Use Wordpress As a CMS

If you followed along with the second post of this series, you’ve no doubt got your shiny new Wordpress installation set up and ready to customize as a Content Management System. Coolio. Before we dive in to using your setup as a CMS, let’s cover some basics.

There are two means of displaying content with Wordpress - Pages and posts. Pages operate outside the the Loop. In other words, they don’t age and they’re always accessible as part of the main navigation. They’re used for displaying “static” information typically found on a website, such as about, contact, history, mission, etc. Conversely, posts are dynamically generated pages which will “fade”, or move down the blog chronology as new entries are made.

*Note: Technically, both Pages and posts are database-driven, and therefore dynamic, but for the purpose of this article and the intended use of Pages, think of them as static. If you already knew that, just pretend you’re still fascinated and we’ll move on. :)

Page Control

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, especially if you’re displaying large photos on the page. The easiest way to accomplish this is to duplicate page.php, rename is to portfolio.php, and style it to fit the needs determined by your content. Finally, add the following to the top of your page, before any other code:

<?php

/* Template Name: Portfolio */

?>

FTP your new template and log in to your control panel. From within the Pages admin, create your page. I know this seems redundant, but Wordpress needs to reference it somehow. Add your content (if you havent’ already done so from within your HTML editor). Now you can assign it the Portfolio template using the drop-down selector on the right.

Post Control

Using the Loop, you also have extensive control over how and where your post information appears. You can create custom styles by category, by single post, or even by manual posting. For example, the index page of a typical WordPress site features the most recent post (or posts), ordered by date. If you only want certain entries to appear on your front page instead of the most recent one(s), you can specify this by modifying the Loop in the home.php page you created in part II of this series.

Further Considerations

• Comment Control - for every forum, blog or community portal, there needs to be a way to moderate. In time, you may need to employ the use of some comment moderation and/or anti-spam tools.
• User Management - User roles may not be a consideration for you yet, but if you ever plan to have multiple authors or users, you’ll have to implement some restrictions.

This wraps up my first attempt at writing a guide for a custom Wordpress install, and my first series of any kind I might add. If you notice that I left anything out or completely botched something up, GOOD GRIEF let me know so I can make edits. Trying to remember my own feeble steps to installing and tweaking Wordpress for the purpose of this article was harder than I thought! :)

Tags: cms | content-management | site-management