What website CMS system would you suggest?
-
Hello all! Thanks everyone for making my experience with SEOMOZ so far a great one. There are some really awesome folks here answering questions and we obviously have a great community here.
Question
We host our sites on dedicated servers with Cpanel. We have a new project that will require that users can log in and create a free Website on a sub domain eg.
abc.mainwebsite.com or example.mainwebsite.com
So the end user will be able to provide their choice of a sub domain.
Then the user can create their website, upload their logo and so on for the free site. (Content management controlled by them)
What software would you suggest we use for providing this free service?
Thank everyone!
-
Thank you for a well thought out answer. I look forward to repaying the favor.
We are researching the options you presented and I will post the results here once we know which software we choose.
-
Is this for social networking, business, blogging?
MU Wordpress
Elgg
Joomla (maybe but it can get complicated)
-
From your brief explanation, I'm not sure that you can achieve what you want without utilising a more robust framework than WordPress or Joomla or other "open source" solutions - maybe Silverstripe ...you need a fair amount of System Admin "grunt", UI controls and security to achieve what you are describing in a scalable size.
If you do head down the Open Source path, then WordPress is the way to go - they have a "below the radar" Multisite solution that provides Network Administration functionality - you can find out more here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network
You will also need to add in:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/multisite-user-management/
Again, this is really a "work around" for multiple WP sites...I'm still not convinced that this will really deliver what you need...
Hope that helps...
-
Definitely Wordpress, themes are in-expensive, and plug ins are very easy to manipulate, server side.
-
Wordpress or Joomla strike me as the obvious choices. Both are free and really easy to use.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What type of website is best for seo.
I need a new website for my health insurance business. What type is best for SEO? Many thanks
Web Design | | laurentjb0 -
Any second opinions as to why our organic search website traffic hasn't recovered from website rebrand (domain change, website redesign)?
I am hoping to see if anyone in the Moz community would be able to help troubleshoot or lend any advice on a major organic search traffic issue we've been experiencing over the last 8 months. In a nutshell, we decided our ~4.5-year-old business needed to undergo a rebrand in October 2015. After changing domains & redesigning our website (more below), our search-driven sessions have dropped 20% in 2016 v.s. 2015. We made quite a few on-site modifications (with some success) post-redesign but are still deep in a rut and not sure what more we can do to recover. I've listed my theories below as to why we're still suffering this hit. If anyone could weigh in on these and/or share any other troubleshooting ideas, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it (and owe you a lunch/beverage of your choice the next time I'm in your city!). ****Backlinks - despite our efforts to 301 all links, I sense we have lost many backlinks. According to Open Site Explorer, our old domain has 1,172 backlinks (some from some very authoritative pages domains), 1,068 of which are passing link equity. In contrast, our new domain has 367 backlinks, 321 are passing link equity, and very few overlap with our old domain. Domain Age - we may have lost much of our reputation with Google as our new domain is much younger than our old domain (1-year-old v.s. 5.5 years old). Domain Name - although I thought to have common keywords in one's domain was a myth, I am now questioning that belief. Our old domain contained a popular, topical keyword and our new domain is derived from a term that is topical, but very uncommon. New URLs - our developer has insisted all links were moved to the new domain, but I have a hunch they were not. When conducting a "site search" (i.e. "site:websitename.com"), the new domain returns 7,740 results. Prior to our switch, a site search with the old domain yielded 30,000+ results. 404s - we found and fixed 100-200 404'd links after the domain switch. We still see a few pop-up today and I'm wondering if this is a red flag in Google's eyes. For a little more background too, here are the nitty gritty details with a rough timeline: Pre-October 12, 2015 - registered new domain and designed the new website on Wordpress, while researching a range of articles and resources for a successful site migration (e.g. this and this Moz guide). October 12, 2015 - flipped the switch on the website design, domain, minor content reorganization, and social handles. We announced the change to our audience via an article, newsletter, and social; informed Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) of the new address, 301'd all links from the old to the new domain, and submitted new sitemap in GWT. October 12 - 16, 2015 - traffic is normal, everything seems to be okay. October 17, 2015 - search traffic drops by 54% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. October 26, 2015 - search traffic rises, so now only down by 30% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. November/December 2015 - re-added numerous elements from the old website such as category, tag, and page pagination and a few sidebar modules that linked to other important pages and tags. Search traffic rises slightly in November (down 27% year-on-year), dips again in December (down 31% year-on-year). January 2016 - today (June 17, 2016) - we published more content on a daily basis and search traffic fluctuates around the 20% versus the same period in 2015. January 2016 - down 23% year-on-year February 2016 - down 17% year-on-year March 2016 - down 20% year-on-year April 2016 - down 21% year-on-year May 2016 - down 21% year-on-year June 2016 (until the 17th) - down 23% year-on-year Thank you all in advance for your time and help, please let me know if you have any questions!
