I have been intending writing a bit about using WordPress as a CMS for a while now. This post is made up of several parts -
- Website examples of WordPress being used as a CMS
- My endeavours as a beginner to use WordPress as a CMS
- A series of tips for using WordPress as a CMS by graphic and web designer Jennifer Farley from Laughing Lion Design
- A series of links about using WordPress as a content management system and useful WordPress Plugins that I have found when trying to research the subject.
If you are looking to set up your own WordPress website you can download my FREE GUIDE HERE (no sign up or email required)
1. Website examples of word of WordPress being used as a CMS
As many of you probably know as well as being used as a blog WordPress can also be used as a CMS or if you didn’t know here are a few examples of sites that use it. (Found via http://www.codex.wordpress.org). Click on any example to go to the sites.
2. My endeavours as a beginner to use WordPress as a CMS
I have been experimenting with WordPress as a content management system myself, all be it by adapting an existing template as my coding skills are still not very strong (so please be gentle with me).
My experiments have been on a site I wanted to create for my characters designs The Weather Pops. I was looking to create a simple website fairly quickly as I am attending the brand licensing show in October.
After searching for a suitable theme to start with I settled on the Blixed WordPress Theme for its simplicity and the fact that the pages did not have a side bar, as I only wanted header navigation on my main pages. I tweaked the CSS on the pages so that the width of the content was the same width as the header.
The newer versions of WordPress give you the ability to create a Static home page, ideal if you want to use WordPress as a CMS. You can set this in your admin panel under OPTIONS – READING
What I was really looking for though was something that would allow me to specify both a static front page and a blog page as I wanted my website to function as a website first, with a secondary blog. I found a plugin which allowed me to do this called Filosofo Home-Page Control which allowed me to set both a home page and a “virtual” location for my blog. If you look at http://www.theweatherpops.com/blog it appears that the blog aspect of the site is in a blog folder, when in fact it isn’t, it is just part of the rest of the site.
The website is very basic but it gave me a taste of what could be done with WordPress.
3. Using WordPress as a CMS by Jennifer Farley from Laughing Lion Design
http://www.laughing-lion-design.net
Jennifer is an experienced web and graphic designer and also a design instructor. Make sure you take a look at her blog for loads of photoshop tutorials. Jennifer’s Laughing Lion Design website also uses WordPress as a CMS
I took my first tentative steps from using Blogger to WordPress (WP) as my blogging platform about 8 or 9 months ago. Initially my plans were to use WP solely for blogging. I had read quite a bit about it and lots of the blogs I was visiting seemed to be using it so I decided to give it a go. Within a very short period of using WP I realised that it offered so much more than just making it easy to publish a blog.
So what else can you do with this baby?
It is possible to use WP as a complete Content Management System (CMS). Not only can you write and edit posts easily, you can also write, edit and add PAGES easily and for me that’s what makes it so great. This means that you can set up the design or look and feel of your site and continue to add as many web pages to your site as you need, when you need them. No more pleading with clients to REALLY think about each section they need before you start designing, if they forget something you can add it in later with little or no problems. Many people believe that they must have the blog posts on the front of their website if using WP but the fact is you can set any static page as your home page and have your blog “inside” the main site.
Another factor which makes WP a joy to work with is the number of superb plugins that are available. WP is an Open Source application which means it has been developed by a community of people who are genuinely interested in creating good quality, FREE applications. Plugins could be considered smaller, “helper” applications that plug in to WP and give extra functionality to your site. To find out more about the type of plugins available check out – http://www.codex.wordpress.org/plugins
So let’s take a look at a couple of examples of where you could use WP to manage different types of website.
a. News or Magazine Site
WP lends itself very well to this type of site. Feature articles can be kept on the front page with latest news listed chronologically on another part of the page. You could also set up different category pages such as Fashion or Sport. To see a WP theme using this style, check out Gridlock at http://www.hyalineskies.com
b. Gallery Site
As well as displaying images, gallery sites sometimes allow commenting (no problem for WP) and rating of individual items or lists of top rated items. This sort of application can be put together using WP with the WPG2 plugin – http://www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpg2/ which allows random, recent, daily, weekly, popular images, and albums to be displayed as image blocks in the WordPress Sidebar.
c. Portfolio Site
Very similar to a gallery site, the portfolio site usually consists of one or more pages of thumbnails which when clicked allow the visitor to see a larger version of the work. You could of course include the WPG2 plugin to allow rating, but if you’d rather just show your work without them, a wonderful plugin that you can use is NextGen. This is a plugin I have used for many of my clients and I cannot tell you what a time saver it is compared to the old method of individually resizing thumbs and then linking them up. Great stuff.
d. E-Commerce Site
These days, it’s very important to be able to add some sort of E-commerce functionality to a site. Everyone has something to sell, don’t they? This type of site is generally made up of product page with descriptions and thumbnails. Also required is integration with some type of payment service. I use Paypal as the payment service for my clients because it really is simple to setup. But what about the E-commerce functionality? How does that tie in with WP? Well needless to say there is a plugin available …
The imaginatively titled “WP E-commerce” plugin is available for download from http://www.instinct.co.nz It’s one I’ve used on two client sites without too many hassles. The main problem I came across with this was the particular themes I had designed didn’t quite sit right with some of the product pages, but that was my fault rather than the plugin.
