Using Wordpress as your CMS

[fragos]

I hand code all my sites and am very picky about site load time, SEO and making sure my code validates. Given the testing that Opera did, my sites are part of the 4.3% on the Internet that validate. Given I have these skills, why would I want to use Wordpress or it's ilk? I can relate to higher level tools making site development easier. I have a concern that some of my designs might be more difficult because I've ventured outside the box defined by these tools. Ease of use seems to in general be at the expense of flexibility. Not a bad thing as long as you don't need to deal with tasks not integrated into the environment. Am I missing the point?

[Dan Grossman]

I hand code all my sites and am very picky about site load time, SEO and making sure my code validates. Given the testing that Opera did, my sites are part of the 4.3% on the Internet that validate. Given I have these skills, why would I want to use Wordpress or it's ilk? I can relate to higher level tools making site development easier. I have a concern that some of my designs might be more difficult because I've ventured outside the box defined by these tools. Ease of use seems to in general be at the expense of flexibility. Not a bad thing as long as you don't need to deal with tasks not integrated into the environment. Am I missing the point?

Yes, you're missing the point. A CMS is about making it easier to handle the data and structure for you. None of your points are about that. If you want to change the URL structure of your site, or just edit some text in a paragraph on a page, you have to edit or rename files.

You still have full control over site load time, SEO and validating code with WordPress or most any CMS. You write the template files, with the same HTML/XHTML and CSS as you currently do.

You can take your current coded design, and simply replace the title and text of the page with <?php the_title(); ?> and <?php the_content(); ?> and it would be a working WordPress theme. The output of the site would have the same characteristics as your hand coded version, it'd still validate. And with a cache plugin turned on, it'd load exactly as fast, since it only has to be dynamically generated when you change the text or content of a page to refresh that cached file.

[fragos]

Yes, you're missing the point. A CMS is about making it easier to handle the data and structure for you. None of your points are about that. If you want to change the URL structure of your site, or just edit some text in a paragraph on a page, you have to edit or rename files.

You still have full control over site load time, SEO and validating code with WordPress or most any CMS. You write the template files, with the same HTML/XHTML and CSS as you currently do.

You can take your current coded design, and simply replace the title and text of the page with <?php the_title(); ?> and <?php the_content(); ?> and it would be a working WordPress theme. The output of the site would have the same characteristics as your hand coded version, it'd still validate. And with a cache plugin turned on, it'd load exactly as fast, since it only has to be dynamically generated when you change the text or content of a page to refresh that cached file.

Thought I might be. I'm glad to see I can still do whatever I want in terms of design. On that basis I may check Wordpress out. At first blush I'm not sure how HTML markup becomes a "theme" as other than class="{name}" there's no style/appearance information on my pages -- it's all in separate CSS files. Unless of course the real content is all dynamic and supplied by back end PHP as it might be for a blog or an shopping catalog.

[Dan Grossman]

The word theme, for WordPress, just means a set of templates. Those templates are written in plain old HTML, with a little WordPress-specific PHP code thrown in to display the text from the database, and of course HTML can include inline or external stylesheets.

If you were to move your static site over to WordPress, you'd take the title and body of each page and enter them into the database (through the CMS) as pages. And WordPress would take care of displaying the right page at the right URL using your theme.

To the outside world, there would be no change to your site at all. To you, you now have a CMS you can use to manage the content, URL structure, and templates without editing many separate files.

[kooshin.com]

Yes, you're missing the point. A CMS is about making it easier to handle the data and structure for you. None of your points are about that. If you want to change the URL structure of your site, or just edit some text in a paragraph on a page, you have to edit or rename files.

You still have full control over site load time, SEO and validating code with WordPress or most any CMS. You write the template files, with the same HTML/XHTML and CSS as you currently do.

You can take your current coded design, and simply replace the title and text of the page with <?php the_title(); ?> and <?php the_content(); ?> and it would be a working WordPress theme. The output of the site would have the same characteristics as your hand coded version, it'd still validate. And with a cache plugin turned on, it'd load exactly as fast, since it only has to be dynamically generated when you change the text or content of a page to refresh that cached file.

Very true and inspiring Dan. That was great answer.It just makes it easy to use Wordpress more I guess.

[october-29]

Hi, everybody. I choose to use WP as Cms for one of my site: clanplaystation_dot_com

The site is in italian. It's dedicated to a Federation of Clans on Ps3. News/reviews about games and all the stuff related to multiplayer gaming on PS3.

On another site I use E107, but now I prefer WP 'cause it's a lot easier to manage than E107.

Ciao, Marco

ps. my nick is my daughter bday... today!

[jetgordon]

There's a plugin reducing the blog features available in WordPress for people using it as a CMS - Simple CMS WordPress Plugin

Simple CMS WordPress Plugin Demo

This looks promising. I'm definatley going to give it a go.

I'd like to use Wordpress as a CMS - the advantage to me is that I can hone my skills in the one area and be better value to my clients. In the past I have been worried about client backlash from a seeming complexity with wordpress. Way to easy for them to stuff things up too!

This plugin could be just what I'm after.

[muaysteve]

I can't say enough great things about the Simple CMS plugin. Perfect for small business clients who want to be able to update content on their websites. It makes the wordpress back end very simple to use for them.

[Dr Googler]

We sometimes use wordpress as a good cms. Very easy to edit and FREE>

[RyanFormspring]

I use Wordpress for lots of different types of sites. The last one I built was a business magazine site for an offline magazine. I like that the software has moved from blogging platform to more of a CMS in recent years. I think it will continue to grow into a viable CMS platform. I also think that it should eventually be split into two products, as it may become too bulky for its original use. There should be Wordpress or Wordpress Lite, which is merely basic blogging software. Then there should be Wordpress CMS, which has all the features of a popular CMS such as Joomla or Drupal.

