I spent the holiday weekend not doing much in the way of online crap. Bike rides, kids and relaxing were on my agenda for most of the time. But I did buy the upgrade to XSitePro. And I love it. I’ve been a fan of XSP since I purchased it back 2005. And they certainly improved upon an already excellent product. There is very little to criticize about this product. I’ve read reports from a few folks that say they still prefer Dreamweaver. I have to chuckle over that one. I have Dreamweaver. I even use it from time to time. But they aren’t in the same league. You can do everything with Dreamweaver and more, but the simplicity and the focused approach that XSP gives for building niche websites is what I am after.
I dismantled two of my sites with WordPress over the weekend. Within two or so hours I had static XSP sites in their place. One of the features I like is the ability to add RSS feeds. I go to the article directories and pull a relevant feed. What else do I like about it? The organization. The work flow. The SEO analysis. It’s simplicity. If you’ve ever messed about with CSS and tried to get the header to line up with the body and the left and right panels created with the right colors and sized properly with the font and…blah, blah, blah, you’ll know why it’s so nice to let XSP just handle all those details.
I like how I can take my PLR and import every article into a project. You don’t know how convenient it is to be able to have all 40 articles in the left pane. You simply roll through each one modifying the content in one tab, changing the meta data for SEO in the next tab, then analyzing your page in the next tab. This was available in version 1 but it’s even smoother in this version. It’s an organization that you just don’t have in WP. The program has some sort of silo module that I haven’t used yet. That could be useful. And it now has a content scheduler.
Yea I know I’m going backwards when it seems everyone is moving forward with WordPress. Precisely why I’m doing it. When the IM world is pounding blogs, my thinking is it’s time to move in the opposite direction. Diversification is never a bad thing.
I’m not a big fan of niche blogging. I think trying to shoehorn a blog into a static site is kinda stupid. The kind of sites that we have been taught to build, well, XSP is the perfect tool for delivering that content. I think blogs are best used for blogging. Most people don’t blog when they create a niche site. I’ve created niche blogs where I wonder how in the hell I am going to continue to be able to blog that topic. I think Google expects a blog to be blogged. If the site is not a blog then maybe they don’t expect the content to change much. That’s my theory anyway.
I don’t expect to drag anyone over from the blogging herd. Blogging is free. $297 is a shitload of money. If you have XSP, and use it, then there is no reason not to spend the $97 and upgrade. It is most definitely worth it. There are improvements in every single step that you used to build a XSP site previously.
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
I also have picked up the new XSP but I have yet to actually dive into the what is different yet. The RSS feature is definitely cool and they now have 100′s of templates to suit anyone’s taste. And have you seen the silo function? Absolutely beautiful….
Up until this point, I have only used XSP for squeeze pages and what not but I am definitely looking at creating a full blown site with it.
Hey Splork,
I aboslutely, love, love, love the changes that have been made to Xsitepro. Version 2 is da bomb.! I never jumped on the wordpress bandwagon, since I never had a problem getting my xsp sites to rank. They do pretty well actually and with the new upgrade, I’m sure they will continue to do well.
You really make a good case for XSite Pro…
Particularly the part about diversity and zigging when they zag…
I’d pick it up but I already have too much on my plate. Are they closing the door on this thing?
Never. It’d be like closing the door on Dreamweaver. It’s not a black hat product. Or something that you’d have to be worried that if too many people were using it, its effectiveness would diminish.
Makes a lot of sense…
Like many, I see the pinging, using comments as content, and other aspects of WP as a positive. And some claim that they rank better in the big G.
So you can dripfeed articles into XSP?
I looked at their sales page and it seems like a pretty good web site building tool. However, I already have Microsoft Visual Studio and Expression Studio, thanks to work, that I can use for web development so I’m not in the market for another tool right now. If I was, I probably would consider XSP.
I don’t think that Google cares that much about whether a blog is being updated or not. I have niche blogs that haven’t been updated for months that still get good search traffic. In fact, some have actually increased, probably due to age. I also have static HTML mini-sites that are the same. As long as you have good links and good keywords you’ll get search traffic.