Web Design | | nick490 -
SEO strategy for UK / US websites
Hi, We currently have a UK-focused site on www.palmatin.com ; We're now targeting the North American market as well, but the contents of the site need to be different from UK. One option was to create another domain for the NA market but I assume it would be easier to rank with palmatin.com though. What would you suggest to do, if a company is targeting two different countries in the same language? thanks, jaan
Web Design | | JaanMSonberg0 -
Is it important to keep your website home index page simple to rank better?
My website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ markets holiday cottages and it's grown from my own singular cottage into a small letting agency and I used to rank at best number 3 for the short tailed keywords like Whitby holiday cottages with its drop-down to position 10 on Google.co.uk. So this week I was looking for a UK business to help me improve my rankings and the first thing they said was my home page is detrimental with the listing too many conflicting info with it advertising all 12 properties on it. They suggested a door entry page into the site keeping it simple but when I run it through the analysing tool here on Moz for "Whitby holiday cottages" as an example it came out looking okay. I do the usual things of title tags and meta descriptions for my keywords etc any suggestions or advice would be very welcome thank you Alan
Web Design | | WhitbyHolidayCottages0 -
New Website Redesign: Any Design Comments or SEO Suggestions?
Hi! We recently launched our new website after MONTHS of work. Now that it is live, we are looking to fine tune the design and SEO efforts. This is our new website. And for reference, this is our old website. Any and all comments on design and SEO would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help! Mike
Web Design | | Mike.Goracke0 -
What is your mobile website strategy?
Do you have one where you deliver the same content to the desktop (rich user experience) as well as mobile websites? In our case we provide content to www.domain.com, m.domain.com (for smart phones not using our native apps) and mo.domain.com (for older feature phones). We found that in some instances Google favours the indexing of our mobile content over our desktop site and we have now started pointing canonical content to our desktop site (i.e. to www.domain.com). Possible downside is that Google might not present desktop indexed content on mobile devices. This is not really a big issue, as currently Google presents mobile content for desktop searches. A better approach would have been responsive design, but we feel that dedicated apps will rule the mobile device space and desktop-websites will evolve to allow content to be displayed on all devices (we consider our m.domain.com and mo.domain.com stop-gaps to overcome legacy device issues and bandwidth limitations). What is your mobile device strategy with regards to SEO?
Web Design | | MagicDude4Eva0 -
Google Penalizing Websites that Have Contact Forms at Top of Website Page?
Has anyone else heard of Google penalizing websites for having their contact forms located at the top of the website? For example http://www.austintenantadvisors.com/ Look forward to hearing other thoughts on this.
Web Design | | webestate1 -
Will Switching To a CMS System Help Rankings
I would like to transform our 400 page website to a CMS system. We rank failrly well for most of our keywords and not so much for others. Our website is currently optimized with lots of unique content, but we need to transform to a more professional website with lots of options. Will doing this transformation affect our rankings if Redirects are correct ? Any recommedations for a Easy CMS that is very SEO Friendly?
Web Design | | hfranz0