[Hierophant]

Then there should be Wordpress CMS, which has all the features of a popular CMS such as Joomla or Drupal.

Wordpress 2.6 has most of the functionality of Drupal now. It is missing a built in forum system and per-user blogs. You can add forums with any number of tools from BBPress to vBulletin to fit your needs. Per-user blogs can be simulated with author pages. User roles are fairly light in Wordpress but this can be overcome with the role management plugin which does wonders for a multi-user system.

Joomla has a lot of functionality out of the box but I found it "clunky" to use. Didn't get into it very deeply before deleting it off my test server.

90&#37; of Drupal's appeal comes from the widespread use of addon modules. An area where Wordpress is quickly catching up. Drupal doesn't even support the use of SEF URLS easily without addons. Wordpress already surpasses it in that regard. The new commercial version of Drupal called Acquia looks to overcome Drupal's default lack of functionality but only by including a group of commonly used third-party modules, not by adding functionality to the core system.

Wordpress is also a lot lighter and less resource hungry when it comes to displaying information. I spent 6 months developing a site in Drupal 5 and now I can recreate it if I want in about 3 hours with Wordpress. The same site would have been impossible in Drupal 6 because of the lack of third-party modules and upgrade paths.

[albunix]

Hi there guys.

What do you think of using Wordpress as your CMS of your portfolio website? Do you think it is a good idea to use Wordpress or is it not unique therefore it is not needed?

Please share your opinion on this matter.

Thanks in advance.

When considering any type of CMS consider the security factor. Many CMS's which fail to incorporate some sort of easy streamlining security patches into their actual framework, tend to leave unhappy users behind. Consider that where you'd host it, it will eventually be you(your webmaster) the point of contact for any upgrades to deal with any potential patching/version upgrades.

How much you're willing to get involved rather than having your CMS do most of the updating, is where you should focus a great deal.

Thanks

[Kommy000]

Joomla all the way for me baby... You can always to set it up to look like wordpress

[Tyssen]

I use WP for my site but use ExpressionEngine for all my client sites these days. I'd convert my site to EE but as I still get a bit of WP work coming in, it's good to keep up to date with it.

[Crey_Design]

I recently tried building a site from scratch using Joomla. It has all the things you could really want in a CMS, but it's not nearly as easy to work with as Wordpress, especially in custom themes or templates.

Wordpress is so easy to use, and as long as it has the plugins you need, I'd say go ahead and use it anytime for a CMS.

[johnson9]

CMS stands for 'Content management System' and is normally used in terms of websites. Nowadays, as the theme of the industry demands, most of the people are building dynamic websites. The idea of dynamic websites suggests over 500 database driven pages. CMS is a great aid for managing such huge websites.

Integrating CMS

Integrating CMS in a website is very a skilled job and should be done very carefully for an easy handling of the website. Expert web developers are required especially if you want CMS integrated into an existing website. Another reason why you need a proficient developer is to keep the website search engine friendly.

Nowadays, search engines do not like clumsy layout of a website, which dynamic website are prone to. In order to ensure that the website stay approachable by search engine spiders, some add-on needs to be integrated with the CMS. The developer should have a complete understanding on customization of CMS to accomplish this task.

[floris]

Hi there guys.

What do you think of using Wordpress as your CMS of your portfolio website? Do you think it is a good idea to use Wordpress or is it not unique therefore it is not needed?

Please share your opinion on this matter.

Thanks in advance.

I do 4 different things online that includes me having customers, and I have a wordpress as CMS for each one. As a quick and dirty web site, with info, products/services/portfolio... It's just freelance work and works great.

[conorp]

Hello,

I am interested in making my wordpress blog into a cms. I have a few main questions on this:

• What does this involve. Is it just editing my template?
  Is this time consuming?
  Do you need to be experienced in coding to be able to do this?

Thanks

Conorp

[Dan Grossman]

I am interested in making my wordpress blog into a cms. I have a few main questions on this:

Your WordPress blog is already a CMS. We're just discussing using WordPress as a CMS for other types of sites. That usually just involves a different approach to how you use what's already there. For example, WordPress already supports static pages (Pages) out of the box, and can set a page as the home page of the site instead of a list of blog posts through the settings.

[Scott.Botkins]

I use wordpress to run my web design company website. I also use it for almost every site I design for, my clients love using it.

[OrangeCreative]

I'm using Joomla with JPortfolio. I don't want to spank WP too hard as I haven't used it long enough but, why even try to force something that was not planned to work as a CMS to behave like one when you have all those other great options out-there. I'm mainly thinking, Joomla, CMS Made Simple and Drupal.

Just my two cents...

[webcosmo]

Think its not a bad idea at all. The home page and sidenav need to be modified though to get it working. But the benefits of having a free CMS included site worth the effort for sure.

[CeMET]

Just simple make some config in theme, it easy.

[kooshin.com]

I'm using Joomla with JPortfolio. I don't want to spank WP too hard as I haven't used it long enough but, why even try to force something that was not planned to work as a CMS to behave like one when you have all those other great options out-there. I'm mainly thinking, Joomla, CMS Made Simple and Drupal.

Just my two cents...

Well but I guess many people will prefer WP because it is easier than Joomla!

[riverbirch]

I Justed started using WordPress and I love it. I like joomla too but for a smaller website WP is, I think, the best choice.