So that’s a short round up of just some of the ways you can take your WP blog and turn it into a fully fledged CMS with tons of functionality. You’ll find there are plugins for all kinds of things, the ones I listed above are some that I like and use for my own and my client sites, there are many more out there to play with.
4. A series of links about using WordPress as a content management system and useful WordPress Plugins
Semiologic
Semiologic is a WordPress theme that has been designed so it can be used to build a website rather than just a blog – ie. act as a content management system. I downloaded it put it on a test site to experiment. It basically contains a series of wizards and set up features that you can activate without any coding knowledge. There are a lot of layout variations you can choose from – 1 column, 2 column, 3 column and you can choose the width of your website as well, there are a few skins build in too. What I though looked pretty good was how easily you could duplicate the skin and create/amend it to adapt to your own liking if you had a bit of CSS knowledge. Using widgets you can drag and drop what you have in the sidebar too. (if you choose to have a sidebar)
This article from Blaze Media talks you through 5 WordPress Plugins which make it easier to use WordPress as a Content Management system
Charity at Design adaptations gives a step by step guide to creating template pages in WordPress -
“One of the ways I use WordPress as a CMS is by way of custom templates. The kind of pages which can be added using template files that you define are virtually limitless. Say you want to showcase your Portfolio. You might need a layout vastly different from your default pages.” Charity has several other articles about using WordPress including Configure WordPress as a CMS.
David Peralty at Blogging Pro shares his 5 reasons that WordPress should be used as a CMS.
A plugin from Instinct.co.nz which brings ecommerce to WordPress. (as mentioned above by Jennifer)
J David Macor gives a step by step guide on how to get WordPress running locally on a PC, ideal if you want to test your WordPress website before releasing it publicly.
Michael Doig gives a step by step guide on how to get WordPress running locally on a Mac, again ideal if you want to test your WordPress website before releasing it publicly.
Blog helper has several different articles about using WordPress as a CMS including how to use WordPress to create a portfolio site
Brian Gardner has created a premium WordPress theme called Revolution – a magazine style CMS theme.
This article from pqdb.com gives more information about working with categories, adding a FAQ page, a contact form and making sure the whole WordPress website is searchable.
The Sandbox theme at Plaintxt.org is a very minimalistic theme ready to be styled in any way you wish. If you are looking for a fairly blank canvas to start your WordPress CMS website and know a bit about CSS it could be a place to start.
David at David Airey has an article on how to customise your WordPress Login page. This could be useful if you are using WordPress to build a CMS website for one of your clients and want the login page to fit in with their corporate look.
Randa at Randa Clay Design discusses how she worked out how to rearrange wordpress navigation and hide elements she did not want to appear.
Char at Essential Keystrokes talks you through how she made a website using WordPress as a Content Management System.
This article by John McCreesh at Onlamp.com can show you how to create a static home page if you are using an older version of WordPress.
An article by Jonathan on how to put together a WordPress Theme from scratch.
If any body else knows of any useful articles/plugins for using WordPress as a CMS please let me know and I will add them to the list.
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317 Comments
Great article. WordPress is so much more than a blogging platform. I am an affiliate marketer and use use it for many of my affiliate sites, it is quick and easy to set-up, and easy to customize, plus someone else does the development for it keeping the code ship shape!
Hello Tara,
this is indeed a very useful collection of links and information. It came very handy to me since I was thinking about setting up a new page and was now able to setup a local version of WordPress to test stuff before I will set it online.
One thing I want to add is the WordPress documentation the part which is talking about the template tags:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/ which is very helpful if you are a little bit more into programming and want to customize your WordPress whether you use it as CMS or as blog.
Thanks again for your great article!
-Joe-
Great resource, WordPress definitely has a lot of potential!
Thanks for the post. I must admit that I do not go into the details of my web page’s back end. I had it made for me according to what I wanted. With the internet it’s easy to get help. When you need to get business planning assistance, web design and other technical tasks.
