Trying Joomla. Any pros wanna help?

[phuckbunny]

Sort of a redux post. I have a blog ( my oldest one) that I update ratehr rarely but it gets quite decent traffic, between 1500-2000 uniques a day and hasn't been downgraded ever knock on wood. Thing is, I don't update it partly because I'm afraid to touch it. I'm also a little bored with it, it started off as somewhere between a real blog and blatant porn promotion but the latter was doing me better...

What I was thinking about doing is to have it set up as more of a static site, but something with tables so I can have a blog section, a feed section, a dating section, etc etc etc i know all those things can be done in WP apart from the design aspect and I don't know enough code to do it from scratch; so I was thinking of moving everything to a Joomla page to do that.

Questions:

1. Is this even sensible?

2. Where can you get good Joomla themes for free? Or should i just shell out 50 euros for a decent theme/template?

3. Will whatever traffic I have now hold steady if I chaneg the front page to a joomla page?

4. If I say fuck Joomla, and just do a new WP theme and redesign, what are my risks with traffic?

[sunfunbill]

Why not just use pages in your wp for your sections?? I have 8 wp installs put together so I have different sidebars, but you can do that with one.

If your site gets good traffic, I would just try to get more links and leave it alone.

[NookieNotes]

Well, I love Joomla, and have made well over 50 sites with it... if you are going into it new... I'd choose a professional template ( yootheme. com or rockettheme.com have some excellent ones), because they will add so much professional flexibility right off the bat.

As much as I'd say go with Joomla, there will be a learning curve.

I doubt your traffic or SEO would be affected if you made the changes properly, but as Bill said, why fix what isn't really broken.

<smiles>

[phuckbunny]

Yeah you guys are right but I was just wondering how I can make the site look better and keep it more static, but keep on slowly expanding it without keeping the same ugly format.

How does changing themes affect SE traffic? Or does it?

[porn punk]

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

I'm not sure 1500-2000 uniques on a blog that you never touch is bad. Maybe it is and I'm a know nothing.

I know every time one of my blogs starts to increase in traffic and I fuck with it, I'm back to stage one (dropping from a couple thou down to a few hundred or so).

I learned to leave well enough alone and basically consider a blog (or any site) succesful based on sign ups and/or traffic depending on what I want from it or what I'll settle for.

What I would do is use a new domain to fuck with Joomla (i want to learn that program too), or use on of those domains that pull in a few hundred a day to begin with and have never changed and never will.

That's just my personal two cents.

On the other hand if your other blogs are pulling 50k uniques a day, then this is probably a domain you might be able to use like the 300 I was talking

[phuckbunny]

If my other blogs were doing 50K I'd be ready for my private jet, the thing is, since this is the one that seems to be holding steady I'd like to increase it even further - but I'm also afraid of fucking with it now as that can potentially be a disaster as you and I know and agree, PP.

I'm also seeing that now most of my traffic comes from google image search - not a bad thing, but could be better.... and I hate the design and that makes me want to update it less and less; maybe just changing the theme or is that going to screw me up as well?

Also, many many outbound dead links that I need to go through, etc etc.... but without touching it it's holding steady as I said....but it's been around for a while so it's going to take my new blogs a while to get there.... Don't know what to do....

[balls_deep]

phuckbunny,

You need to sit down and assess your situation. You are running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Stop worrying about what google is going to do to you and start building quality sites, if that means changing a theme then change it. Need to remove dead links? Then get rid of them, they're not doing you any good.

stop wasting time worrying about your rankings and add more content. *Reminder* content is king.

get busy living or get busy dying.