of 2!
Posted by Forward Web, 06-13-2011, 05:07 PM
In short, as long as it looks professional and doesn't look like a typical word-press blog, I dont see anything wrong with it. Personally im not a big fan of wordpress, but at the end of the day its all about what works best for you. If you feel like wordpress is the best solution for you at the moment, then by all means give it a shot (you will quickly know if it was a good idea or not).
Posted by EssexMedia, 06-22-2011, 06:41 AM
Hi all, Thanks for all your comments. After searching through various forums for the past week I've come across many discussions about using WP as a main website/cms and read lots of really good arguments for & against it. For web designers, I can really see the advantage of using it as a platform for client sites because you can totally white-label the admin backend, using your own logos etc and hide any unnessessary options leaving only the edit/add pages & posts if you want, making it super-easy for non-techie people to edit/add content. I suppose it depends on the size of the site you need - I think a lot of the other CMS's are a bit overkill for small sites, say 5 or 6 pages. ...but WP does produce some awful code!, loads of styles mixed in with the html As for my decision? -I've decided to go with the static option for the main hosting site but I loved the WP template so much and as I've said previously I'm graphically challenged! so I took all the WP bits out of the theme and applied it to the html site and then integrated the same design into WHMCS. Happy days. Mark.
Posted by Hsunami, 06-22-2011, 08:21 AM
Glad you came to a decision. I want to point out that this statement is not accurate. WP does not produce the awful code, it was the designer/developer who created that theme.
Posted by EssexMedia, 06-22-2011, 11:59 AM
Sorry WickedFactor, that was a flippant statement to make & I didn't mean any disrespect to the WP community.
Posted by Uzii, 06-22-2011, 12:41 PM
What is wordpress suitable and not suitable for????
Posted by bittraffix, 06-22-2011, 01:03 PM
no. i think people won't mind as long as you provide great services. and wordpress is good for seo. this will help you rise among the hosting companies in search results.
Posted by Hsunami, 06-22-2011, 01:11 PM
Oh, no worries. I just wanted to clarify so people don't get the wrong impression. This isn't accurate. WP is simply a tool and by itself, has nothing to do with SEO. It's about how you perform your on-page optimizations, just like static HTML, and incorporate that into the WP theme.
Posted by Uzii, 06-22-2011, 01:14 PM
Just curious...what is wordpress good for...a small to medium website...online magazine and blogs???
Posted by Hsunami, 06-22-2011, 01:22 PM
WP was originally meant to be a blogging platform, however, it has now grown to become much more - a complete CMS and people have been able to customize and use it as such. I don't think the question should be directed at WP in certain, but instead, what is a CMS good for? For small to medium websites, sure but I don't believe a CMS is necessary, unless simply for the ease of managing content. Blogs and online publications could definitely benefit from a CMS, especially with multiple writers, collaborators, editors, etc. A CMS is simply a platform that manages content in a simple interface without having to dig through and edit HTML files directly and individually. I can't imagine running any content heavy sites without using a CMS as a back-end.
Posted by Chris - Whitesystem, 06-22-2011, 02:15 PM
We had a plain and boring html/php site and wanted to have all the flexibility offered by Joomla and IP.Content, Then we and Byethost are completely lost according to you statement
Posted by Uzii, 06-22-2011, 02:28 PM
I have been using WP for quite a long time...and this thread made my head spin for some reason...can you also tell me for what WP is not suitable...
Posted by EthernetServers, 06-23-2011, 03:16 AM
I wouldn't use WordPress for your site, I would stick with using plain HTML. The more software you installed, the higher the server load will be and the higher the chance that your site will get compromised, this could be for many reasons, 0 day exploits, outdated software versions, etc. On my web hosting company, the only software I have installed on the site is WHMCS (for clients/billing), the other pages are W3 validated HTML pages, so I'm pretty confident about the hosting site's security.
Posted by ModelWebHost, 06-23-2011, 04:32 AM
Although wordpress is the most frequently used CMS but it will not truly represent a company as a professional one and also sometime it will take much time to be loaded as compared to HTML/CSS. So, it will more better to design a custom built HTML/CSS website instead of wordpress.
Posted by rickmeister, 06-25-2011, 11:54 PM
We currently use WordPress, and it has held up very well, even when the site gets busy. We're not a super huge web host, but WordPress gets the job done.

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