These post will be helpful for webmasters.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere I had never thought of WP as a CMS opting for other solutions but after now using it I would recommend it for anyone looking for a simple CMS. Easy install and upgrades aswell.
Hey Tara, great article on the management system, you can really gather your content and manage it pretty efficiently if you have the correct tools, thanks for sharing this..Very informative!
Its a Wonderful post. Thanks for putting your thoughts so precisely.
Excellent stuff! a very informative article about the uses of cms and how it can help wordpress users in so many different ways! thanks for sharing! cheers..
I actually use WP for all sites I build, it’s really kicking some behinds.
I was just looking for this sort of info and you came straight up as No 1 on Google. Fantastic information – thank you!
I set up a friends business site using WordPress – it is a very simple site of just 19 pages, but it is all within WordPress which gives my friend (who is not web-savvy) a really simple CMS that works brilliantly. If I had used something like Joomla I think it would have been overkill
Great done – I have dabbled with wordpress as a CMS before without any success! This will help a lot!
Looks like a lot of people are using WordPress for clients CMS.
Presumably they add content to pages / posts using the dashboard, not too difficult, but how do they cope with graphics!
Clients have sent me photographs that are megaBytes big not kiloBytes! They are taken on high resolution cameras on the highest settings. OK for prints, but not for the web.
I can cope with megaByte photos, I crop them to size and optimise them for the web. But what does a client do?
How do your WordPress CMS clients upload photos?
Im not convinvced that WordPress should be used as a CMS tool for larger sites or sites needing customisations. But I guess for smaller ones its ok.
Thanks for the article. I really appreciate the effort you have put into it.
Great post!with the internet it’s easy to get all the support you need,and I really enjoyed going through your article, it had some brilliant tips! thanks!
This was really a nice article covering all most all the aspects of content management system..But I believe Joomla CMS is a total solution, comprehensive pack with great functionality….besides really appreciate the effort on the article
I personally use WordPress as a CMS for all of my client’s site and our new website which should be finished mid August 2009 utlises many of the features of WordPress that make it a great content management system. The most notable feature is the use of custom fields in order to display extra information associated with each post/page. Two plugins that we find very helpful are the “More Fields” plugin and the Admin Management Extended plugin. WordPress truely is a terrific web publishing platform.
Thanks for such an informative site. I am still a “learner” and am trying to read as much as possible about Word Press, etc.
Excellent Article! I’ve just been using wordpress as CMS for clients website aswell as the new headway theme for WordPress and I love it. Headway cuts the time in half to pump out websites for clients in wp. You can fully customize it to your hearts content. and they continue to update their product. The only thing I would like to see is to intergrate an e-commerce leaf or something.
If you haven’t already you should take a quick look at headwaythemes
I have been using WordPress with my new job and am trying to learn as much as possible. Thanks for this site. Went into codes.wordpress.org/plugins and check out the various plugins. Also, NexGen and went into web sites. Great seeing the different ones that can be used.
Thanks for the great post. Well written and opens my eyes more to WordPress. I use wordpress as my blog but have been a bit more hesitant to use it as a CMS. You have changed my mind on this one. Thanks.
Thanks for all the good tips and links. I do love wordpress as a blog and from now i will try it as a CMS as well!
Wordpress as CMS works really fine!
Thanks for all your input.
I´ve been using wordpress as a cms for several projects and it ends up just fine. Simple, stable & easy to use!
Your post is very informative specially for newbies. Filosofo Home-Page Control is the best part of it because i need it right now.
Hi forex – you probably don’t need Filosofo now as the new wordpress allows you to do this already
I agree that WordPress is a great way use CMS effectively. Not to mention it makes it a lot easier to update than a traditional website done with HTMLS and PHP. I have been wondering lately if I should use WP as a static page on my blog. I do run a web hosting review blog, but on my blog I talk about everything from CMS, hosting problems, designs, ect.
Anyways good post and keep up the good work.
Garen
Using the WordPress as a CMS tool has merit. But I wish it had better search and organization feature.
Honestly I find WordPress miles away from other CMS services around. WordPress is really flexible and customizable. Especially with the huge amount of plug-ins and themes.
Wordrpress has certainly come along way and has improved in every way. It really has provided a strong platform for many bloggers and it’s by far one of the best platforms.
Awesome!
Thanks, especially for the tip about the NextGen plugin, wich I now use for my photo galleries. I find WordPress as a cms overall extremely flexible.
I´ve been using wordpress as a cms for several projects and it ends up just fine. Simple, stable & easy to use!
thx
I don’t know. As you’ve showed us, there a lot of possibilities within WordPress to build different kind of sites. E-commerce, portfolio et.c
However, I still think WordPress needs a lot of hacking everytime I want to use for something else than a blog. Getting rid of the blog code, rearranging pages and posts… it always takes too much time. I wish the whole “blog” part could have been installed separately.
