I am looking to build an informational site that consists of a few landing pages. What kind of platform would you recommend?

[djlittman]

The site would consist of an initial homepage, about us page, products & services page, sub-category pages that consist of the products and services in greater detail, and a contact us page.  What platform would you recommend building this site on?

I currently use Miva Merchant for an ecommerce platform, however this new site will not require the customization that Miva provides, and will also not need to have ecommerce capabilities.  This will strictly be an informational site for prospective and current clients.

[vmialik]

That sounds fine. I would choose either google apps or zoho for custom email.

I have not heard of Hostasaurus up to this point.

Hope this helps

[djlittman]

So you would use wpengine to build the site and then purchase the domain thru godaddy and setup custom email there?  What do you know about Hostasaurus?

[vmialik]

Most regular hosts do that give you for example Plesk, cPanel. these generically include Bluehost, Dreamhost, MediaTemple.net (there are countless of other great hosting options here it is just some that have had great experiences or heard of others). These are managed but generally allow you full control. There are also many unmanaged servers like Linode where you install mail servers from ground up, but I am not sure that is what you are looking for.

Again even WPEngine can have membership sites, it is just that it might take more time to set up as WPEngine is a bit picky in a good way to keep you from making mistakes earlier on. But if its for a informational site aka content site, and you have not yet worked with Wordpress. I would choose WPEngine. The benefits in my mind out way the cons of using gmail, or hosting custom email somewhere else.

Hope this helps

[djlittman]

Are there hosted sites that do allow you to create membership sites, or provide custom email?

[vmialik]

yea its by far one of the better hosting solutions starting out. It has its limits that are really there to keep you from making mistakes.  If you are not taking Wordpress to the extremes of an eCommerce solution or a membership site, I would say definitely go with them. I mention that because some (few, and very customizable) of the plugins are not supported or do not work great with WPEngine off the bat. They will go far and above to protect and speed up your content if that is important to you.  Also they do not allow you to create an email server like most hosting solutions that give you Plesk or cPanel access allow. Which is a pro or a con depending on how you look at it. Again its an amazing host. If you custom email is important and you do not want to use Google Apps or Zoho for email, try MediaTemple.net DV solution is also great option. Although the future might be iffy, as they have recently been bought out by GoDaddy. But so far I use them for some clients and them have been great. Again there are many great hosts out there, but I comment on the ones I have used. Bluehost, and Dreamhost have also been good with Wordpress but not to the extent of WPEngine and their expertise with Wordpress like Matt has mentioned.

[djlittman]

Do you know anything about wpengine.com that was mentioned above?

[vmialik]

.org is a self hosted which gives you 100% control with plugins like Yoasts SEO plugin that was mentioned. .com is free version that is great for mom blogs etc

[Matt-Williamson]

Just to put it out there I have hosted WordPress with several companies and in my opinion the best out there is wpengine.com and those guys are worth every penny! They are a bunch of WordPress Ninjas that always go above and beyond to help sort things for you - you would be hard pressed to beat them!

[djlittman]

Why .org and not .com?

[Matt-Williamson]

I would second Vadim - Wordpress would be a great solution for what you want and it is very user and search engine friendly! Especially if you install the Yoast SEO plugin...

[vmialik]

If you are going for content and landing pages. Its hard to beat Wordpress (.org not .com). The search engines seem to love how Wordpress platform is set up for content publishing, and the community to support this platform is huge and one of the nicest around. Its proven to scale well with larger news sites as well.

Hope this helps