Making a niche article news blog like SitePoint

[AnyBody]

Hey!

I am trying to build a new site called BigSpot.net

a niche blog/news site with a market place, forum and store.

I want to know:

- What do you think about the idea.
- I use WP for now and i think i should use another CMS, do you know any good CMS that can show featured articles (if i mark them) and number of recent articles from various categories on the home page, also can be connected to a forum platform and the home page can show recent posts?


It will be very helpful!

[Dan Schulz]

WordPress can handle it. You'll have to use the Pages feature though to do it. As for a forum, there are bridges available that will sync your WordPress subscriber and forum member database tables if you want to go down that route, but I don't know how reliable they are overall. Though if you use WordPress to power the whole site (instead of just the regular pages and blog part), you'll have to do a lot of custom programming to make it work.

[AnyBody]

well i know wordpress can do it with a lot of custom coding of the template/plugins so that i can hook it up. but the problem is that i am looking for something more like "out of the box" so that when updates come, etc. i don't have to deal with bugs and problems. I do not want that WordPress power the all site because i don't think it can handle that. vB can do that better imho, I saw your "News Right Now", is this somehow connected to WP? as i don't see any sign of WP.. is it custom made? I this is what i am looking after but with less recent articles on the home page i think. Will it be a good idea to post so much summeries of news stories on the home page for SERP or just keep 3-4 of it... as i want to hook many things on the home page i simply don't know if there will be enough space :P

[Dan Schulz]

"News Right Now" belongs to my hosting provider, so I wouldn't know. He's asked me to write for it but I haven't said yes or no (yet).

[AnyBody]

ok anyway some guy is selling a template for news too:
http://typepress.net/wp/morning/

he hooked it up pretty much good but i wounder if he used code blocks from WP codex or used plugins

[infonote]

Joomla or Drupal are better than wordpress. Joomla is a complete CMS designed for portals.

[ryanhellyer]

- I use WP for now and i think i should use another CMS, do you know any good CMS that can show featured articles (if i mark them) and number of recent articles from various categories on the home page, also can be connected to a forum platform and the home page can show recent posts?

WordPress can do the features articles standard straight out of the box. It just requires modifying the theme, no core changes are necessary. There are plugins to integrate an SMF forum and the articles can be displayed on your home page quite easily with a function in SMF called SSI.php.

I have an example of all of these features in the ice hockey site in my signature. It is just a regular WordPress install with a custom theme and a forum added. Actually ... I just remembered I removed the latest posts from my home page, I used to do that but I have highlighted forum topics in there place now.

a niche blog/news site with a market place, forum and store.

I've never tried adding Market Places or Stores to WordPress but I'm sure it could be done just as easily as the forum and featured articles can.

[ryanhellyer]

ok anyway some guy is selling a template for news too:
http://typepress.net/wp/morning/

he hooked it up pretty much good but i wounder if he used code blocks from WP codex or used plugins

No. As far as I can see that is just a standard WordPress template.

[ryanhellyer]

WordPress can handle it. You'll have to use the Pages feature though to do it.

I'm confused. What would the Pages feature be used for?

[Dan Schulz]

There are some plugins for WordPress that could be used to set up an ecommerce system (store). IIRC, those plugins would make use of the WordPress Pages feature, so that each product could have its own unique page (which is why I recommended the Pages option).

I could be wrong though.

[ryanhellyer]

There are some plugins for WordPress that could be used to set up an ecommerce system (store). IIRC, those plugins would make use of the WordPress Pages feature

That makes sense. I haven't used any ecommerce stores before to know.

[AnyBody]

i like what u have on that hokey site, i just don't understand some things,

i.e what is the Pages feature, i.e the about page, etc. but what that has to do if i have 5 categories and i want to do the following:
i have 5 spots on the main page, 1 is featured, the other 4 are smaller.
i take the featured spot and i bring there my latest post on the blog, at this moment that spot is i.e marketing, so in the bottom it will also display, "Read more from that category", and it will display 2 titles of 2 posts that were published prior to that featured article. the other 4 spots are for differnet 4 categories and each is having also it's own 2 "read other" titles from posts, if my latest post is changed and it's not marketing i.e then the main featured spot gets its new category and all the other are replaced acordingly. so i will always have 5 spots on main page of different categories where 1 is featured.

any ideas of a direct coding into the template to do that?
i don't wanna use plugins i guess it will just harm and wont be proffessional.

[ryanhellyer]

Ah, your post is a little confusing, but I'll do my best to explain what I can.

I should probably write a blog post about this at some stage as there seems to be a lot interest in this type of theme and little information about how to make them. That will have to be a job for another day however.

i.e what is the Pages feature, i.e the about page, etc.

WordPress Pages are essentially just static posts which are unconnected with any categories and are not displayed in archives.

i take the featured spot and i bring there my latest post on the blog, at this moment that spot is i.e marketing, so in the bottom it will also display, "Read more from that category", and it will display 2 titles of 2 posts that were published prior to that featured article.

So you want the Featured Article to be the latest article? In which case you just need to use a regular loop to display the latest posts but just limit it to one post. In a standard WordPress loop (such as in the Kubrick theme), each post displays the category/s the post is in, you can use this functionality to display the "Read from that category".

Or do you want to display an article which you have chosen to be featured? I do this on http://dunedinicehockey.co.nz/ by displaying a loop containing posts from a category called "Featured Articles". There are multiple ways to display other recent post titles, but the way I would do it (there's probably an easier way) would be to display another loop, which ignores the first post and only displays the title of the next two posts in the category.

I'm not sure how to display recent titles from the category in question if you are wanting the theme to pluck the latest post out as your Featured Article. The best I can think of is to display the two other latest posts, but not from the same category as the current Featured Article is. It may be possible, but I don't know how to do it. The complication here arises from the fact that a post may have multiple categories. I'm sure someone else will be able to help with this though.

the other 4 spots are for differnet 4 categories and each is having also it's own 2 "read other" titles from posts,

The same principle applies as for the featured articles advice above. Just use a different category that's all.

i don't wanna use plugins i guess it will just harm and wont be proffessional.

Yeah, plugins are annoying. Particularly if the developer doesn't update them.

[bestofmoney]

ok anyway some guy is selling a template for news too:
http://typepress.net/wp/morning/

he hooked it up pretty much good but i wounder if he used code blocks from WP codex or used plugins

Unfortunately it is no more sold