Should I switch our site to WordPress?

[Bohak]

We started a newspaper about four years ago and in the hopes of giving our artists, musicians and writers more exposure and getting more interaction from our audience, Im thinking it might be good to convert our site to a blogsite. Here is our current site:
Welcome to The Beachside Resident

I came across this site Drift Magazine and I liked the jukebox and built in galleries that will make the online version of our newspaper more interesting and easier to manage.

I guess I'd like some feedback as to whether this is a good idea. Should I make part of it a blog and keep part of it html? Are blogs as easy to market to search engines? Is it true that once you start to get 10,000 hits per day wordpress gets bogged down? Having no experience with blogs, will I have trouble building and designing one?

Thank you.

[incrediblehelp]

If it makes your life easier in the long run and the website more visitor friendly then do it.

[Bohak]

Thanks.

But I hope I get more feedback.

Our site contains quite a bit of information. If I knew it was going to make my life and our audience's life easier I wouldnt have posted this question. The question is, is it a good idea for our company to make this transition? Like I said, I have no experience with wordpress.

I'll edit the question.


I came across this site Drift Magazine and I liked the jukebox and built in galleries that would make the online version of our newspaper more interesting and easier to manage if wordpress is stable and as user friendly as it claims to be.

[sushil]

If it makes your life easier in the long run and the website more visitor friendly then do it.

Basically you don't do to swith your website to wordpress but as the word of incrediblehep he is right if it make you life easier then you should need to do it.

[Bohak]

My question:
I came across this site Drift Magazine and I liked the jukebox and built in galleries that would make the online version of our newspaper more interesting and easier to manage if wordpress is stable and as user friendly as it claims to be.

The answer:
If it makes your life easier in the long run and the website more visitor friendly then do it.

Thats incredible.

Thanks anyway.

[Chuckmiser]

I have been debating this as well I use blogger hosted on my site but some of the Web 2.0 gurus are saying that you need the additional funtionality of word press.

Question is it worth changing for, or work with the current and hope that they will catch up?

[Bohak]

Yea,
Im not sure what to do. I thought this would be the place to get more info on it but I really got nothing except "if it makes it easier, than do it".

Ive noticed alot of sites are being built with wordpress type templates, and it seems like a good move, I just would like to know the pros and cons from someone familiar with my situation. Im sure there are alot of newspaper publishers that are in this same situation. The newspaper industry has been taking a dive for a while now, but by focusing more on their online presence, publishers are seeing an increase in their audiences. I would like to revamp our site as well, but before I do, I would like to get some advice on the best road to take.

If anyone knows of a forum that has more info on this topic let me know.
Thanks.

[incrediblehelp]

Bohak people are not going to make business decisions for you on SEO forum, nor should you take business advice as gospel on SEO forum.

[rizzoid]

Joomla! (Joomla!) is free, pretty easy to setup, and may have more serious functioning as far as users access and subscriptions. Get the Community Builder add-on and you'd be very powerful, very quickly. Drupal is also an option, but a little harder to use than Joomla.
-r

[bj]

The search engines love wordpress sites, and the RSS and other features can really help get a site into the early returns on the SEs. You can import all the content and manage it through the wordpress interface, and not have to keep part in static html.

Also, of all the systems I template for (including Joomla, Drupal, Modx, Movable Type, TextPattern, etc) Wordpress is, without a doubt, the easiest to use and extend.