With the official release of WordPress 2.0 we came across a great article by Aaron Brazell (or is it Darren Rowse?), which listed 10 important things to know about WordPress 2.0, and the 10 point we’d like to point out to anyone else out there that has been kicking the idea around of using wordpress as a content management system, or CMS….
10 Things You Should Know about WordPress 2.0: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
WordPress as a Content Management System – Suppose you like WordPress as a blogging tool and you wish to use it to run non-blog sites. This is a distinct possibility, and not necessarily WordPress 2.0 specific. In fact, I’ve been doing this for the past few years in one form or another.
Let me give you an example of one such site. My father is a pastor at New Covenant Community Church in Audubon, New Jersey. (Feel free to visit. I’m sure he won’t mind!) This site is completely WordPress 2.0 driven and it doesn’t even resemble a blog! The question is, how did I accomplish this?
Well, there’s a couple of things I did and ‘ll bullet point them for quick reference.
1. Because we wanted the front page to have a different layout than the rest of the site, we created a special template file called NCCC_Main_Page.php. To make it usable for our front page, we needed to add this block of code near the top (after the opening ‘< ?php’) /* Template Name: NCCC_Main_Page */ 2. We created a “page” with our home page content and selected the NCCC_Main_Page template from the Page Template drop down. 3. We then downloaded the Static Front Page plugin and followed the instructions to install it. 4. We created the content for our home page and assigned it a page slug of “home” (Note: this is most easily done by assigning the page title of home and then changing it to something more useful after publishing) 5. Because most non-blog sites, including NCCC’s, have a manageable number of pages, we were able to create Entries in WordPress and create a static menu using the entry permalinks. There are built-in functions and plugins to make larger amounts of content more manageable and automatic. 6. As a bonus, we did create a non-blog blog of “Upcoming Events” by posting under a specific category. The permalink to this page was a mere category archive permalink with the specific category used in the archive call. This provides added benefit of enabling an RSS feed of upcoming events. Related: WordPress 2.0, Open Source Content Management
One response to “10 Things You Should Know about WordPress 2.0: Blog Tips at ProBlogger”
[…] So far I haven’t used every feature, but the post writer looks better, and seems to be faster than what I had expereinced with wordpress 1.5. I have not yet had a chance to see which plug ins are working with the new 2.0 yet, but I did find a post at Global Advanced Media about using wordpress as a content management system, which made me jump right into downloading the new WP 2.0 so I can give a try.. I have always wanted to use something like wordpress to create my entire web presence here, and if I can set a static page the way I want with these tricks posted by, then it will be great… If not I will hope that the old kiwi theme plug in available for wp 2.0 so I can give that a whirl. […]