WordPress as a CMS

I have been on a bit of a love-fest lately about my favorite blogging software, WordPress.

This is because I have been using it more and more as a Content Management System for traditional sites, rather than just as a blog platform. Combined with the fantastic Thesis theme I have never been so productive as a website builder.

It really is a delight to use, both as a developer and as an end user. If the client can use Hotmail then they are sure to be able to edit their own site in WordPress. This sort of functionality used to cost a lot of money (and still can) but WordPress is capable, flexible and free.

Some people get confused though thinking what I am suggesting is to have a blog look and feel, but that is not the case.

A traditional website can be built very quickly and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a WP based site and a hard coded one, on looks alone.

Whites Recycling Solutions is a site I am working on right now (excuse the lack of graphics, it’s a work in progress). The client has already been in and tweaked the content before I even got around to teaching them the system, how is that for ease of use?

You will see the home page is static content, while the “blog” style page is in a tab, under “news“.

No technical fancy work was required, it’s just a settings/reading option:

Reading Settings WordPress

People who are used to hard-coded or traditional CMS systems often worry about being able to cater to the sorts of request clients often have, such as “I want it to look like this apart from on that page”.

No worries there either, you can have custom page templates which are then selected from a drop down when editing the page, or you can do what I did on me and my friend Ryan’s Credit Card Pundit site and introduce a little WordPress logic.

We wanted the banners for the various types of credit cards to appear on every page apart from the credit cards page, which would have just been ugly duplication.

It couldn’t have been easier!

code

Translated into English we get “If this is not page ‘8′ then do the following” – easy, eh?

The one problem with WordPress is keeping up with the upgrade cycle, I just wish they would release patches separate from functionality upgrades so people could keep up.

Other than that, I LOVE WordPress … can you tell? :)

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Software Tools

Comments

7 Responses to “WordPress as a CMS”

  1. Richard Williams on September 11th, 2008 1:47 pm

    Welcome to the club Chris. It’s so much easier to have WP as a site with blog as opposed to a blog with a few web pages thanb it was say two years ago.

    Know what you mean about upgrades, though. You can solve this issue by using the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin I charge a nominal amount per month, added to client’s hosting bill and do the upgrades for them. Hope this helps.

  2. Jon Eland on September 11th, 2008 1:59 pm

    As you know I love WP too – I like the freedom it gives those creating the content within it and it’s endless flexibility.

    I’m starting to look at how it can be reconfigured to offer the same functionality 10k+ systems offer – but being a lot more client affordable. So hearing other people the WP praise song is great.

    More posts like this please!

    Jon

  3. Chris Garrett on September 11th, 2008 2:55 pm

    @Richard – I don’t know why automattic don’t build an auto upgrade right into the system, like they did with plugins

    @Jon – With things like the revisions it is starting to really grow up, add a bit of workflow and it already matches some very expensive software feature lists ;)

  4. Richard Williams on September 11th, 2008 8:07 pm

    I guess none of us would be surprised if Automattic went down the auto upgrade route at some point – thing is, it never seems to be quick enough for us, does it? Reminds me of that line in “Under Siege” where Seagal reminds TLJ that they work for an ungrateful master – that’s us! :)

  5. Patrick K. O'Brien on September 12th, 2008 1:30 am

    Chris,

    I’m another happy Thesis user. Since I’m a software engineer, and not a designer, I really like how easy it is to get a site that looks good without a lot of effort. Out of curiosity, what exact technique have you been using to put the blog pages on their own tab? You showed how to set the home page to a static page, but I’ve seen several alternatives for moving blog content to /blog/ (or /news/ in your case). Which works best with Thesis?

  6. Nora on September 12th, 2008 2:09 am

    I love WordPress for CMS for sites for my biz and clients. I have one large site I’d like to turn into WordPress and use it for CMS but I’m struggling with one point — a few of the users are less tech savvy and I don’t want them accidentally (and of course unintentionally) imploding the whole site. I’d like to figure out if there is a way for me to set up a user who only has permissions to edit one static page on the WordPress site.

    If anyone has any thoughts about this, I’d love to hear them!

  7. carluew on November 19th, 2008 4:51 am

    I found something called a cpn number that will
    give you a new credit profile within 30 days.
    the website is

    http://www.creditmenow.info

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