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General Discussion

Posted by cristiano Moura dos Santos
cristiano Moura dos Santos
495 Points

WORDPRESS or HTML template?

I am putting together a photography business and I have chosen a template that I liked to work on, but I have a couple of questions that perhaps you could help me with before jumping into a new training module. This template (http://nonus.html.themewoodmen.com/) has HTML and WORDPRESS versions, but I am a bit confused on which one should I choose, as my skills in web dev are very little as now. I have the domain and hosting that I purchased already via godaddy, and I have it set up on wordpress dashboard already.

Questions:

1 - What would be the difference between HTML and wordpress as templates as far as admin and dashboard management?

2 - Which one I would have less challenges in making images to load faster?

3 - Which one is easier to administrate?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

Chris

1 Answer

Andrew McCormick
Andrew McCormick
17,730 Points
Andrew McCormick
Andrew McCormick
17,730 Points

Cristiano, 1 - The difference between the two is that one version is static HTML. So it's just straight up HTML, CSS, and Javascript. If you want to make a change, you open up a text editor and make changes directly to the page you want to change. With the WordPress version, you can install it as a theme for a WordPress installation and therefore make changes through the WordPress admin area. You modify your pages through WordPress pages, you can easily add a blog and use the WP blogging system, as well as use any of the thousands of free plugins.

With the HTML version there is no admin area or dashboard. With the WordPress version, you get to use WordPress. According to your needs, it's up to you which one you'd prefer.

2- IMO I would say WordPress would be less of a challenge. I'm not saying that you couldn't do it or even do it better without WordPress, but I'm saying that WordPress would be less of a challenge. There are many great gallery plugins for WordPress available that have all the necessary tools to handle your galleries and image loading properly. Of course, there's also a lot of poor ones as well, so make sure you read up on reviews for a system that you choose

3- Again, a lot of this is subjective. I would say WordPress. My main client is photographers and I almost always have them on a WordPress site unless there's a special circumstance. If you don't want to look at code then WP is the way to go.

If you want to stick to being a designer, then I would say to get the WordPress install and be sure to follow the Treehouse WordPress track on building your theme so you can understand how it all works.

If you want to be more on the developer end and want to learn step by step, then I would suggest getting the HTML, working it for a little while and then when you have the site like you want it, try converting it to a WordPress theme.

Again, a lot of this is subjective and your mileage may vary.