Hey Phil. You can schedule articles to be posted in this new version. The only limitation is that your PC has to be on of course.
Hey Frank. Yea if you’re a web developer with the tools then XSP probably isn’t for you. The only thing that might make a difference is that XSP is focused on getting a site built, analyzed with SEO and organized so well and quickly. It would seem to be quicker to me but I think maybe experienced web developers would get a little frustrated with the product. For me it’s perfect. It does everything that I need and more. But I have Dreamweaver too and know that the freedom to CREATE just isn’t built into XSP like it is with DW.
Yea, Google is hard to figure out. I haven’t been having very good luck with niche blogging recently but I have been doing OK with my static sites built with XSP (and older ones built with NPB). Then again I’m having a really good month with datafeeds posted on blogs so what do I know?
It’s funny how this shit works for me. I started concentrating my efforts on BANS and despite throwing everything I have at getting those shitty sites indexed, Google continues to ignore them (sandbox indeed). Yet while I remain frustrated by this I’ve discovered my WPDFI sites to be doing pretty good. All on subdomains. Go figure.
Thanks for another great post. You know, I have to agree with you about avoiding WordPress blogs (I mean avoiding building your own site with them. I know you’ve had good backlink building experiences with WordPress blogs hosted at Wordpress, that’s different.)
I think it’s a real mistake to be flocking into building tons of WordPress blogs and that simple html sites are the way to go.
For instance, for us non-techies who are used to installing our WordPress blogs with Fantastico (like me) things are always getting more complicated. I was hanging out at the Bluehost forum the other day and a mod let slip that they are going to be phasing out support for Fantastico. And you can’t easily change your blog over to a manual install once you’ve set it up on Fantastico. So what that means is that if you’ve used Fantastico to install your WordPress blog on your own site, and you use Bluehost as a host (up until now I’ve been very happy with them) at some point you aren’t going to be able to easily update your WordPress blog. And you know that you’ll need to update it at least two to three times a year since the security is useless and WordPress blogs are so easily hacked.
When it comes to enhancing my quality of life (and preventing migraines!) I have to admit that WordPress just plain sucks.
Also when a customer clicks on a blog he is understandably skeptical if you have a dated entry like, from months ago, reviewing a product. Even if you remove dates on your blog it’s still a blog.
Static sites at least look like real storefronts.
I’m going to be removing WordPress on some of my niche sites and only building new sites as static html from here on out. When you create your own simple rss feed for your html site with a simple sitemap you can still ping your site and bookmark as usual – and when I do that with my static sites they place just as well in Google as the WordPress monstrosities I’ve built and get so tired of maintaining.
These days I’m envisioning a future of being on the beach WITHOUT a computer once in a while – and not having to do a damned bit of customer service for reports or Ebooks – and really using a hands off affiliate marketing model for 100% of my business. Right now I’m in IM full-time but about 30% of my time is with ebooks I publish. Much as I love to write, I did not get into this business to be a shopkeeper, and I’m just DONE with customer service, building lists, responding to people saying “How do I unsubscribe from your list?” etc. My affiliate sites with NO list, no blog, no customer service, just send them out to the vendor and get the darned sale – those are the sites that make me happiest these days, and I think they’re the sites which will probably have the greatest longevity, too.
Just my rambling opinion! Take it for what it’s worth.
Jennifer the “Internet Marketing Badger”
Thanks for the great post Jennifer.
“My affiliate sites with NO list, no blog, no customer service, just send them out to the vendor and get the darned sale – those are the sites that make me happiest these days”
I’m with you on this though you understand the money is in the list. The money is in servicing and creating things and memberships people want to buy. We’ll do OK affiliate marketing but we probably will never be super rich. I’m perfectly fine with that because, like you alluded to, I don’t want the hassle either.
I’m pretty much done with niche blogs though I will continue using Blogger and Wordpress.com for blogging, if that makes sense. Blogging and building niche blogs are two different things in my mind. Like I’ve mentioned ad naseum, Wordpress is just killing it.
Though I will mention that one of the lost Blogger blogs, just one for now, is doing great things in MSN search. #1 for a very nice keyword. It popped up on Monday in Adsense stats and immediately started averaging $2 the last couple of days. It is still nowhere to be found in Google.
