Utilizing WordPress As A Content Management System (CMS)

Word­Press I used orig­i­nally only only as a blog­ging tool, but I learned that it was indeed quite a pow­er­ful con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem (CMS). This espe­cially became true in ver­sion 2.0+ as addi­tions were made that made it more con­ducive to the aver­age user (such as inte­grat­ing TinyMCE).

The fol­low­ing steps are the intro­duc­tory steps I use in set­ting up web­sites using Word­Press. In fact, for me web design is no longer done apart from Word­Press; for me Word­Press = Web Design. I am assum­ing a gen­eral knowl­edge of installing Word­Press, but if you need help in this you can con­sult the Codex.

Choos­ing A Theme

One of the strengths of Word­Press is its devel­op­ment com­mu­nity. There is almost no short­age of resources to uti­lize in design­ing your web­site around Word­Press. A well cho­sen theme is instru­men­tal in how your appli­ca­tion will not only look but func­tion. I sug­gest the fol­low­ing tips when select­ing a theme for a web­site that uses Word­Press as a CMS.

• Choose a theme that looks less stereo­typ­i­cally “blog like” such as Kubrick.
• For the sake of the designer, choose a theme that uses wid­gets for easy updates.
• Choose a theme that has clear, not ambigu­ous, navigation.
• I sug­gest themes that have a fixed width, but I real­ize this is per­sonal preference.
• Less is more in a theme; that is why Almost Spring is a bet­ter choice than Kiwi.

Nec­es­sary Plugins

Here are a few plu­g­ins I’ve found absolutely nec­es­sary when design­ing a web­site with WordPress.

• Search Pages
• Google Sitemap
• WP-Contact Form
• FAl­bum (if using a photo gallery)
• run­PHP
• Side­bar Widgets

The great thing about the Word­Press com­mu­nity is that if there is some­thing your client wants done there is prob­a­bly a Word­Press plu­gin to help you do it!

Set­ting Up the Site

There are a few steps I go through when set­ting up my site with Word­Press as a CMS. I first make sure that the splash page con­tains only one post. While you can cre­ate a sta­tic front page in Word­Press, I just use one post so it is more eas­ily editable. I then put all my actual con­tent in pages.

I usu­ally don’t use the link part of Word­Press for my own blogs, but I use it on my sites because then my clients can eas­ily update, delete, and cat­e­go­rize links. If you do this, I also sug­gest using the My Link Order plugin.

Next, be sure to set up Perma­links which give the impres­sion of direc­to­ries. Your client will be hap­pier with domain/about/ then domain/?page_id=12. And lastly be sure to cre­ate your cus­tomer accounts with “Edi­tor” priv­i­leges so they don’t break every­thing!
Exam­ples

Here are sites that I have used Word­Press as a con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem (*working).

• Kemp Road Bap­tist Church
• Crock­ett Home Improvement
• Siolon*
• Find­ing The­ism*