Go Back To Plain HTML Am I Nuts?

I tell you, over the last year I've had so many problems with iframes, injection and all kinds of malware. Actually this week I had 4 of my sites listed as "Attack sites". I have all the security plugs installed etc with wordpress. Suckers are even getting into my .htacccess and changing it. I have about 10 sites only about 40 pages each. It would be so much easier just to do sites in plain ole html again and not have to worry about any of this. I just spent a couple hours getting everything back up and running with stock themes etc.

Perhaps I am just ranting because i'm pissed off I got hacked AGAIN. But I'm SOOO ready to just do these pages in plain html again with some WYSIWYG editor.

Thing is, will I lose link juice if I redirect my pages from the standard wordpress format http://www.mysite.com/cars to http://www.mysite.com/cars.html ? Or perhaps I can just make a .htcaccess to remove the .html part from my pages?

Ugh.. freaking frustrated. Venting I guess... I have enough anxiety issues as it is. Then I have to login to statcounter and see my sites have zero visits and are attack sites.

BTW, they are putting this shit in my header:


I remove everything from the domain, reinstall everything and bam 1 week later its there again.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a plain html site.
I love them, they look 100% better then a WP site and if you know your shit
they still rank.

Install Wordfence plugin and scan all your default pages. Chance are they injected more code on your site and it replicates every once in a while. You need to clean all your installs.

This happened to me a few weeks ago and most of my index.php/html pages were infected. Along with readme files, config files and htaccess.

Wordfence found all the injected code for me and I haven't been bothered since.

My only complaint with HTML sites is that I'm lazy, if I had a good collection of templates and snippets to paste in to do it quickly I'd stop using WP.

Thing I do hate about the html sites(prob my own fault for not knowing how to do it properly) is keeping everything lined up. Sometimes some of the stuff gets off center because I didn't lock it etc. Annoys the hell out of me to no end just being 1 hair off lol.

oxonbeef said:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a plain html site.
I love them, they look 100% better then a WP site and if you know your shit
they still rank.

Click to expand...

Why would they look better? HTML sites are fine, but you can do anything with Wordpress that you can do with HTML since it's just a CMS. I used to be an HTML only kind of person, but Wordpress is the easiest way to manage content that I've found so I've stuck with them.

Like many things, you can be better at one or the other but the tools themselves are impartial and highly flexible.

For better Wordpress security:

-ALWAYS stay updated to the latest version. If you're worried about it breaking your theme/plugins, keep a no-access demo site for testing before live.
-If this has happened more than once, it's time for a fresh Wordpress installation.
-Make sure your directory permissions aren't writable by other users
-Prevent htaccess access by other users
-Every plugin opens up a door for a potential attack (i.e., timthumb which was used in most themes and became a total disaster)
-it takes more than security plugins to make a site secure

I used to really pull my hair out with straight HTML because I'd be flipping between different browsers and finding that my pages looked VERY different on them. As an example, if I was doing something and was trying to create 3 columns, on IE it might show up right, but on Netscape it would wrap the 3rd column... so I'd play for hours cause every time I'd get it right on NS, IE would suddenly look like CRAP. And then after all of that, the pages even looked different on the same browser, but different versions!

I very much like that in recent years that XHTML has helped with cross browser similarity ALOT so overall, things look much better as long as you don't get TOO complex.

Honestly, I'm half tempted to create some templates for myself and go back to straight HTML. I could do some very nice CSS templates and mainly change the header and footer graphics and then insert the HTML for each page. I'd have to change the .htaccess to 'process' each page though cause I like to use includes for things like menus, post lists and footer links. (we used to make the pages .shtml but many people think that looks strange - so I just edit the .htaccess to look for the include snippets).

The great thing about going back to straight HTML is that you are REALLY in control of exactly what is posted on each page - and evaluate your KW density based on that. I have heard of people that calculated their KW density based on their post alone and then with the tags, other posts, tag cloud, categories and more found that they were over 10%!

OldSalt said:

The great thing about going back to straight HTML is that you are REALLY in control of exactly what is posted on each page - and evaluate your KW density based on that. I have heard of people that calculated their KW density based on their post alone and then with the tags, other posts, tag cloud, categories and more found that they were over 10%!

Click to expand...

I think that the issue is that Wordpress users are no longer expected to control their own content. Like you said, it's really easy to just find a random theme, slap it on your site, and just customize the header. That's what 95% of Wordpress users do, and it's OK unless you need complete control (most people don't).

If you are serious about your SEO, I think that you need to be able to code your own theme from scratch. It offers all the benefits of normal HTML pages in that you control every single thing that shows up on your page, but it has the added benefit of being dynamic and CMS driven. I think it's the PHP that scares people away, but I was pretty much completely new to PHP when I made my first theme. Easy stuff!

The problem is that the average person never looks under the hood of their WP themes. They figure if they look good, they run good--which is usually not the case!

Even Thesis, one of the most respected SEO themes, leaves a lot desired when it comes to its ugly insides.

No in a matter of fact Iam in the process of going from html to wordpress/php. Google want you add content Iam tired of playing with css each time I want to add new page.

I guess I'm just different. Even when I've tried going static... the pages end up loaded with all sorts of includes, php, mysql calls, etc. So I just say screw it and go right to WP unless it's to be a very very small page.

I've been working with WP since 1.5 and have only had a few installations exploited. Reason: Poor password and/or old version.

Hack free WP suggestions in order of importance imo.

1. Complex password
2. Keep on top of updates
3. Don't use "admin" for any admin users
4. Don't use wp_ as the table prefix
5. Install one of the many security plugins

I'm hearing you - half my sites are plain old html - and nothing ever goes wrong. It takes a little longer to build than a WP, but then you can just forget them.

Since I am using Better WP security plugin, I have no similar problems. I sincerely recommend that plugin.

I have dozens of website using old html. I prefer it, just takes longer to build.

Having too many of the same style websites, leaves a big footprint.

Yes. Personally I'd drop the whole wordpress thing. I can't stand those sites.

Your site not looking correctly in various browsers when using HTML is not a valid excuse, because ALL your styling of the page should be done via proper, valid, cross browser CSS.