I have just stumbled across your blog again and its a fantastic source of information.
I have been looking into the latest version of WordPress (security and all that) and you may want to consider some of the following plugins for additional SEO benefits.
yoast.com/wordpress
I think you can use WP only for simple sites or blogs (maybe very intersting) , but if you have good manual , you will need only 10 min to install CMS Joomla and you receiving all power for your idea
The best thing about WordPress is that it is open source. This singles it out as an attractive option for any start up or first time website owner. It is also easy to use and once you learn to design for it, the possibilities are endless.
I am seeking advice/direction regarding a content management solution. We have main web site which has inidividual pages for many outlets. Each outlet needs to be able to create the content for their page. Any content change will need to be approved before it can go on the main site. Each outlet page will also only be able to modify certain content based on predefined templates. Certain sections of every template will have content of the master or main site, similar to a master page in .Net. I need the content creation to be simple with a wysiwyg user interface. It needs to be extremely streamlined so as to not be overwhelming for the content submitters. The content submitters in many cases are not technical. Also after the content has been submitted and approved we’ll be looking to upload the content to our production web site which is not currently slated to be a Content Management System, only static html for the most part. Therefore the content submissions need to be extractable as html from the CMS.
In summary I’m in need of the following:
1) Simple wysiwyig html Content Creation supporting templates. Media such as photos and vides must be supported.
2) Content must be workflowed for approval.
3) Once approved, the html and media would be extractable for upload to production web site.
I’m not a CMS guru. It is very daunting looking at all the myriad of different choices. Much of what I’ve seen, although powerful, seems to be to difficult for non technical users who only need to edit one and only one page. We’re really hoping for a simple user interface where basically to only choices for the end user is to logon, modify content including uploading of videos and pictures and submit for approval. We’re thinking that perhaps we could skin a CMS to streamline the UI just for this purpose. Perhaps offer a specific URL address just for the single page content submitters and a non streamlined version for the main web site content providers.
I’m open to any technology choices too. Open source would be great be not required. Would wordpress be a good candidate here? How?
Thanks in advance for any guidance or direction you can offer.
Hi Eric, Thanks for your comment I am not a big techie either – have you looked at Joomla as well. I would try posting on somewhere like sitepoint.com and soemone may be able to give you more advice. Hopefully someone else might chip in here too.
You can test out opensource CMS here.
I’ve never really thought of using WordPress as a CMS but after reading this article it seems like a good idea. I”ve only used EKM and Magento but I will have to give WordPress a go. Thanks for this article.
wordpress is like second to life these days for the webmasters…allmost all webs of mine run on it…..simple and yet very powerful.
With the arrival of WordPress 3 Custom Taxonomies, the CMS capabilities can be truly extended into building a meaningful information architecture. Regards, Jason
If you want to create a normal website or blog, I would rather use WordPress than Joomla.
It is easy to install, offers a large community for questions and can be extended with numerous plugins and widgets.
@ Eric Decker:
As far as I know, Joomla is Multi domain capable and offers the possibility to create different users with different privileges. This allows to activate the content after a certain user approved it.
Greetings
Marcus
some of the websites mentioned in this article are no longer using WordPress, for example moo.com is not using WP, you can check this by viewing the source and looking for the style.css file which should be in a themes directory, maybe their blog (if they have one) is using WordPress. But anyway, back to the topic, I think that WordPress is a great free asset, but not always can be used for different purposes, high end ecommerce website with a lot of traffic wont use WordPress and any website that wants WP as a CMS but has tons of traffic, wont use WP as the platform because, WP will collapse from the tons of queries it will get.
I agree with Angela. Too much custimization when you want to use WordPress as a CMS for a non-blog site. But your article seems very useful. I added it to my bookmarks and will definitely try it!
HI,
I’m on the road to create a website NOT a blog
i really like the wordpress platform but i don’t think it’s can do more than a BLOG
jooma or xoops will be better
WordPress is becoming a popular choice for web designers and businesses. Great share. =)
I’ve used Word Press before for basic CMS and it does work well for sites that don’t need a ton of functionality. I do love the interface and the ability for my clients to easily pick up and use the features. It’s a great tool – hopefully they will expand it’s features in future releases.
Fun to look back and see where WP has come in the last 3 years. I still found the link on how to create a wordpress theme interesting.
WordPress is a GREAT content management system – I’ve tried out a handful of CMS’s including Joomla, which is also supposed to be good, but WordPress is definitely my favorite. It’s just so intuitive and easy to use. I also love the amount of free plugins out there – all you have to do is search for them!
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