Replacing WordPress with a free website template
In my ongoing online re-organization work, one of many projects is to reduce the number of domains and minor websites I manage in order to use more time and energy on a few high-priority websites. Several of my sites are non-public and used only for specific purposes, such as developing and testing free WordPress themes or showcase a custom template, theme or marketing idea for a client. It is useful to have a separate development site for WordPress themes, but impractical to have six such sites because of all the extra maintenance work it takes to keep the sites up to date.
I also have a couple of small and public sites that don't have any actual purpose. One such site was andreasviklund.se where I made an attempt at writing a Swedish blog some time ago, only to give up on that plan after a few days. Instead, I ended up using the site to promote a couple of Swedish WordPress themes and a free MP3 album with 12 short and instrumental songs that could be used as ringtones on mobile phones.
My .se site had about 50 visitors per day in average over the last 6 months, despite the lack of updates. The themes (which are hosted by the official Swedish WordPress portal WP-Support.se) were downloaded in 1.800 copies in the same period, while the ringtomes were downloaded in approximately 7.000 copies. Those are actually surprisingly high numbers. But compared to the stats of this website and the amount of maintenance that every WordPress-based website needs over time, it was a lot of work for a very limited effect.
With the Swedish blog idea abandoned, the Swedish themes hosted successfully by WP-Support (where I used to provide free theme support during last summer - something I will need to take up again) and the ringtones soon being included in the big music collection I mentioned in my previous post, I could not come up with any good reason to keep the WordPress site online. I decided to take it down and replace it with a single template-based website with contact information and links to my high-priority websites. I decided to go with my andreas07 template.
Setting up the template site
The process was really simple. I used andreas07 in its original form, changed the language to Swedish, removed everything that I wouldn't need (including the navigation menu) and added my own content. I also changed the default link color fron red to blue, and added a photo in the left sidebar. It took me only 10 minutes to create the page from the template. I know it doesn't look very pretty, but it will definitely do the job for now. I can always improve the design at some later point.
Adjusting the new site to work with the history of the old site took a little bit longer since I wanted to do it in a proper way. Before I deleted the WordPress site, I made sure to copy the generated XML sitemap. I created a custom .htaccess file where I made manual 301 redirects for the URLs in the sitemap, to make sure that people who try to reach the deleted pages of the WordPress site are automatically redirected to index.html instead of seeing an error message. I also created a separate "Error 404" file which I made into the default 404 document in the .htaccess file. And finally I added a rewrite feature that removes the "www." from the address if a visitor has entered it.
With the template-based site and the .htaccess adjustments ready, I uploaded the new site and tested it live. It worked as intended and validated without any errors, and after saving a last backup copy of the WordPress site I deleted it. The new andreasviklund.se is now live. Feel free to take a look and comment on my first own andreas07-based website!
The re-organization continues tonight with an upgrade of andreasviklund.com and the two Swedish humor blogs Tjuvlyssnat and Tjuvtittat to WordPress v2.7. There is still a lot of work left to do, but I'm on it and it feels very good since it has been needed for quite some time now..
Comments can be only posted for 14 days after the post date. If you have comments about an older post such as this one, feel free to send me an e-mail!
Comment from Angela
Time: January 8, 2009, 22:27
Yeah, I like the look of it, too. Don't know how it was before, but it looks very nice now. :)
Comment from Thomas
Time: January 11, 2009, 1:19
andreasviklun.se does look stylish… I don't understand why you say otherwise. Also, 301 redirects in an .htaccess is crazy.
Comment from earnblogger
Time: January 11, 2009, 21:01
Thanks for your insights - I couldn't agree more that it's stylish. :)
Comment from Andreas
Time: January 11, 2009, 22:24
Thanks! I based the "not pretty" comment on the fact that the original template looks a bit more interesting thanks to the fact that it has a bit more color than the site I made from it. As most people who are familiar with my templates know, I like simple designs. But when a design is made from large areas of solid white and/or grey, I usually want to put something very colorful in it to make the design more visually appealing. The andreas07 template is a good example of this, and so is andreas01. In fact, this site shows the point too. The new andreasviklund.se doesn't include any such color, but I will most likely add it sometime in the future.
Comment from Web Designer
Time: January 15, 2009, 0:03
I fully understand your situation. I have beeen trying to maintian 3 or 4 blogs only along with part time support form a colleague of mine. This itself has been so time consuming that I have been thinking of reducing to 2 wordpress blogs. Most of my time however goes in writing articles. I also have an active SEO strategy for my web design company's website which is not a blog but a standard CMS. Compared to a normal site, I find wordpress requires much less time to maintian, especially since SEO is pretty much taken care of automatically in wordpress.
Comment from Richie Murray
Time: January 18, 2009, 22:59
Hi Andreas, I successfully used your andreas02 web site template again, so I've sent you another donation via PayPal. Thanks for your work on this particular template which, for me, is the 'cleanest' design in your collection. Kind regards, Richie.
Comment from Elaine
Time: January 20, 2009, 9:42
Your site is really very nice and stylish, I think, it is a very good idea to replace WordPress with a free website template, because WP needs a lot of time to maintain it, I also have the same problem with my blog: I spend too much time on it, one day I even decided to close it, but now, I think, I do the same things. I understood, that it doesn't take too much time and doesn't need some special skills, so thanks for this useful information.
Comment from Francesca
Time: January 7, 2009, 14:27
Why do you say the new andreasviklud.se doesn't look very pretty? It does and it is very stylish.