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I have to set up a small website, it's a porfolio for a design company with just the standard sections: home, about us, services, portfolio and contact. That's it, no blog, no dynamic sections, no big deal.

I thought I could do it using WordPress, but I think it maybe an overkill. On the one hand, WP maybe useful for a couple of interesting plugins that could save me some time, like sitemap generator and better SEO results, and also for in-browser editing of the posts. But on the other hand, it's harder to do the things "the wordpress way", like using wp_enqueue_script to load the scripts and things like that. Also, sections are not like posts, each one is different, not to mention the homepage, so the "generality" that WordPress could bring me is somehow useless.

What do you think?

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I don't think it's overkill. IMHO even a small site can benefit from running WordPress.

World wide web is a very dynamic environment and your site should stick to this flow.

You can keep your site up to date when it comes to terms of usability, security and other standarts just by keeping your WordPress core updated.

I'd expect no troubles with speed/performance with such a small project.

And of course it is very scalable for any future client needs like Wyck has mentioned.

home, about us, services, portfolio and contact ... no dynamic sections

In my experience often portfolio is a dynamic type of content. Your use case can be different of course.

One more thing: time spent learning how to make WP fit your needs is an investment that will come back to you ( probably during your next project :)

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  • Thanks for your answer, I'll stick with WordPress then. As you've said, who knows if the client will want to set up a blog or something like that anytime :) – José Tomás Tocino Jan 10 '11 at 13:11
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One thing you should consider is making your site scalable. If in the future you have any plans to expand or add a blog, etc, working with a static site can be troublesome and you often just end up re-doing it from scratch. With wordpress this isn't the case it is very easy to change themes and add content even for smaller sites.

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Lets get it down to definitions. WordPress is:

  1. Content management system.
  2. That was historically developed for blogging.

So:

  1. Would content at that site need to be managed? If so - how often and by whom (with what level of technical experience)?
  2. Is there a possibility that site will need blog some time in the future?

If not - consider something simpler, personally I'd look for one of those tiny CMS engines that don't require database.

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There's really no definitive answer. But in favour of Wordpress I'd say:

  • Sites tend to get bigger overtime even if it's not forseen at the beginning so you'll be well placed for that with Wordpress,
  • If you explain to them the benefits that having a blog and more content can bring in terms of SEO and visitor engagement they may well decide to increase the size anyway,
  • Probably the main point though is that it'll be much easier for you to hand the site over to them to manage themselves as the Wordpress backend is easy for the novice to pick up.
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If it is going to stay at that four page, definitely don't use WordPress. WordPress requires databases and its heavy for a such site.

Do a simple static html. It will load fast and won't use a database.

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