Hey Splork,
I noticed you mentioned something about RSS syndication in the new XSP and how you intend pull a relevant feed from an article directory to populate content on a site. However, when I took a closer look at this, it appears that XSP only allows you to syndicate your own pages, not others. Am I missing something here? (I haven’t dug into the 1000+ page manual).
Yea check out the RSS Feed Wizard. You can pull any kind of feed you want into your site.
what a beaut! Thanks Splork. Looks like I am going to be using this one a lot.
On a separate note, I was actually able to build a site in about 15 minutes with this software so it is fast and powerful and I have only scratched the surface.
Sure DreamWeaver is more powerful, but for marketing purposes, it can a bit like overkill. Most of the XSP users want something that will be able to spit out sites on the fly so you can get to the more important stuff.
Yea I don’t find it any slower than WP really. The only thing is the writing of content, as usual.
Has you know splork, i use xsite pro for the mini-sites at the free hosting services. With this new version i think i’ll do a little more, i’ll try to make instead of a blog, i’ll make a static site with some plr content, i want to see how well a full big xsite pro (100 pages) will perform.
Yea I signed up for a couple of free accounts after you mentioned it. I plan on dropping some XSP sites on them. It might be an interesting idea.
I’m actually really disappointed in XSP version 2. One of the biggest, most annoying things about XSP is that the code it spits out is not great from an SEO perspective. Nested tables, etc. I thought it would have spat out nicely formatted css, div tags etc that loads twice as fast.
Seemed like the obvious next step, but no, still the same crap that needs a coder to go in and fix up.
XSP 2 also has trouble importing XSP 1 websites and takes a lot of fiddling.
Also, it’s really annoying how xsite pro makes it so difficult to remove a left hand menu (lets say you want to keep it on some pages, but not on others (e.g. ppc landing pages)). If you remove it, it removes itself from every page, which isn’t what is wanted. Yet if you decide to ignore page layout completely (the solution that xsitepro recommends), you lose all your settings, not just your menu, but your fonts, backdrop headergraphc, the works.
I admit XSP 1 and 2 are good products, don’t get me wrong there, as they are very good for newbies to use and make it fast and easy to set up article sites. But I see no real great advance in xsitepro 2 that are actually going to great impact on peoples $$$.
It depends on how much flexibility you want building a site. I imported over a dozen sites with no problem, but I didn’t have any crazy mods. I just had pages with content and an ad. Pretty simple. But that is all I was after with the program three years ago and again today. I’m no newbie but I appreciate the ease of the work flow. For me it is the easiest and most organized way to get a site up.
Hey Splork,
I actually am building a BANS site with xsitepro2 right now and did a seo spider simulator. To my dismay, I noticed that the blasted spiders aren’t indexing the feed themselves. When I took a look at the SEO Optimization of the site, it showed that my ebay feeds were displaying as images. Did you run into this as well?
Splork
I have looked into the scheduler and must be very dense.
I see how to set up the schedule but how do I tell it to add the articles?
Do I publish say 5 then add the rest of the ones I want scheduled and then turn on the scheduler?
I would appreciate any help at all on this?
Thx
Dave
Go to the “page settings” tab on each webpage you want to post. At the bottom you will see “Advanced settings” (below the description box). Click it and then you will see another list of tabs of which “scheduling” is one. Schedule that page.
Can anyone tell me how to fast set up a XSP niche mini site using pre-set templates, and without ploughing through the manual? Many thanks.
Colin, open the program.
Add Project – fill in the info.
Add website – choose template – fill in the info
Configure as you like in the page layout.
Go to web pages tab. Edit the pre installed pages or start adding your own pages.
Finished – go to publishing tab and publish your site.
That is the quick start. You’ll have to play around with it some to configure your site like you want it (like left or right sidebar, etc). Additionally if you have a package of html or txt articles you can import them by going to the other tab and choosing “Import Pages”. That is a huge time saver. If you plan on using the built in advertising you’ll have to add your account info.
Many thanks Splork…appreciated!