I need to build a site soon and I'm thinking whether to use just HTML/CSS clean design or WordPress or some custom fancy web application. Now, regardless of the purpose of the site do you think that plain HTML/CSS still has any point or would I be better off with some more powerful site? This is a general question.

Each has their merits, but I personally love designing WordPress sites with Artisteer.

I love WordPress but I have full control over HTML/CSS files. I guess I was asking how important is to have all those interactive options that HTML/CSS lacks of. By the way, Artisteer, what's that?

You still have full control over a Wordpress site. All these CMS platforms still use clean XHTML/CSS, with the exception that they also use PHP or some other serverside language. Of course, we are talking about a self hosted setup of Wordpress, not a wordpress.com account. And you will have control over every file in your theme, so you may write the XHTML/CSS however you like.

Writing a basic XHTML/CSS site would be too inconvenient in this day and age. If your site has a lot of articles, pages, and other content, it will take too much effort to update regularly. Not to mention the pain of making it SEO friendly. But if you use Wordpress, you can update everything from the admin are as easy as I'm typing this right now.

I would suggest installing Wordpress, and looking at the theme files. These are all the files you will need to edit, and they use clean XHTML/CSS.

Artisteer is design software that makes it super easy to design blogs and web templates in minutes - that can be exported to Blogger, Joomla, Wordpress and other CMS products.

I guess if you're deciding whether you shoudl have static pages in HTML or if you shoudl have a Blog, you need to ask the question - do you need a blog!

Our site (http://www.handsonwebhosting.com) is all static as the information doesn't update daily. If I was updating on a regular basis, then sure, a blog is handy for that

So you need to ask yourself the question of "do you need a blog" as that will determine the answers. What's in a blog that you really want/need.

I agree. You need to decide if you need the features of a CMS. I also have a static web site and don't plan to update the content very often. At some point I plan to add a blog, but I wanted to start with a quick static HTML/CSS site.

I'm a big fan of using XHTML/CSS as it allows you to watch the code carefully and ensure the website is as optimized as possible. By using a CMS it's always going to be slightly slower as there's allot of PHP for the server to process.

Jack

I absolutely believe for your site to rank high in search engines today, it has to have a pulse. I routinely see static sites sliding backwards in ranking, while socially connected sites gain more traffic.

Personally, I open a text editor and write html from scratch. I've had sites that experienced around a half million hits monthly.

Point: Most people aren't concerned and don't know the difference what coding was used to produce your web pages.

Good graphics and layout are most important in my opinion. I've learned that "pretty things" still attract people. Just focus on good, clean design but make sure your pages don't take too long to load. A good size for your main page including graphics should not exceed 70k. Also consider the screen resolution you design your pages in, even though 800x600 was a popular size at one time, it's not now. 1024×768 should be ideal for most people.

Secondly, make your site easy to navigate.

Next your content is important. Using the right words on your web pages can increase hits to your site. Most search engines don't even use the key words in your meta tags because it's too easy to type anything in there. They acquire the words from the web page itself.

Another item of importance in gaining search engine optimization is to get as many links to your site as you can. If you have multiple web sites begin by linking to yourself. Search engines such as Google base your rating partly on how many sites link to yours.

I guess it all depends on the site itself. Having a static site works well for sites, like portfolio's, hosting sites which requires monthly or weekly updates.

The whole point of having a CMS like wordpress would be if new content, articles are posted almost daily! I don't see much use for it other than this.

I personally prefer wordpress. You get themes, blog websites, commercial websites.

Its better to use CMS or PHP to make your sites dynamic and save you from lots of hassles like editing menu in each page .

It would be better to use PHP or any CMS for developing your website. Have a look to joomla.

Then you must go with HTML/CSS site. Although you can try WordPress or any other Open source application if it is test project.

But you must go with your strength when doing commercial projects.