« Free Template
Great Directory Submission Service »

Using Wordpress for a CMS

I sometimes build websites for people just for the fun of it. I really enjoy helping people out especially ministries that are in need of a website, but don’t have the know how to get a website going.

I’ve been working on a particular website for over a year. It hasn’t been because I haven’t had the time to get it done, but I’ve been waiting for the client to give me pics and the info to plug into each page. (This story continues you just to have to hang on for the ride.) Just the other day, I was at a different ministry in down town Grand Rapids and I mentioned to them that I could build a website for them for free. The guy I was talking to quickly asked, “Will we be able to edit the text and the images?” Right then it was like I got a revelation from God. You could almost here the music playing and see a light bulb going on. I started to think, I got to get a hold of a content management system (CMS) for these people. My wheels started to turn. If I could just make the shell of the site for these ministries and have some sort of CMS, that will allow them to add pages, text, images etc. I will make life easier for them and myself. They would get a site that they can edit themselves and I in the long run would save myself time and headaches.

I then started to look for a CMS to use. Everything I tried seemed to be too complex for the end user. I had several people in forums tell me to use Wordpress as a CMS, but I wasn’t for sure how to do it. Then I came across this article:

Using Wordpress as a CMS

Sweet! Finally, some instructions that actually made sense. Wordpress has a very simple admin. Anybody and their brother can use it, even if they are computer illiterate.

Anyways, from the article above I was able to make this CMS thing work with Wordpress. I didn’t do everything that the article recommended because I didn’t need all of the fluff. I got this site done in about 2 hours. The site still needs a logo, some other images, and more content . I’m waiting for the client to get me the logo. :) The content you see is the content that I copied from the original site that I created for them. They have a lot more info to add.

Bookmark this article!

FacebookBlinkbitsBlinkListsBlogLinesBlogmarksBuddymarksCiteULikeCo.mmentsDel.icio.usDiggDiigo

FarkFeed Me LinksFurlTagtoogaGoogleLinkagogoma.gnoliaMister WongNewsvinePropellerRawsugar

RedditRojoSimpySphinnSpurlSquidooStumbleUponTailrankTechnoratiYahooNetvouz

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 20th, 2007 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Every Day Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Using Wordpress for a CMS”

  1. jimmylee Says:
    January 22nd, 2007 at 3:07 pm

    nice article.
    anyways… i preffer joomla insted of wordpress for cms purposes.

  2. Blonde Jon Says:
    January 22nd, 2007 at 7:58 pm

    I think you were the first person who told me about Joomla. Joomla is pretty cool.

    For the people who I’m working with they need something more simple as far as the admin is concerned so that’s why I went with Wordpress. I’m more familiar with Wordpress also so that makes me want to stick with it more.

  3. Eric Says:
    January 29th, 2007 at 2:25 am

    Hi,

    Thanks for mentioning my article! If some of your users got a 404 when they clicked thru to the tutorial, that’s because I changed the site I initially wrote the article on.

    I actually was running the site on Joomla and I was having a few problems that made me actually scrap the whole CMS and go with WP for the entire site.

    I think there are times when you use Joomla but often times it can be overkill! I also thin for small to small/medium sized sites, WP can be implemented and tweaked enough to fill most needs. WP does lack in the plugin departments such as a shopping cart and simple but good photo galleries. The biggest one is there is really no great option for WP for ecommerce.

    I have integrated wordpress with withinweb.com’s paypal IPN shopping cart and it fits my needs. i think with a couple of days work, a really good plugin could be written to combine withinweb.com’s shopping cart with wordpress but i don’t have that kind of time now. you can see my integration at: pqdb.com/category/ready-to-go-sites/ if the IPN software was mine i would definitely integrate the 2 pieces of software.

    anyway, your new site looks great! you’d never know that was blogging software. great job!

    any for any readers who got a 404 with that link, here is an updated URL:
    pqdb.com/wordpress-articles/using-wordpress-as-a-cms-content-management-system/

    take care,
    eric

  4. Blonde Jon Says:
    January 29th, 2007 at 1:49 pm

    Thanks Eric,

    Your article is very well written. It was a huge help to me. I will continue to use that article as I make other sites that use WP for a CMS.

    I will change the link to your article in my post.

    Jon

  5. Eric Says:
    January 29th, 2007 at 9:55 pm

    Thanks Jon!
    :)

Leave a Reply