It's true. And it's time. At least not 100% of the time any more. Business will go on as usual of course, but I want something that isn't business as usual. So this kind of falls into the personal advice department, since I've decided it's time to do up a new "personal" type site.

I'm tired of all marketing, all hype, all commercialism, all ecommerce, all promotion, all SEO all the time. I'm tired of being concerned about Page Rank, about what Google likes, about what Yahoo likes and about what MSN will like. In fact, I don't care if anyone likes it. :p

The problem is that part will need to be static and while I don't mind hand-rolling a bit of it, most really should be dynamic; and never having personally put together a dynamic site, I'm not sure how to proceed or what steps to take. It'll be better to start out right than to have to tear the whole thing apart and start over again.The preliminaries in mind go something like this:


Static pages in the root or a subdirectory or two that can be added by whim or at random
Articles
Tutorials
A blog that's sort of business related but not commercial
A personal journal with whatever I feel like writing about whenever I feel like it
A directory with pretty much of a niche flavor to it that can have personal comments put in at will
A links section with categorical links to some topical resources, preferably with commenting capability
A page with some selected reciprocal links or ones that don't belong anyplace else
Rants that don't belong anyplace else. Definitely rants. Especially rants. :D


The main question is whether it's possible to use different scripts for different sections on one site, since there a few simple ones that would fit the bill for different areas, or whether there's a whole_site solution that would be applicable for all those diffeent types of sections and topical areas. Obviously, there would have to be a navigational system set out with the proper directory structure and being technically challenged the simpler the better.

The other question is whether or not, if some static pages are put up to start out with and get it off the ground, if those will later on be able to be integrated within a dynamic section or directory without causing problems, particularly with search engine indexing..

Does this sound too complicated? Would it be best to just forget dynamic altogether and hand-roll the whole thing?

Added:
OK, one minor concession so it's altogether truthful, since I'm an honest woman. I have to admit to checking the PR of ODP categories already. :)

>I'm tired of all marketing, all hype, all commercialism, all ecommerce, all promotion, all SEO all the time. I'm tired of being concerned about Page Rank, about what Google likes, about what Yahoo likes and about what MSN will like. In fact, I don't care if anyone likes it.

Then you might as well give life up right now, what else is important?

> have to admit to checking the PR of ODP categories already.

Scratch that, you have risen like a pheonix from the ashes.

Are you a born again SEO :)

I find your post funny, in that I can relate from a different perspective. My company builds high end Web based applications, boring Web based apps that help keep businesses efficient and streamlined. I personally have been doing this since I started college but its what I live and breath. I am also tired of it, so I decided to start some of my own things.

- I have a blog that is pretty popular these days
- I am building tools for SEO community for free and some paid
- I have tons of new ideas I want to get done for internal projects

So what I am doing, is taking what I know best and using it for myself.

It seems like your tired of consulting for someone else, and that you want to consult for yourself. Can you go cold-turkey? I can't, but I am aiming at the 80/20 ratio. 80% consulting and 20% internal. As the internal stuff becomes profitable (I hope), more of my companies resources will be allocated to the internal and less to the consulting.

This is my current goal.

The main question is whether it's possible to use different scripts for different sections on one site, since there a few simple ones that would fit the bill for different areas

Yes.

or whether there's a whole_site solution that would be applicable for all those diffeent types of sections and topical areas. Obviously, there would have to be a navigational system set out with the proper directory structure and being technically challenged the simpler the better.

I've never heard of a whole-site solution that would encompass regular pages, a blog, etc.; that doesn't mean there isn't one.

My thought is that you might use SSI for your main template -- logo, navbar, bottom of the page stuff. This will make it 'way easier to update everything at once.

Of course, that means other problems when you're working on pages on your machine, but hey ... <grin>

The main question is whether it's possible to use different scripts for different sections on one site

Yes, you can do that, as long as all the scripts or applications are made to run on the same webserver and that they are not in any way conflicting with each other. However, in the long run it could potentially turn out to be a nightmare to maintain a website build that way (trust, I tried it :))

I would suggest you take a look around at the various content managing and publishing solutions that are available. Some of them will have all the functionality you need in one system and even if they don't it is often quite easy to write a custom modules.

The other question is whether or not, if some static pages are put up to start out with and get it off the ground, if those will later on be able to be integrated within a dynamic section or directory without causing problems, particularly with search engine indexing..

You have to think two steps ahead here in order to do this.

- First you need to find out what dynamic format you want to use later: PHP, ASP, JSP ??

- The static pages you put up have to use the same extension (ASP, JSP etc) as you will use later for your dyanamic content. The files will just have static HTML inside for now

- When you are ready to go dynamic you just add whatever server code you need to your files. As they already have the right extension for the webserver to understand them you are ready to go and can keep the indexing your "static" pages have already gained.


In regards to your last question I personally do not think you should roll it all out by hand - but then again, Im possesed with dynamic websites :) Joke aside, in my experience you can uptimize things so much better so much faster if you have a well thought out dynamic website. It will take you more time to initially get it up but in the long run I usually find it worth the hassle - from a content management and publishing point of view as well as SEO

Marcia, there's no need to reinvent the wheel or to spend a lot of time integrating software from different vendors. The more popular and robust content management systems either do the things you want to do out of the box (so to speak) or have third-party plugins that do them. I suggest going over to http://www.cmsmatrix.org and comparing a few of the packages that have been discussed here, like Mambo, Typo3, and Drupal - they all have options like forums, FAQ, link managers, photo galleries, blogs, etc. With any luck, at least one of them will have everything you need.